Call him Gabriel. For eight years he was a consultant for the Direccion Federal de Seguridad, Mexico’s internal-security police. Today he is one of the most articulate and useful informants on the drug-related corruption that has allegedly tainted Mexico’s law-enforcement establishment. Gabriel overflows with stories of gunrunning, bribery, violence and death, much of it perpetrated by his old agency. Information provided by him has put U.S. investigators on the trail of major trafficking organizations abetted by corrupt Mexican officials. He recently met with TIME Correspondent Elaine Shannon to recount some of his adventures. “I was privileged to share in a lot of dirty laundry,” he said.
One of Gabriel’s more intriguing disclosures concerns La Pipa (the Pipe), a smuggling operation carried on by the DFS. According to Gabriel, the agency in the late 1970s acquired about 600 tanker trucks, ostensibly for ferrying natural gas from the U.S. for sale in Mexico. On the northbound leg of the trip, DFS men packed the empty trucks with marijuana provided by Mexican dealers and ran ten to twelve trucks a day into Phoenix and Los Angeles. At the border, several Mexican officials and U.S. Customs personnel were bribed $50,000 a load to let the trucks pass.
According to Gabriel, the relationship between the traffickers and the Mexican government agency began in the mid-1970s. Two DFS commanders persuaded the leading smuggling families to settle a bloody feud over control of drug production in the Sierra Madre highlands and to unite against the antinarcotics campaign being waged by Mexico and the U.S. The DFS helped the families relocate to Guadalajara, introduced them to local officials and assigned them bodyguards. In the meantime, the agency, which, among other duties, is charged with keeping tabs on political subversives and works in close contact with the CIA, went after minor traffickers, winnowing down competition to the new Guadalajara cartel. In exchange, the cartel handed over 25% of all its profits to the DFS.
Mexican officials frown on information provided by sources like Gabriel. They contend that the informants attempt to save their own skin by spreading unverifiable tales about prominent people. True, Gabriel is no angel; his DFS job involved reselling drugs that had been seized by other Mexican police. Still, many of his allegations have the ring of truth. Mexico thoroughly reorganized the DFS in 1985. Says one U.S. investigator of Gabriel: “Whom he says he knows, he knows. He calls them. He talks with them about drugs. We’re satisfied that what he says is true.”
Among the people Gabriel knows is Manuel Salcido Uzeta, better known as “Cochi Loco” (Crazy Pig), a ruthless trafficker who owns hotels and restaurants in the resort city of Mazatlan. Once, says Gabriel, three guests at a local wedding reception annoyed Salcido. The drug lord ordered his gunmen to shoot them down. While Mexican law-enforcement officials say they cannot find him now, Mazatlan residents say they see him often, calmly eating breakfast or moving about with carloads of police bodyguards.
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