CLANDESTINE NETWORK CONTROLS DRUG PASSAGE

Detective Robert Alvarez, who heads a two-man gang intelligence unit
at the Edinburg Police Department, says Mexican drug cartels use
local gangs, which are heavily made up of male juveniles and young
adults, to move their drugs. But a number of people -- businessmen,
teachers, truck drivers -- also peddle illegal substances to
supplement their incomes.

The cartels are designed so local drug traffickers don't know who the
people in the supply chain are, Alvarez said. That way, if one group
of runners is busted by the police, they can't rat out the rest.

Cartels do not call themselves cartels, said Rosalva Resendiz, a
criminal justice professor at the University of Texas-Pan American
who informally studies the drug trafficking culture. It's a label
given to them by the media and law enforcement.

Basically, a "cartel" is a loose organization of people, she said.

"You know you are part of it, but you don't really think about it," she said.

The two major Mexican drug trafficking organizations are the Gulf
Cartel and the Juarez Cartel, and they have a kingpin in each major
Mexican city, said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jorge L. Cisneros.

The city boss knows what is being trafficked through his territory at
all times. Mules -- independent runners who can be illegal
immigrants, gang members or just connected individuals like truck
drivers -- must pay the kingpin to use the routes through his city,
Cisneros said.

Trevino said the independent runners' loyalty is to the cash, though,
not to the cartel. And vice versa, the cartel does not contract, per
se, with only local gangs.

Nor do drug traffickers hire local gang members solely because they
are gang members, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said. Those
people are just available and the trafficker knows through experience
that they can get the job done. No one is on the payroll; they're
more like free agents.

The heavy drug-related violence occurring in Hidalgo County, for the
most part, is not the result of turf battles, unlike in other parts
of the country.

"How can you fight for turf in Hidalgo County? Hidalgo County is a
transshipment point," Trevino said. "How do you fight for turf? The
dope just runs right through here."

He and Cisneros agree violence occurs when a trafficker on the
shipping chain loses a load to law enforcement or another gang, or if
that person owes money or drugs to someone. Retaliation for
backstabbing also can be a reason for violence.

"It's all because of a bad business practice," Trevino said.

Drug smuggling is a business, he said, and that business has become
more sophisticated.

"A lot of the drug smugglers, instead of paying cash to their
smuggling people, security people, stash-house people and for the
transporters, they were paying in kind," Trevino said.

Imagine a transporter is hired to take 1,000 pounds of marijuana from
Point A to Point B at $1 per pound, he said. The supplier will give a
transporter five pounds of the dope from load and call it even. The
supplier, who gets his stuff cheap, perhaps is paying a transporter
only $250 worth of drugs. The transporter could take that in-kind
payment and sell the drugs himself for about $500 a pound, depending
on the selling location. He likely would make much more than if he
had transported the load for cash.

"I'm paying you less, but you are making more," the sheriff said. "A
lot of the stash people are keeping the dope here in the Valley and
selling it locally. They are tripling their money. We picked up on
that two or three years ago."