CAMARGO, Mexico – The ranch near this border community is isolated,
desolate and laced by arroyos – an ideal place, experts say, for training drug
cartel assassins.
Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least
six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a
few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the
printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.
The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are used to
train cartel recruits – ranging from Mexican army deserters to American
teenagers – who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both
sides of the border, authorities say.
"Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle,"
said a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training
courses. ... And that's not something that we have seen before."
Many of the camps are temporary, used for a time and then abandoned or used
intermittently. Others are hidden on private land behind locked gates and have
more permanent facilities, the officials said.
The land is seldom held in the name of known cartel members but is usually
purchased through someone fronting for a cartel, authorities said. Sometimes
"mobile" training camps are conducted on private land without the
owner's consent.
The camps include locations in Mexico's interior, but U.S. law enforcement
officials said they are acutely concerned about those along the 1,000-mile-long
Texas-Mexico border – another example of the escalating drug war among feuding
cartels.
Mobile sites
In Texas, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores said he and other law enforcement
officials are "doing everything we can to secure our borders with limited
resources."
"We know through intelligence sources that narco-traffickers invest
money in Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens in training camps to instruct them
in the black art of assassination and terror," he said. "It's even
more shocking to hear that they even have mobile training sites because they
take loads of money to set up."
In the state of Tamaulipas, for example, the Zetas – paramilitary enforcers
of the Gulf cartel – train with other mercenaries, including the Kaibiles from
Guatemala, the officials said.
The testimony of the five protected witnesses is in documents from the Mexico
attorney general's office obtained by The Dallas Morning News. Fernando
Castillo, the spokesman for the attorney general's office, confirmed the
authenticity of the documents and said the report of six training camp locations
in two states abutting Texas was "about right."
"We're not talking about Marine-style or al-Qaeda-type training
camps," Mr. Castillo said Friday. "These are more informal places used
for target shooting and for physical exercising."
According to the printed testimony, the training has taken place at locations
southwest of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville; near the town of
Abasolo, between Matamoros and Ciudad Victoria; just north of the Nuevo Laredo
airport; and at a place called "Rancho Las Amarillas" near a rural
community, China, that is close to the Nuevo León-Tamaulipas border.
Two other ranches used as training camps, both east of Matamoros, have
clandestine landing strips for cocaine shipments originating in Colombia and
destined for the United States via Texas, according to the officials and
testimony.
Mr. Castillo described Rancho Las Amarillas as a more sophisticated operation
than the others and said Mexican authorities seized the ranch in 2002. The ranch
manager, Eduardo Salvador López, was sentenced Feb. 23 to 20 years in prison
for drug crimes.
Mr. Castillo added: "When we know there is a training camp, we seized
them and shut them down. But because they're often mobile and often temporary,
we can't do much about them."
Two Mexican soldiers stationed in Reynosa, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said the camps are sometimes heavily fortified.
"In some cases, they're better armed than we are," one soldier said
of the cartel members. "They can bring down a plane."
A former senior Mexican intelligence official said that the use of training
camps has become "standard practice" for the cartels. "Yes, there
are training camps where hitmen from both sides of the border train with weapons
from the United States," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hundreds' of soldiers
There is no firm estimate of the number of people who have received training
in the camps, but a U.S. intelligence official said the number was in the
"hundreds" across Mexico.
It's all part of a strategy by drug cartels to intimidate their enemies and
assert control over besieged communities along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico
border, the officials said. The result has been unprecedented violence – at
least 5,000 people killed nationwide in two years – and ongoing brutal
confrontations with local, state and federal forces.
"The Zetas paramilitarized the situation with training camps and
military background," said a senior U.S. law enforcement official and
weapons specialist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They turned
battles into a prolonged war."
In small towns along the Texas-Tamaulipas border, the Zetas operate with
seeming ...
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