Savvy young heirs give Mexico drug cartels new face

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Shunning the gem-studded pistols and gold chains flaunted by their fathers, a savvy new generation of drug smugglers is moving up the ranks of Mexico's cartels wielding college degrees and keeping low profiles to outsmart police.

The fashionably-dressed sons of two prominent drug bosses were recently arrested in smart Mexico City neighborhoods, suspected of laundering money for the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels while moving seamlessly among the country's elite.

They typify a new wave of leaders of Mexico's warring drug cartels, whose turf wars killed 6,300 people last year. Often the urbane offspring of cartel founders, they bring a clean-cut management style to the murky multibillion dollar enterprise.

"These people are usually better prepared, better educated and very useful for the cartels because they're professionals," said political analyst Jorge Chabat.

"They're harder to identify because they don't look like typical drug traffickers," he said. "You can't detect them by saying 'Oh look, he has a big truck with wide tires and automatic weapons, gold chains, snakeskin boots and a big belt buckle and dark glasses.'"

President Felipe Calderon has put dozens of top traffickers behind bars, along with thousands of low-level hitmen and drug runners, in an army-led war on cartels that has Washington worried about a possible spillover of violence.

For years the classic image of a Mexican drug baron has been of a macho gunslinger who revels in an ostentatious lifestyle of bad taste. But that may be changing.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva, the suave 32-year-old son of legendary drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was nabbed last week while jogging in a park near his house in the capital's most exclusive district and paraded in front of news cameras in a slick white Abercrombie & Fitch sweatsuit and trendy specs.

His late father was known as the "Lord of the Skies" for flying jets full of cocaine to the United States in the 1990s. A high-living patriarch, when he died he was building himself an extravagant four-level palace in the Mexican border city of Nogales with soaring white domes and a 12-foot exterior wall.

Carrillo Leyva, nicknamed "The Engineer", grew up among a wealthy elite, was educated abroad and enjoyed frequent trips to Europe. He reportedly speaks English and French well and had invested in a high-end boutique selling Versace clothes.

Neighbors said he lived a low-profile life.

"No parties, no noise; these neighbors were very discreet. The young man went out running in the morning and his wife was very nice," a local resident told El Universal newspaper.

FAR FROM THE DIRTY WORK

Also captured this month, Vicente Zambada, 33, the son of Sinaloa cartel boss Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, lived a little larger, with luxury cars and five armed body guards.

But in his toned-down outfit of jeans, pressed shirt and jacket, he was undistinguishable from the young professionals who crowd Mexico's upscale bars and restaurants. Read full story here

Reuters 8 Apr 2009

The mass media unfortunately idolises and romatiscises the drug industry.

The authorities are fully aware of the large drug cartels, and it's only the small fry that are uncomfortable, that are usually prosecuted or exterminated. Far too little is done to kerb the drug problem.

Since Politicians, Law Makers and the Police are involved there is a PHENOMENAL amount of money to be made in drugs ($18 Billion in Australia for 2008), which are distributed to the children of the masses.