The author is a Venezuelan soldier and diplomat who discusses the U.S. government’s use of the “war on drugs” as a pretext for intervention and exposes inconsistencies in Washington’s propaganda. Translation: John Catalinotto

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum made this statement — “Start with your own country” — during her regular morning press conference Feb. 7. The Mexican president then said: “They have a lot to do in the United States,” and asked, “How does fentanyl or any other drug get there? It is not right that it passes illegally, we must do the work [to stop it] in our country. But what happens after it crosses the border? Who operates? In the cities of the United States, who sells the drugs that have wreaked such tragedy?”

President Sheinbaum knows what she is talking about, especially if one considers who the big winner is in the drug business. Already at the end of the 20th century, a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated the profit produced by international drug trafficking at close to $500 billion, more than half of which circulated through the U.S. financial system.

To try to control this situation, the U.S. government launched Operation Greenback, targeting banks handling drug money. Why? Because it was easier to monitor financial institutions than to carry out military interventions in producer countries.

Operation Greenback

By examining the amount of money coming into Miami banks, the Federal Reserve Bank found that Florida had a cash surplus of $5.5 billion at a time when the rest of the U.S. was running a cash deficit. The Department of Justice, in coordination with the Treasury Department, was forced to act. Thus began Operation Greenback.

After obtaining some minimum results and after charging three Colombian nationals and 13 others with conspiring to defraud the United States, the operation was called off in October 1982. Then, mysteriously, most of the defendants managed to flee from justice.

Serious prosecution of drug trafficking in the United States lasted only three years. The anti-drug czar at that time was George Bush Sr., who had just shifted from being director of the CIA. His “meritorious work” in both the CIA and the DEA earned him later election as vice president and president of the United States.

Another aspect of this business is that of precursor chemicals. As far back as 1989, the Colombian police seized 1.5 million gallons of chemicals used to transform coca into cocaine. Most of the barrels had U.S. corporation logos.

The CIA itself reported that the export to Latin America of substances such as hydrochloric acid, potassium permanganate, sulfuric acid, acetone and ether far exceeded their legal uses, while the Congressional Research Service concluded that more than 90% of the chemicals used in drug production come from the United States. It seems clear that controlling this industry domestically is much easier and less costly for the U.S., yet little or nothing has been done.

‘Los narcos gringos’

Washington-based Mexican journalist J. Jesús Esquivel has recently dedicated himself to investigating and documenting the actions of drug traffickers in Mexico and the United States. One of his books, “Los narcos gringos,” published in 2016 and republished in 2022, goes into the mysteries and unknowns of drug trafficking in the United States by conducting an in-depth investigation of court files in addition to interviewing informants and agents who have been directly involved in the drug business or in the fight against it.

With great detail, this book recreates the “ingenious tricks used by brokers, the architects of drug trafficking, to take their merchandise to the interior of the United States and launder the proceeds of their illicit work, which they send to the Mexican cartels,” according to the book’s back cover.

In a chapter called “Gringo Narco-Corruption,” Esquivel states that the highest authorities of the United States and even the U.S. public of that country when they talk about drug trafficking immediately think of Colombia and Mexico, placing the responsibility on the two countries’ agencies, which they accuse of being corrupt. Without denying these charges, the Mexican journalist believes that there is also narco-corruption in the United States.

He writes: “Gringo and Mexican drug traffickers have on their payrolls U.S. customs agents, Border Patrol, DEA and local police; if this were not a reality, only narcotics that pass undetected through the most inhospitable regions of the border, such as the border area of the state of Arizona, would enter the United States. … ”

Esquivel quotes Oscar Hagelsieb, an expert agent of the U.S. Office of Homeland Security Investigations, who states that “narco-corruption … is the greatest obstacle facing the authorities dedicated to combating drug trafficking.” In making a comparison between the two countries, Hagelsieb states that “drug trafficking corruption in Mexico is generated by poverty and the weakness of the authorities confronting money. In the United States is where the demand and consumption of narcotics is born.”

The secrets of drug trafficking

Another investigation, this time carried out by Mexican journalists Jorge Fernández Menéndez and Víctor Ronquillo — published by the publishing house de Bolsillo under the title, “De los maras a los zetas. The secrets of drug trafficking, from Colombia to Chicago” — states that there are some 20 million drug users in the United States, of which some 6 million are addicts; however, it is dangerous to talk about the subject, so it is avoided, leading to total ignorance and confusion and the easy construction of stereotypes aimed at blaming the scourge exclusively on the producing countries.

Fernández Menéndez and Ronquillo explain that, after the shipments have crossed the border using all kinds of transport and also through tunnels along the entire border area, the drug trafficking networks begin to operate from 14 cities in the south in the states of New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida and Louisiana, where the drugs are smuggled. The drugs are stored in warehouses controlled by the drug trafficking organizations, from which the market is supplied.

I wanted to report on two specific public investigations on drug trafficking. The information handled by the security agencies is likely much greater. That is why it is difficult to understand that the most powerful country in the world has not been able to control this business … or perhaps, in reality, it has not wanted to do so.

The president of Mexico continues to ask questions: “Where does the money from the sale of illegal drugs go, and how do the weapons from the U.S. Army end up in the hands of the Mexican cartels? Who sold them, how did they get to our country? What is the final distribution in the streets? Or is it that there are no cartels there, or organized crime?”

Many questions, few answers, and those formulated from Washington carry the arrogance and threat that characterize the rhetoric and actions of the U.S. government. The response from Washington came from the Justice Department, which in a memorandum informed that it instructed the total elimination of the cartels and transnational criminal organizations. Much more than that, Tom Homan, the “border czar,” and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned that the United States could use the Army to attack the cartels even in Mexican territory.

With absolute serenity and the high mindedness that characterizes true statesmen, President Sheinbaum said that the Justice Department memorandum “is not well understood,” because it only has general explanations, but it is not known what it is going to be used for. In the continuation of the controversy and in defense of Mexico’s best interests, three days later Sheinbaum reiterated that the United States must take responsibility for the serious problem of drug trafficking and drug consumption in its country.

The Mexican president explained that drug trafficking arises from the demand for drugs; as long as there is consumption, there will be supply. She said that her government of course opposes drug trafficking, so the objective of the highest authorities of her country, including herself, was to reduce violence in her country. To take that path they have also proposed to reduce drug production and consumption in Mexico.

U.S. must do its part

But she reiterated once again that the United States must do its part by acknowledging that high drug consumption is a public health issue that Washington must address. In this area, she insisted that the United States must also take charge of controlling its own generators of violence and domestic production of psychotropic substances and must make an effort to monitor and intervene in its illegal internal market.

It must also be said Claudia Sheinbaum showed her indomitable will and patriotic feeling in the conversation she had with the U.S. president last week. Although Trump ignored the fact that the Mexican president addressed the issue of arms trafficking from the U.S., she took it upon herself to remind him a few days later. In the same press conference on Friday, Feb. 7, Sheinbaum reported that she told Trump that it was crucial in the fight against drug trafficking that weapons from the U.S. did not arrive illegally in Mexico.

She also recalled that the Mexican government had previously filed two complaints against arms distributors and manufacturers. On Jan. 21, just one day after Trump’s inauguration, the Mexican Congress, through the Foreign Ministry, requested a detailed report from the U.S. government on illicit arms trafficking, after Trump designated drug trafficking cartels in Mexico as “terrorist organizations.”

According to the latest public report from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “74% of the weapons arriving in Mexico come from across the northern border. It also states that the Mexican government had submitted a total of 148,200 requests for weapons tracing between 2017 and 2023, of which 50,409 were made between 2022 and 2023, representing a 25% increase between 2021 and 2023.” All these events showed Mexican interest in the case and were unanswered by the United States.

After the U.S. exit from the Panama Canal Zone Dec. 31, 1999, by virtue of the Torrijos-Carter agreements, the regional control apparatus that the United States had built was dismantled. This apparatus had its operational, command and logistical axis in Panama where the Southern Command headquarters was located.

The disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world caused the United States to lose the enemy whose existence served as a pretext for U.S. imperialist interventions. It then resorted first to blaming drug trafficking and the migration of undocumented people and later the fight against terrorism in order to fill the pretext “gap.”

Today, the Trump administration, claiming to “make [the U.S.] great again,” is resorting to the same pretexts as instruments to enforce regional cohesion around Washington’s dictates. The policies alleged to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking are once again tools to attempt control by subjugating countries, governments and peoples in the region.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Cuba was the sole country to resist the crushing power of the empire, while Venezuela, led by Commander Hugo Chávez, was just beginning to act internationally in defense of its sovereignty and self-determination. But today, there are several countries and governments that support and defend the dignity and honor of their peoples.

Claudia Sheinbaum, just like the priests Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos, just like Benito Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas, is giving continuity to policies to recover decorum and consciousness of Mexican sovereignty initiated in this century by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She gives us examples of the path to follow, not only for Mexico, but also for all of brown America to the south of the Rio Bravo [called Rio Grande in the U.S.].

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