Moving cocaine is a capital-intensive business, but the cartel subsidizes these investments with a ready source of easy income: marijuana. Cannabis is often described as the "cash crop" of Mexican cartels because it grows abundantly in the Sierras and requires no processing. But it’s bulkier than cocaine, and smellier, which makes it difficult to conceal. So marijuana tends to cross the border far from official ports of entry.
The cartel makes sandbag bridges to ford the Colorado River and sends buggies loaded with weed bouncing over the Imperial Sand Dunes into California. Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. "They erect this fence," he said, "only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they’re flinging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side." He paused and looked at me for a second. "A catapult," he repeated. "We’ve got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology."
An overview of the cover-story on the reigning Sinaloa cartel, as well as recent reporting on the sadistic Zetas, here.
(Photo: A Mexican soldier stands guard at a marijuana field, in Los Algodones community, Culiacan, Sinaloa State, Mexico on January 30, 2012. Mexican soldiers found a marijuana field and incinerated the drug as part of the Culiacan-Navolato operation. More than 40,000 people have been killed in rising drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers and federal police to take on organized crime. By Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 