Narco-Mex : The History of the Drug Trade in Mexico - PowerPoint Presentation

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Narco-Mex: The History of the Drug Trade in Mexico

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Archivo General de la Nación

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Presidentes

(Obregon-Calles, Cardenas, MAC, MAV, ARC) GDO and LEA have no catalogues. JLP and Miguel de La Madrid do have catalogues but are radically reduced.

Citizens’ complaints about trafficking

Some legislation

Basic reports on some anti-drugs campaigns

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Investigaciones Politicas y

Sociales

Newspaper clippings about busts, campaigns

etc

Some investigations into drug production, political corruption, and local effects.

Handful of biographies of 1940s foreign traffickers

Information on military campaigns against drug production in trafficking (particularly in the 1970s)

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Ciudad Juarez, 1926

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SEDENA

Reports on military anti-drugs campaignsComplaints of civilians against military aggression, especially during Operation Condor

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Dirección Federal de Seguridad

Relatively banal collections of newspaper clippings on traffickers linked to the DFS (Felix Gallardo

etc

)

More interesting documents on pre-1978 leaders e.g. Pedro Aviles (BUT these are now redacted)

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Other potential AGN collections

SEP? a) Allegedly a mess b) Which regions do we choose

Secretaría

de

Salubridad

y

Asistencia

- no catalogue.

Tribunal Superior de

Justicia

del Distrito Federal/

Siglo

XX/

Archivo

Histórico

/

This contains drug cases from both DF and for some reason Tijuana from 1920 to 1930

This is catalogued

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Archivo del Estado de Baja California

Small scale drug rings

Increasingly alarmist official reports over drug use.

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Archivo Histórico de la

Secretaria de la Salubridad

Can’t photograph, prohibitively expensive to take photocopies.

We have noted all entries in written but not online post 1940 catalogue

Health police in charge of drug busts up to 1940s.

Drug busts

Drug policy

Legalization

Treatment of addicts

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Casas

Juridicas

Drug cases from 1920-1950

SLP (done)

Tijuana (partly done)

Mostly small scale drug arrests, offer insight into a) judicial system b) to some extent profile of Mexican drug user.

In Tijuana, some more high profile arrests, larger drug rings.

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DEA Library

Figures on drug busts, drug addicts, Explanations of policies

and international cooperation

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Digital National Security Archives

Online, purchased by Universities of Sheffield and Warwick

Policies, international cooperation, presidential discussions.

I have gone through 1969-1980 stuff and

pdf

it.

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Ford Archives

Lots of information about anti-drugs campaigns 1974-6Complaints of congressmen, other US citizens.

Policies, international relations

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Interviews

DEA Agents – Mike Vigil (twice), Tony Ricevueto

How far do we want to go down this path? Does this depend on what date we finish the book?

I have contact details for another 8-10 agents.

Tony

Ricevueto

has offered his personal archive for our use.

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Kenneth Johnson Archive

US political scientistWas working with Sonoran intellectual and politician, Oscar

Monroy

.

Has interesting documents on police corruption and the drug trade

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NARA RG 21 RIverside

Criminal cases of minor drug traffickers coming over border in San Diego

Gives an idea of small-scale US traffickers

Large-scale traffickers (e.g. Robert and Helen Hernandez) have had files removed.

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NARA RG 36 Riverside

Customs offices in CaliforniaAnnual reports 1940-1955

Can really get a sense of decline of Mexican drug trade in 1950s

Individual drug busts 1914-1920

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NARA RG 59 Washington

State Department Archives

All major busts, policies, instances of international cooperation between 1930 and 1973.

We do not have 1910-1929 which does contains drug files but is also on microfilm at LSE and Oxford (?)

Peter has asked for certain files 1970-3 to be

FOIAed

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NARA RG 84 Washington

Consular recordsMostly from 1920-1945/50

We have Chihuahua, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez, Durango, Guadalajara, Matamoros, Nogales, Mazatlan, and Veracruz.

We are missing Tijuana

What about post 1945/50. Do these reports exist?

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RG 170 Riverside

DEA Records for California 1972-4Some files relating to Mexico

I have currently asked them to be

FOIAed

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RG 170 Washington

Federal Bureau of Narcotics archives, 1920-1962Huge collection of data on drugs busts, international cooperation, policy.

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Newspapers

El Sonorense – media link between drugs and left wing student group

El

Informador

– online Guadalajara newspaper, useful for tracing major drug busts/policy shifts. Also has 1935 poem in praise of Marijuana

Rolling Stone Mexico, interest articles on drug culture in Mexico late 1960s

San Diego Union – on Robert and Helen Hernandez

Hemeroteca

Nacional

Has newspapers pre-1910 online

Has some national newspapers and magazines post 1910 online ONLY in

Hemeroteca

building. Can we word search busts/policies?

What local newspaper/crime newspapers should we look at? – Baja California/Tamaulipas/Ciudad Juarez/

Alarma

/

Alerta

? These are not online and are tough/expensive to photograph.

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Nixon Library

Surprisingly poor collection of documents on policy and international relations. Interesting anonymous hippy article on marijuana smuggling.

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NSA, Washington

This contains more documents than the NSA online archive.Extras include

Edward Heath’s Masters Thesis on Operation

Trizo

(Carlos Perez

Ricart

has

FOIAed

the documents from this)

Nazar

Haro

and

Zuno’s

court cases in the US.

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PGR

This has been given to me by Carlos Perez Ricart

Contains acts of official PGR-US cooperation between 1930 and 1980.

Contains a lot more but I have not had time to look at it.

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Secondary Literature

Like local newspapers, small-print-run books also could reveal regional drugs business

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Secretary of State Cables 1973-1978

After 1973, State Department in US moved to cable system.

They are much less detailed, it seems to me, than the previous system.

But they do have ample figures about drug busts, drug campaigns and some interesting stuff on some drug traffickers (E.g. Aviles and Herrera)

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Tribunal Superior de la Justicia

There is one computer in the Tribunal Superior, DF which allows one to search and access files of drug offenders that have asked for an

amparo

from 1920-2012

Results are mixed

Some of the case files are huge e.g.

Jaime

Buelna

Aviles

(1980) traces out the arrival of cocaine in Culiacan in the early 1970s.

Some of pitiful and simply ask for an

amparo

.

If you ask for copies all names are redacted. But if you work in the Tribunal, you can get all names.

How much do we use this?

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US Congress Investigations

US Congress and US state congresses often did lengthy investigations into the drug industry, using court documents we do not have access to.

I have collected a lot that are online in

pdf

form but not all. Mostly from late 1960s and 1970s.

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US newspapers on the drug war

Collected some US newspapers on Mexican drug war, particularly 1970s.

Playboy,

Oui

and other semi-pornographic magazines have serious investigations.

Border newspapers have good news stories on drug trade.

Again, how far do we go down this road?

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UT El Paso Oral History Archive

Contains interview with US Customs agents working in the 1940s-1960sSome mentions of drugs from braceros and other workers.

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Questions

How centralised was the drug trade?

How involved were federal organizations, local government?

How did this change over time?

Effects on local communities?

To what extent was US pressure key to anti-drugs legislation?

How to get at the post-1980s drug trade?

Proceso

and other newspapers

Interviews

Toluca Casa

Juridica

Tribunal Superior

Local/Nota

Roja

papers

How to read judicial files?

As evidence of social cleansing campaigns

As evidence of patterns within the drug trade/drug trafficking?

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Archives: The main questions

Nat goes to Salubridad

(notes) and AGN (photos). But where else?

UNAM/

Biblioteca

Medica

theses

Casas

Juridicas

Where? Tijuana (finish?), DF, Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Ciudad

Juárez

?

Casa

Juridica

Nacional

, Toluca has post 1950s cases. We have catalogue for SLP, Sonora and

Michoacan

. No photographs. Do we go here or use Tribunal Superior?

Newspapers.

Wordsearchable

access to Excelsior, Universal

etc

in

Hemeroteca

Nacional

. We can get

pdfs

of stories. Do we search specific dates for

Prensa

, BC, and CJ newspapers.

Magazines. Key magazines: Detective

Internacional

,

Alarma

,

Alerta

, some issues of

Por

Que

?

US newspapers – how local?

DEA agents

?

Charles Bowden Archives

Local studies using triangulations of NARA/AGN sources plus RAN, SEP, Newspapers, court cases

Looking at weight of evidence/strategic importance, I would suggest

Sonora/Sinaloa 1920s-1940s

Tijuana/CJ 1940s/1950s

Sinaloa/

Michiacan

1960s/1970s

Guerrero 1970s

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Strategy

Plan of book400 pages OUP/University of California series

Series of standalone regional/chronological/thematic case studies ad infinitum

800 page two volume text, 1910-1960, 1960-?

One or two volume popular Verso text?

Middle road – Harvard?

Division of

Labour

(Are we doing individual archives or individual tasks?)

Nat’s involvement.

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What type of book: Pros and Cons

Academic TextPros – easy contract, relatively easy to write, academically important, included within proposal, can include technically difficult studies of legal changes

etc

, can if necessary get two volumes.

Cons – will have to cut radically, will probably leave out much of the “

flavour

” found within the documents, will hit a small audience.

Middle road:

Harvard popular press

2 books, one academic, one popular

1 popular book and then host of academic articles?