Cocaine seizures rise at Mexico City's international airport

By Alejandro Melgoza

Nearly fifty boxes bound for Sinaloa seemed suspicious to Colombia National Police (PNC). They were supposed to be cartridges for printers and photocopiers toner. But a dog at El Dorado airport in Bogota discovered the hidden truth. Testing showed that in fact they contained one thousand kilos of "black cocaine."

An hour earlier, a shipment of similar weight was carried by a plane to Mexico City International Airport (AICM). After Colombia's police notice, Mexican authorities intercepted the product, valued at 19.2 million dollars, with a capacity to generate almost 3 million doses. No one was arrested in either country, but according to Colombian authorities the package was to be received by members of the Sinaloa Cartel and was apparently sent by a drug cartel that operates in the Atlantic coast of Colombia.

From 2006 to 2014 342 kilograms of cocaine were seized every year at Mexico City's international airport, compared to 1,079 kilos from January 2015 to February 2016, according to information obtained via the Transparency Law Transparency, three times more than the annual average of the previous years.

In 2015 and the first four months of 2016, authorities seized more than one ton of cocaine, mainly from Peru and Colombia.

Carlos Zamudio Angles, researcher at the NGO Colectivo por una Política Integral hacia las Drogas (Collective for an Integral Drug Policy) says that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada has controlled Mexico City's international airport for a long time, and that the airport is used by drug cartels given the increased surveillance at the coasts. 

"It is a neuralgic point. For example, during the past administration there were direct flights from the Dominican Republic to Mexico, but they were interrupted not due to a commercial reason, but to cut the flow of drugs, mainly cocaine, that made a “stopover” and then went to Europe, Mexico and the United States," says Erubiel Tirado, coordinator of the program Security and Democracy in Mexico at the Iberoamerican University (UIA).

In April a 60-year old Peruvian citizen was caught at Mexico City's International airport with 34 capsules containing cocaine hydrochloride inside his stomach. Doctors extracted more than one kilo of cocaine from his body at Balbuena Hospital.

Two and half months before, another traveler of the same nationality was caught with 30 bags of cocaine wrapped with a jacket inside a gray suitcase. 

Drugs coming from the United States, Canada, El Salvador, Chihuahua and Quintana Roo have also been seized at Mexico City's international airport.

From January 2015 to February 2016, 27 people, among them Colombians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Mexicans, were arrested at Mexico City's international airport for carrying cocaine.

Apart from 1,079 kilos of cocaine, authorities have also seized 10.45 kilos of methamphetamine, 1.39 kilos of psychotropic pills and one kilo of marijuana.