AC: "The cartels are
diversifying their business interests."
Monday, August 10, 2009
Length: 6:53
LARGE (79.5 MB)
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SMALL (8.4 MB)
Michael reports on the human trafficking
'business' that the drug cartels are now invested
in, with interviews from people who have been
victimized by the cartels. Any lucrative business
seems to be fair game as they muscle into even
legitimate areas in order to diversify their
revenue streams.
JOHN
ROBERTS: President Obama wrapped up the North
American leaders summit in Guadalajara, Mexico. At
the meeting, he defended Mexican President Felipe
Calderon's battle against the drug cartels. There
have been accusations from some in Washington that
Calderon's government is sacrificing human rights to
win the war. Here is President Obama's response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES: I am confident that, as the national
police are trained, as the coordination between the
military and local police officials is improved,
there is going to be increased transparency and
accountability and that human rights will be
observed.
The biggest, by far, violators of human rights right
now are the cartels themselves that are kidnapping
people and extorting people and encouraging
corruption in these regions. That's what needs to be
stopped.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: The president also touched on immigration,
calling it a broken system. For the cartels, however,
illegal immigration is a booming industry and a
bloody one, at that. They are not just smuggling
narcotics across the border.
With tonight's "Crime & Punishment" report,
here's CNN's Michael Ware.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is
a tale of kidnap, imprisonment, and worse -- much
worse. It's the story of those who fall prey to
Mexico's drug cartels because of their hope to come
to America.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: Because they didn't let me free, they raped
me.
WARE: I cannot tell you her name, nor anyone else's
in this story. Nor can I show you their faces or tell
you where I met them. Because if I did, they say,
they would almost certainly be killed.
That's because the violent drug cartels have a new
and lucrative business. Think of it as a hostile
takeover, the people smuggling business.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: We were very scared because these men were
very bad. They don't have a soul. They can just kill
an immigrant without a thought because to them, we
don't count for anything.
WARE: This woman fled the poverty of her hometown,
the seventh of 12 children. As hundreds do every week
in Central America, she headed north to Mexico, bound
for the U.S., only to be seized by one of the most
brutal cartels in the business, Los Zetas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: We boarded the train, when the train arrived
to (BLANKED), many vans drove by with members of Los
Zetas. They kidnapped us and took us to a secret
location.
WARE: The cartel ransom them off for whatever they
can get, selling them back to families who barely
could pay.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They control all the routes. They
have the infrastructure. They have the money. They
have the people. They have the guns. They have
everything right now to control everything.
WARE: This man is one of few working with the
cartel's victims. He tells us the cartel's new
business, human trafficking, is flourishing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. This is not only a drugs
issue. It's getting money. Where come from the money,
they don't care.
WARE: And some of the money is used for bribery. When
the car carrying the young woman in our story arrived
at an immigration police checkpoint, she hoped her
ordeal with the cartel was over. But she says the
immigration officials were in on it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: I was telling myself, thank God, something
is going to happen the instant an immigration officer
approaches. But the kidnapper in the car said he was
a member of an organization without name, and made
some hand signal, and the immigration officer said,
"OK, go through."
WARE: This is another woman who was held by a cartel.
Her family was unable to pay a ransom, so for four
months she was forced to work, cooking for the other
hostages and the cartel kidnappers themselves.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: While I was kept in the safe house I found
out a lot of things about the cartel, because being
the cook, I had to serve them. I had to attend to
them, bring them their beer and their food when they
were in their meetings.
WARE: She says she was also ordered to take food to
prisoners shackled in makeshift torture chambers, and
to wash the clothes of the cartel jailers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (speaking foreign language)
GRAPHIC: Because I washed their clothes, it was
always bloody. I didn't realize why. But then I
realized the people tied and cuffed, they chopped
them into pieces, then burned so there was no
evidence of that.
WARE: The men chopped into pieces, she says, were
hostages who could not pay or more often, they were
the men they call coyotes, the Mexicans who
specialize in smuggling people across the U.S.
border. The cartels literally butchering their
competition.
And anything that makes cartels like Los Zetas
stronger is a threat to America, particularly when it
offers a new mean of importing more drugs.
RALPH REYES, D.E.A. MEXICO & CENTRAL AMERICA
CHIEF: The Zetas are a prime example of an
organization that has, from a traditional
perspective, looked into other areas of making money,
specifically with the alien smuggling situation. It
is a means of introducing drugs into the United
States.
WARE: And that means only one thing: many more horror
stories to come.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Michael Ware joins us now live from
Guadalajara.
And Michael, the women in your piece, do we know what
will happen next to them?
WARE: The short answer to that, John, is no. They
don't know what will become of them. The people
caring for them don't know what will become of them.
They're caught in a limbo, John. They can't move
forward to the United States. They can't move
backwards to their impoverished families. They are
literally caught in the middle.
So we are going to have to monitor their fate and see
what becomes of them, because they are very much a
barometer of the human tragedy that is now about to
unfold for those who are trying to get to the United
States through Mexico -- John.
ROBERTS: And these cartels, Michael, first drug
smuggling, now human trafficking. Is there any
business they won't get into as long as there's money
to be made?
WARE: Absolutely not. One would imagine, as the DEA
tells us, that the cartels are under pressure from
the Mexican government's military operations, from
interdiction from U.S. forces at the border. So
they're looking for other revenue streams.
However, other people will tell you that, in hard
economic times, like any good company following any
decent business model, the cartels are diversifying
their business interests.
So from here on in, it's virtually fair game for any
illicit and sometimes legal businesses that are
operating in areas controlled by the cartels. Soon it
will be the taxis, the hotels and goodness knows what
next, John.
ROBERTS: Well, so far, though, not exactly a decent
business model. Michael Ware for us in Guadalajara.
Michael, thanks so much.