Sono particolarmente lieto stamattina di riproporre la sintesi di un lavoro di ricerca, sui rapporti tra la
mafia italiana e quella messicana, pubblicata lo scorso dicembre su http://www.coha.org/the-relationship-between-italian-mafias-and-mexican-drug-cartels-part-1-a-comparison/. L’ autore è il giovane Sergio Corrado,
figlio di un mio fraterno amico marinese, che ha svolto la sua ricerca a Washington, dove ha
soggiornato per tre mesi, utilizzando il
ricchissimo archivio del Council on Hemispheric Affairs ( COHA) .
Riproponiamo l'interessante documento nella sua originale versione inglese.
Sergio
Corrado
The
Relationship Between Italian Mafias And Mexican Drug Cartels – Part 1: A
Comparison
Why Mexico and Italy Have More
in Common than Meets the Eye
It is now well-known – thanks
to the FBI-DEA “Project Reckoning” operation in September 2008 and to the
Italian Arm of Carabineers “Crime 3” operation in July 2011 – that the Mexican
criminal organizations Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel are in business with the two
most powerful Italian Mafias, the ‘Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra. Closer business
relations between ‘Ndrangheta, the most powerful criminal organization in
Europe, and Los Zetas, arguably the fiercest of the Mexican drug cartels, could
be a worrisome shift in the scope of the transnational drug trafficking
network.
According to Fabio Armao,
Professor of International Relations at the University of Turin in Torino,
Italy, there are three major similarities between Italy and Mexico: first, a
relatively recent history as unified states, and therefore easily corrupted
political systems; second, a paradoxically marginalized yet critical role on
the world stage, particularly given their relations with the United States; and
third, a Spanish legacy in terms of predominance of the Catholic religion [1].
Weak States and Links Between
Criminal Organizations and the Political Process
The birth of the first Italian
Mafia, Cosa Nostra, dates back to the immediate aftermath of the Allied forces’
invasion of Sicily during World War II. While the first gangs had already
appeared in the first half of the 19th century, only in 1943
did these criminal bosses begin to perform administrative tasks within the
government, empowered by the American and British intelligence services. This
marked a fundamental shift in how these criminal institutions operated prior to
the war and afterwards as, through their actions, the victors of the war
provided political legitimacy to the Mafia’s power and authority. In fact, many
important Mafia members joined the Christian Democracy party, which at that
time was Italy’s ruling political force. As Professor Armao points out, “Since
then, this link with national politics has never disappeared.” [2]
As for Mexico, drug cartels
have thrived in large part thanks to a lack of concentrated governmental power.
From its independence from Spain in 1821, to 1876, Mexico was ruled by a number
of weak administrations. Clashes between liberals, supporters of a federal form
of government, and conservatives, who proposed a centralized form of
government, dominated politics at that time. Afterwards, Mexico experienced
political continuity under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911
(with a break from 1880 to 1884), and under the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) from 1929 to
2000. However, the PRI relied primarily on “clientelismo” and
corruption to retain its power. This helps to explain why Mexico traditionally
has exhibited weaknesses in terms of the rule of law and respect for
governmental institutions. Mexico’s long-standing tradition of police
corruption and deviant institutions provided the appropriate foundations for
organized crime to spread throughout the country. Anabel Hernández, an
investigative reporter for the newspaper Proceso, has frequently
criticized the Mexican government and police officials’ role not only in
failing to guarantee the safety of Mexican citizens, but even worse, in being
responsible for many of the heinous crimes themselves.
The absence of the state in
the equation is a common trait shared by the presence of organized crime in
Mexico and Southern Italy. Roberto Saviano, an Italian journalist and author of
the best-seller “Gomorra”, wrote that in a state not able to satisfy elementary
needs such as medical care and education for the populace, “the narcos that
help in building schools and hospitals end up being considered almost as patron
saints.” [3]
Where the state is missing a
clear-cut role, criminal organizations thrive in its absence. Vanda
Felbab-Brown, Fellow at the Brookings Institution, highlights the fact that an
appropriate response should be “a multifaceted state-building effort” aimed at
bolstering the ties between the state and dropout communities and providing a
fitting alternative to illicit activity as a means of appeasing the presence of
physical insecurity in the surrounding society. [4]
Peripheral Role in
International Relations and U.S. Allies
Mexico, like the majority of
Latin American countries, has been subjected to the Monroe Doctrine and is,
along with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, considered by the
United States to be part of its “backyard”, or area of influence.
Mexico and the United States
have a symbiotic relationship because of the North Atlantic Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). A report from the Office of the United States Trade
Representative made in March 2006 highlights that, thanks to this pact, trade
among the NAFTA nations – the United States, Mexico, and Canada – climbed 173
percent from $297 billion to $810 billion between 1993 and 2005, and that, in
the same years, U.S. real GDP rose 48 percent and Mexico’s 40 percent. In fact,
the negative effects of the treaty seem to overwhelm the positive ones,
primarily in the realm of labor migration. Since NAFTA was signed into law –
according to the Pew Hispanic Center – the number of undocumented immigrants in
the United States, who are often fleeing declining returns to agriculture and
often face adverse conditions in their journey, has increased to 12
million today from 3.9 million in 1993, accounting for an overall increase of
over 300 percent. Of those entering the country through its southern border, 57
percent are from Mexico. Moreover, NAFTA expanded the maquiladora program, in
which U.S. companies employed low-wage workers near the border to cheaply
assemble products for export to the United States. In these export assembly
plants the laborers work for as little as 50 cents an hour, six days a week,
for up to 10 hours a day. This growth in the maquiladora industry also poses
security risks, especially in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, which became
famous for the murder and kidnapping of several thousands of women.
Since the American landing in
Sicily on the 9th and 10th of July 1943 during the
Second World War, Italy has been a U.S. trusted ally. The country was a
founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) signed in
1949, and since 1952 has been supplying U.S. military bases in the critical
geopolitical area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Today, according to the
Pentagon, these bases are 59 in number. Since George W. Bush proclaimed the
so-called “Global War on Terrorism”, the U.S. Army has moved its center of
gravity from Germany to Italy, making the Italian peninsula a launching ramp
for the current and future wars waged in Africa and in the Middle East.
Furthermore, Italy has taken part in NATO-ISAF’s mission in Afghanistan,
providing 3,770 soldiers. However, it only provided logistical support to U.S.
efforts in Iraq.
Predominant Presence of
Catholicism
It is also certainly true that
both Mexico and Italy exhibit a predominance of the Catholic religion.
Italy and Mexico are among the
countries in the world with the largest Catholic populations. According to a
2013 report of the Pew Research Center, Mexico contains 96 million Catholics
(85 percent of its population), and is the country with the second largest
number of Catholics in the world (after Brazil). Italy sits in fifth
place with 49 million, accounting for 81 percent of its population.
This common feature is due, in
Italy, to the Catholic Church in Rome and in Mexico due to its Spanish legacy.
The Roman Catholic Church has always had a huge impact on the Italian peninsula
since its inception during the Roman Empire, and this stature only increased
after the year 752, when Pope Stephen II proclaimed the Papal States. For
the entirety of the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was able to set a
code of conduct for the greater part of continental Europe, including the
populations living in present-day Spain. The Spaniards in the 16th century
spread the Catholic religion in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
The Catholic religion is also
linked to criminal organizations, particularly because of the role of its
precepts of absolution in shielding criminals from the negative consequences of
their deeds, and many scholarly works have emphasized the importance of the
religion in strengthening the Italian Mafia. [5]
Differences in Terms of
Hierarchical Systems and Violence
Beside these similarities
stand several stark differences which mostly relate to hierarchical systems and
the manifestations and scope of violence.
The hierarchical differences
between and among Mexican drug cartels and Italian criminal organizations are
numerous. Among the four Italian Mafias – the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, the
Sacra Corona Unita, and the ‘Ndrangheta – the former three have a vertical
hierarchy while the last is horizontally organized. In criminal organizations
that are vertically organized, the leader is a sort of Chief Executive Officer, who
is responsible for the functioning of the group, ensures the organization’s
operations, and ultimately supports its goals and objectives. [6] In order to
better fulfill his role, he delegates authority to subordinates in terms of
tasks and geographical jurisdictions. On the other hand, the ‘Ndrangheta
has a horizontal hierarchy. It is composed of families, the “ndrine”,
and each family is dominant over the territory in which it operates, enjoying a
monopoly over both licit and illicit activities. These families’ bosses, called
“capibastone”, gather annually to discuss and define the guidelines for
the upcoming year.
On the contrary, the Mexican
drug cartels, once purely centralized, have been forced to decentralize because
some of the most important drug lords ended up being arrested or killed by
governmental forces. As leaders have been imprisoned or assassinated, the
single nodes of the network (the cells) have started to act independently in
order to maintain effective operations.
As a result, most Mexican drug
cartels are currently organized in a so-called “Decentralized Cell Structure,”
a term coined by the international relations analysts John Arquilla and David
Ronfeldt. In such a system, there is a low grade of hierarchy with the
potential for multiple leaders. The single nodes of the network (the
cells) could instead present a higher degree of hierarchy. The decision-making
process is decentralized, leaving a certain level of autonomy to local
initiatives. Therefore, the design could appear sometimes as acephalous (headless),
or polycephalous, even if not all the nodes have the same importance.
[7]
This type of organization
requires a network that as a whole has almost no hierarchy at all, leaving a
high degree of autonomy to the cells. Therefore, cell structures can be
polycephalous, with multiple leaders whose functions and responsibilities vary
depending on circumstances. The leader, usually the person most experienced in
the cell, is the one who is not only responsible for the correct functioning of
the group, but also for its external relations. Particularly, a leader attempts
to pay attention to not attract a high degree of attention from law
enforcement. Furthermore, in such hierarchical systems it is very important
that the cells align themselves with the umbrella organization’s goals and
beliefs. According to Professor Phil Williams of the University of Pittsburgh,
such networked criminal organizations are composed of a close-knit core
leadership and a periphery consisting of expendable, networked criminals. As
the Southwest Region Director at U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Chris
Dishman, points out, this organizational mutation is probably only temporary—a
transition point from a traditional hierarchical criminal group to a fully
networked organization. [8]
Nonetheless, the Zetas drug
cartel has a quite different hierarchy. Roberto Saviano recounts that in each
of the organization’s cells there are several different roles, in which the
most important is la Dirección, the cell’s directional
unit. Los Zetas therefore have a pyramidal organization, along with a
horizontal structure, with cells spread all over the country. [9] Although,
after Los Zetas’ leaders like Arturo Guzmán Decena, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano,
and Miguel Angel Trevino Morales were killed, the cartel has not broken down.
It is certainly weaker and there are some splinter cells, but the group remains
united.
Mexican drug cartels and
Italian mafias differ completely in the purpose and scope of their intended
violence. Whereas for Italian mafias, violence is regulated by an “honor code”
and assassinations are hidden, for Mexican drug cartels such violence is
unregulated by ascertainable norms. Cartels show as much cruelty and ferocity
in their murders as possible, and often exhibit corpses in public plazas,
in order to send a message to their opponents about how violent they can be.
Judge Giovanni Falcone used to
say that the Cosa Nostra’s most common way of killing was the so-called “white
shotgun” (in Italian “lupara bianca”), a method that some criminals used to
kill victims without leaving traces, by melting their corpses in acid. Among
the four Italian mafias there was – and still is – a strict code for killings,
which all the affiliates are pressured to follow. Violence has always had a
precise purpose, even if the people outside of the organization cannot understand
or justify the reactions. The code determines what techniques of murder should
be used, based on the functionality and purpose of the killing itself.
Therefore, spectacular homicides have to be reserved for those that fight
against mafias. For instance, Falcone reported that Cosa Nostra’s enemies who
usually move with bodyguards in armored cars have to be blown up in their own
cars in order to serve as a deterrent. [10] The most important rule to stress
regarding Italian criminal mafias is that an affiliate cannot kill anyone
without receiving authorization from his superior. Tragically, this tendency is
not seen in Mexico.
For Mexican drug cartels the
situation is entirely different, especially if we take into consideration
criminal organizations like Los Zetas. Initially a dropout group from the
paramilitary force “Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales” (GAFE), and
then moving into an enforcer role for the Gulf Cartel, the Los Zetas cartel now
stands alone as one of Mexico’s major drug cartels. Its members are
trained to kill, and their only purpose is profit. They could be seen as a
product of unfettered globalization, in which ruthless actors struggle to make
money within an unregulated environment.
The intensity of the violence
and the brutality shown by Mexican drug trafficking organizations is all but
unprecedented in the recent history of criminal organizations. Decapitations,
hangings, and car bombs have marked the dramatic escalation in Mexico. These
events, in addition to political assassinations and the increased killing of
innocent bystanders, made some analysts consider that the violence exhibited by
the Mexican drug cartels might even surpass the limits of conventional
organized criminal behavior. [11]
Phil Williams observes that
the context in which Mexican drug cartels thrive parallels the growth of
criminal organizations in Italy, Russia, and Albania. What makes the Mexican
case a peculiar one, though, is the feature of “anomie” regarding Mexico’s
violence, which is “a degeneration of rules and norms and the emergence of new
forms of behavior unconstrained by standard notions of what is acceptable” in
an orderly society. [12] Roberto Saviano states that “classical“ organized
criminal organizations – like the Italian ones, or even the Mexican drug
cartels before President Calderón’s counterproductive war against drug cartels
(started in December 2006) – had their own code of conduct, while the new ones
do not. [13]
Los Zetas are the first cartel
to start using violence and ferocity as marketing tools for murder and as signs
of their presence. They have set up a new standard, which now is imitated by
other cartels such as: Jalisco New Generation, Sinaloa, Gulf, the Knights
Templar, and New Juárez. Saviano writes: “Los Zetas are masters, but they are
learning at their own expense, how they could be overcome by their
apprentices.” [14] It is a struggle for survival, in which every cartel has to
be fiercer and crueler then the others. This conflict invokes an application of
Darwin’s theory of evolution, in which only the strongest are able to survive.
In Italy, instead, criminal
organizations thrive in secret. When, in 1992-1993, the Sicilian Mafia
tried to widen its power through bombs and assassinations, it failed. On the
contrary, the ‘Ndrangheta has strived to remain occult and is more concerned
with fostering links with politicians and broadening its businesses around the
world. As result, the ‘Ndrangheta is now the biggest cocaine trafficker in
Europe and Cosa Nostra acts just as its supporter in its businesses in Latin
America. The second part of this analysis will turn to address drug trafficking
ties between Mexican drug cartels and Italian criminal entities in more detail.
Sergio Corrado, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Please accept this article as a free
contribution from COHA, but if re-posting, please afford authorial and
institutional attribution. Exclusive rights can be negotiated.
References
[1] Fabio Armao – From Palermo to Ciudad Juárez: Organized Crime In Italy:
Organized Crime In Italy And Mexico In Comparative Perspective – Prepared for
delivery at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, September 2-5, 2010
[2] Ibid.,
p. 5.
[3] “Caccia
a “El Chapo”, invisibile boss dei narcos”, La Repubblica, May 1,
2011 http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2011/05/01/news/narcos_saviano-15609218/
[4] Vanda Felbab-Brown, A State-building Approach to the Drug Trade
Problem, Brookings, 2013 http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/07/18-state-building-drug-trade-problem-felbabbrown
[5]
Alessandra Dino, La mafia devota. Chiesa, religione, Cosa Nostra (Italy,
Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010); Nicola Gratteri, Antonio Nicaso, Michele Borrelli,
Il grande inganno. I falsi valori della ‘ndrangheta (Italy: Cosenza,
Pellegrini, 2008)
[6] Chris
Dishman, The Leaderless Nexus: When Crime and Terror Converge, Studies in
Conflict & Terrorism, Routledge, 28:237–252, 2005
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Roberto
Saviano, ZeroZeroZero (Italy, Milano: Feltrinelli Editore, 2013), p. 112. I also suggest the reading of the website Borderland Beat in order to have
a comprehensive framework on Mexican drug cartels’ hierarchy.
[10]
Giovanni Falcone, Marcelle Padovani, Cose di Cosa Nostra (Italy, Milan:
Rizzoli, 2004)
[11] June S. Beittel, Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and
Scope of the Rising Violence, Congressional Research Service Report for
Congress, April 15, 2013
[12] Ibid.,
p. 45
[13] Zetas
l’orgia del potere narcos, La Repubblica, July 17, 2013 http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2013/07/17/news/zetas_lorgia_del_potere_narcos-63136477
[14] Roberto
Saviano, ZeroZeroZero, p. 122
Articolo pubblicato nel dicembre 2013 su http://www.coha.org/the-relationship-between-italian-mafias-and-mexican-drug-cartels-part-1-a-comparison/
By: Sergio Corrado, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs
Articolo pubblicato nel dicembre 2013 su http://www.coha.org/the-relationship-between-italian-mafias-and-mexican-drug-cartels-part-1-a-comparison/
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