A Deadly 2-Way Trade: Drugs Pour Into the U.S. as Guns Flood Mexico

In early 1984, a reputed Mexican drug trafficker allegedly seized upon a plan to secure his appointment to an elite Mexican police unit.

He would come to the U.S.-Mexico border--specifically, to a San Diego gun shop--and purchase some high-powered weapons for Javier (Paco) Tejeda, a well-connected but allegedly crooked Mexican federal police official who has since been jailed in Mexico in connection with the killing of a U.S. drug agent there.

As outlined in court papers, the reputed trafficker and a gun shop employee arranged for the illegal purchase of 16 AKS assault rifles in San Diego. The guns, authorities suggest, ended up as part of the ever-expanding arsenal of Mexico’s high-rolling narcotraficantes.

In April, a federal grand jury in San Diego indicted the reputed trafficker and the gun shop employee on various violations of U.S. gun law.

U.S. officials say the case illustrates the increasing flow of arms to Mexican drug rings through the porous 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Of particular concern, authorities say, are semiautomatic, military-type weapons such as the AKS, Uzi, AR-15 and MAC-10, which can readily be converted into fully automatic, machine gun-style arms capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute with a single pull of the trigger. Ammunition, silencers and other accessories are also part of the illicit cross-border trade, authorities say.

“I think there’s no question that, increasingly, arms from the United States have been clearly headed toward Latin America, and the principal transit point has been Mexico,” said Jack Killorin, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in Washington.

Most of the arms are believed to be destined for Mexico’s lucrative--and often violent--drug trade, although authorities say Mexico has also been used as a conduit for arms destined for other Latin American nations.

The gun smuggling, which has always been a problem, has escalated and become more lucrative in recent years as Mexico’s drug business has boomed and found a need for additional firepower, according to law enforcement officers.

Although there are no definitive statistics, authorities point to various numbers to back their claim. ATF figures show that international arms-smuggling cases more than doubled between fiscal 1984 and 1985, with a significant number of cases involving Mexico, officials said. In fiscal 1984, ATF’s Houston office, which covers more than 1,000 miles of border in Texas and New Mexico, documented 1,480 U.S.-purchased guns that ended up in Mexico; since this fiscal year started Oct. 1, the number is approaching 10,000.

“I don’t want to say that things are getting out of hand,” said Phillip Chojnacki, special agent in charge of the Houston office, “but we’re fairly confident from the cases we’ve made . . . that it’s reaching major proportions. . . .

“It’s gone from a mom-and-pop operation, where relatives would buy a couple of guns so cousin Joe could protect his farm down in the interior, to a real commodity that drug traffickers are looking for.”

Officials say the flow of guns is part of a two-way traffic of contraband between the two nations: drugs come north and guns go south. In some cases, authorities say, the same smugglers who have brought narcotics into the United States return with arms. One agent compared the technique to that employed by cross-country truckers who are hesitant to return home without a load of goods.

“Where you find narcotics trafficking, you find firearms,” said David Troy, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF office in Los Angeles, whose territory covers the border areas of California and Arizona. “The narcotics industry today cannot operate without some kind of weaponry attached to (it), both because of the threat of rip-off by their own kind and the threat of enforcement operations.”

Another agent noted that weapons sometimes serve as an extremely stable form of currency. “Whereas pesos and dollars may fluctuate, these guns maintain their value,” he said.

South of the border, the arms traffic has raised considerable concern among Mexican officials, who are often out-gunned by trafficking rings equipped like sophisticated militias with guns brought in from the United States.

“Both nations must work within their national boundaries to stop problems such as this smuggling of contraband arms across the border,” said Francisco Fonseca, a spokesman for the federal attorney general’s office in Mexico City.

In response to the gun traffic, Mexican and U.S. officials have stepped up efforts to trace the origins of weapons captured in Mexico; such trace requests increased from fewer than 100 in 1984 to more than 1,000 already this year, according to U.S. officials. Authorities use the trace information to launch cases against gun shops that may have been illegally selling guns to Mexican nationals.

Though ATF staffing along the border has remained fairly constant, Jerry Turpen, the bureau’s international traffic and arms program manager in Washington, said that agents have been placing a greater emphasis on border gun-running cases. Investigations, however, are generally complex, often involving extensive surveillance and undercover work by Spanish-speaking agents.

“We’ve probably dried up a few sources, and probably stopped some traffickers,” Turpen said, “but in terms of stopping the traffic, no, we haven’t. . . . It’s simple economics; the law of supply and demand. The supply is available here and the demand is there.”

Apart from the threat within Mexico, U.S. officials are concerned that the high-powered violence could spread to border areas. In Texas’ Cameron County, a well-known transit point for Mexican narcotics, the Sheriff’s Department was issued five fully automatic Uzis and four M-16 rifles last year to counter the threat from the other side of the Rio Grande.

“Drug traffickers in this area are using ‘em,” explained Carlos Tapia, chief deputy sheriff in Cameron County, “and to approach one of these guys with a pea shooter is not only lacking intelligence, but bordering on the asinine. . . . These guys don’t have any borders. Their territory is the world.”

Beyond the drug-trafficking problem, there is some concern that weapons could be going through Mexico to revolutionary movements elsewhere in Latin America. Though it could not be confirmed, one U.S. official said that many of the arms used by insurgents during the Sandinista revolution were purchased in the United States and smuggled into Nicaragua through Mexico and Central America.

Once they cross into the United States, Mexican drug traffickers and others seeking to buy sophisticated weapons don’t have far to look, as scores of gun shops from Brownsville to San Diego cater to the border trade. In the border counties of Texas, noted the ATF’s Chojnacki, there are about 1,400 licensed firearms dealers. One pending Texas case involves as many as 6,500 weapons going to Mexico from a single source, authorities said.

“There are only a small number of dealers, fewer than 1%, who are involved in illegal activity,” said the ATF’s Chojnacki. “But there are enough so that if someone’s looking for arms, they can get all they want.”

Apart from the widespread availability of high-powered arms, America’s comparatively lax gun-control laws contribute to the arms trade. In most cases, a buyer at a U.S. gun shop can purchase semiautomatic weapons--many of which are readily convertible to fully automatic--after filling out a simple federal form.

Certain people, such as fugitives, drug addicts and illegal aliens, are forbidden from purchasing the firearms. Foreign nationals are also restricted.

But federal law requires no background checks or waiting periods before the purchase of non-automatic weapons, including those of the semi-automatic variety.

Dealers are required to ask purchasers to produce some identification, such as a driver’s license, but often such documents may be forged or stolen. To conceal their identities, officials say, some would-be weapons buyers pay others, known as “straw purchasers,” to go to the gun shops and buy the arms.

Once buyers get their guns, authorities say, they encounter little difficulty bringing them back to Mexico. U.S. border authorities do not routinely stop vehicles or pedestrians heading south, although a license is required to export weapons. And, while Mexico has stringent gun-control laws and it is illegal to bring firearms into Mexico without a permit, U.S. officials say that Mexican customs searches are often cursory. Moreover, bribery is a well-known occurrence at Mexican border posts, according to law enforcement authorities.

“My understanding is that checks made on people entering Mexico is minimal,” said Troy, with ATF in Los Angeles. “I think the level of corruption is much higher than we would like, but the ease of bringing stuff into the country is a contributing factor.”

Complicating matters is the difficulty of cracking gun-smuggling rings. Often, sales are arranged through a network of trusted friends and relatives.

Increasingly wary of undercover operations utilizing Latino agents, officials say border gun shops dealing in illicit trade now routinely ask unknown Mexican customers for references before they will do business. In one case here, an undercover agent posing as a Mexican gun buyer provided a gun salesman with a relative’s business card and a gift of shrimp before he was able to make a purchase.

“You can’t just walk in and say, ‘I’m from Tijuana and I want to buy guns,’ ” one agent said.

In the gun case pending in San Diego, prosecutors allege that, in early 1984, Marco Antonio Robles Franco, the reputed drug trafficker, arranged the purchase of 16 AKS rifles at the downtown San Diego store, then known as Krasne’s and Orgel’s Gun Shop.

U.S. officials say that the high-powered AKS, a Chinese-manufactured, semiautomatic version of the Soviet AK-47 assault rifle, represents a favored form of firepower for Mexican drug traffickers. In a court affidavit, Celia T. Vela, a special agent of the ATF, said that an AKS rifle “is convertible into full automatic firing action by anyone with proper tools and instruction.”

In order to avoid drawing suspicion to himself, Robles allegedly recruited several Mexican citizens to sign the federal forms and serve as the supposed buyers of the rifles. All possessed California driver’s licenses with false addresses, court documents show.

Robles didn’t try to hide his motivation, according to court papers. He allegedly told the recruits that he was obtaining the weapons for Tejeda, an agent of the Mexican Directorate of Federal Security, a kind of secret police with broad authority. The purchase, Robles explained, would expedite his pending appointment to the directorate. In court papers filed in connection with the case, U.S. prosecutors allege that the directorate’s officers provided security for Mexican drug traffickers.

In the same documents, officials describe Tejeda as the “bodyguard” for Rafael Caro Quintero, the celebrated accused trafficker who is jailed in Mexico on charges of murder, kidnaping and drug trafficking related to the slaying of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

Tejeda, who is being held in connection with the case, accompanied Caro Quintero to the airport in Guadalajara in February, 1985, when Caro Quintero made his escape from Mexico, documents show. Caro Quintero was later arrested in Costa Rica.

At the gun shop, Robles allegedly took his accomplices to Roberto Martin del Campo, a longtime salesman at the store. Martin del Campo is also a former Tijuana police sergeant and one-time member of the Mexican national pistol-shooting team, according to court papers. The salesman allegedly cooperated in arranging the purchases, though none of the people who signed the federal forms were the actual recipients of the weapons. Instead, court papers allege, Robles received the weapons for use in Mexico.

Both Robles and Martin del Campo are charged in a 34-count indictment alleging conspiracy and assorted violations of U.S. firearms statutes. They face five-year prison terms on each count, plus substantial fines.

For Martin del Campo, 60, it is his second run-in with U.S. authorities. In the earlier case, which arose from gun sales to an undercover agent, he pleaded guilty last year to a charge of attempted exportation of firearms to Mexico without a license. He was sentenced to probation.

Martin del Campo, who is free on bail, has argued that the current indictment amounts to double jeopardy and violates the plea-bargain agreement in the earlier case. According to that agreement, the government said that no additional charges would be brought against Martin del Campo, based on information then known to authorities. The government contends that the latest case is based on new information, though the sales date from 1984--before the sales at issue in the first case.

At any rate, Martin del Campo has depicted himself in court papers as an honest salesman who agreed to do “favors” for “responsible and deserving” Mexicans seeking hunting weapons and other non-military type guns. During the earlier case, for example, Martin del Campo’s attorney acknowledged that the gun salesman had helped procure two “John Wayne commemorative firearms” for the staff of the governor of Baja California.

“Mr. Martin del Campo,” a defense brief argued, “never assisted a Mexican resident in obtaining a firearm unless he first believed that the individual was law-abiding, responsible, conscientious and respected.”