while criminal networks gained confidence that counternarcotics operations were unlikely to interfere with their schemes, however blatant.
In 2008 one Orange Walk transshipment ring was so bold as to land a drug plane at about two in the morning right on the Northern Highway.237 Heavily armed masked men dressed in black stopped traffic while a shipment estimated at more than a ton of cocaine was unloaded and a refueling truck carrying 1,200 gallons of aviation fuel serviced the aircraft. Army and police, alerted by an oncoming driver’s cell phone call, rushed to the scene, but, apparently unwittingly, passed the truck heading north packed full of drugs. During the ensuing shoot-out with traffickers carrying AK-47 assault rifles, police shot the driver of the refueler truck, which crashed, and eventually nine other individuals were arrested, although the pilots escaped.
In countries with well-developed criminal-justice systems, prosecutors have used the threat of conviction and lengthy imprisonment to persuade conspirators to provide information in exchange for more lenient treatment. Given the lesser resources and abilities of Belizean authorities, climbing “up the chain” in this manner occurred much less frequently. In this Northern Highway case, too, the government proved to be largely impotent. The Belizean authorities never located the drugs and could only speculate on their probable route out of the country, while those Belizeans who had masterminded the venture were never publicly identified, much less successfully prosecuted.
Juárez Cartel Activities
Mexican cartels, cooperating with Belizean networks, have been behind many of the air and maritime ventures in northern Belize, far overshadowing the Colombian organizations that had moved in during the initial stage of Belizean cocaine transshipment. The most important of the Mexican syndicates came to be the Southeast cell of the Juárez cartel. While Juárez long had a presence in Belize and the Yucatán, its activities here mushroomed in the late 1990s. This illustrates how broader developments within the drug trade often had critically important consequences for Central American bridge states. After the 1997 death of Juárez kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, bloody struggles ensued within and among the principal cartels active in northern Mexico. Feeling intense pressure from the Arellano Félix brothers leading the Tijuana cartel, Vicente Carrillo, Amado’s brother, shifted many Juárez operations into the Yucatán.238
Headquartered in Quintana Roo, the Southeast cell of the Juárez cartel was directed by José Albino Quintero Meraz (“Don Beto”) and former Mexican federal police officer Alcides Ramón Magana (“El Metro”). Before Magana’s 2001 arrest by the Mexican Army, this smuggling ring became one of Mexico’s most violent narcotics networks, dominating the Chetumal and Cancún drug trade. The U.S. government went so far as to direct its consul in Cancún to leave Mexico after his life was threatened.239 Indeed, by 2000 Cancún had become a regional drug center. Servicing the beach resorts out on the peninsula, the city had grown to 750,000 inhabitants, including surrounding slums, and the booming tourist industry provided exceptional opportunities both to launder money and to camouflage cocaine transshipment. The Southeast cell was deeply involved in both, and routes through neighboring Belize gained prominence.
In early 1999 a Mexican federal police report declared that Chetumal traffickers were transporting cocaine for Colombians into northern Belize by air and sea. The narcotics were then being imported into Mexico, either via the Río Hondo or by shipment into nearby ports and oil refineries. The Mexican investigation also revealed that a pair of Belizean police officers in Corozal was assisting passage of the drugs. Most important, the network had support at the top echelons of Mexican politics. It had corrupted Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, governor of Mexico’s Quintana Roo state from 1993 to 1999 and a member of the then nationally dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional party.240
Villanueva Madrid, who had extensive contacts in Panama linked to the Cali cartel, was on the payroll of the Southeast cell as well.241 His trusted subordinates had taken charge of importing and transporting drugs through Quintana Roo toward northern Mexico and the United States. Juárez traffickers had been provided with official credentials and with access to planes, hangars, and airstrips, as well as with heavy equipment to construct clandestine runways. In exchange, prosecutors later declared, Villanueva was receiving a per kilo kickback. In one incident a small plane carrying cocaine being transshipped from Barranquilla, Colombia, to the United States developed engine trouble. Traffickers reportedly capitalized on the governor’s influence and had the drugs off-loaded and moved up the coastal highway from Chetumal to Cancún. According to witnesses, state police and a judicial police chief accompanied the drug shipment as it traveled overland within Quintana Roo.
This organization eventually succeeded in moving immense quantities of cocaine through Quintana Roo. Authorities came to believe that between 1994 and 2002 it exported hundreds of tons to the United States, and some of this cocaine was transshipped through Belize.242 In fact, a critical break in the U.S. federal case against the Southeast cell leaders came when U.S. government informants at a northern Belize airstrip loaded 550 kilos of cocaine onto an airplane owned by the Quintana Roo governor’s office to be flown into Mexico.
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