The Mexican mafia is trying to bypass Colombian drug trafficking
organizations by dealing directly with Colombian coca-growing farmers,
U.S. news agency Associated Press reported Tuesday.
Colombia’s National Police Commissioner Oscar Naranjo told the news agency Mexican traffickers have turned up in many Colombian cities and are
working to get cash in the hands of peasants to boost coca production.
“The belief is that the Mexicans are trying to get closer to the source
of supply and take over the transport,” said Jere Miles, chief of the
unit that tracks trade-based money laundering for the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Service.
“We have evidence of Mexicans sitting in Medellin, sitting in Cali, sitting in Pereira, in Barranquilla,” Naranjo told the AP.
The U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help
Colombia dismantle its major cartels but may have actually helped the
Mexicans gain traction in South America in the process, AP writes.