OFFICIALS DISCUSS USE OF FORMER DRUG PLANTATIONS LAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP98-01394R000200030021-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2013
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: November 28, 1984
• Content Type: REPORT

, Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/07/25: CIA-RDP98-01394R000200030021-2
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY .
1_21C1_1_ALS'OPI DISCUSS USE OF FORMER DRUG PLANTATIONS LAND
c--
Situation in Chihuahua Criticized
Nuevo Laredo EL MANANA in Spanish 28 Nov 84 Sec A p 3
[Text] Chihuahua, 27 November (EXCELSIOR)--Approximately 1,000 hectares still
remaining planted and cultivated with marijuana have been constantly reported
by the municipal presidents to the state governor. Oscar Ornelas, who has chosen
to assume an indifferent position toward this and other problems which, moreover,
have caused a power vacuum and disorder in all sectors.
The municipal president of this town, PAN [National Action Party] member Luis
H. Alvarez, claimed that in the Ornelas administration, which will end in a
year and a half, there are many high-level public officials who are members of
various political parties, giving as an example his nephew, an active PAN member,
who has been the private secretary of the governor of Chihuahua for the past
3 and a half years.
With regard to the recent discovery of the encrmous warehouses, distributors
and processers of marijuana which the Office of the Attorney General of the
Republic discovered in Bufalo, Coyame, Aldama and Delicias, he asked emphatical-
ly how it was possible that no authority noticed what was happening in those
localities.
The investigations of the planting, cultivation, harvesting and trafficking of
drugs have revealed that, about a year ago, several Mexicans serving as fronts
purchased approximately 200 farms with United States money, paying for them
prices far higher than the real prices of the land, which were estimated at
between 30 and 100 million pesos.
Subsequently, that land was constantly visited by American citizens aboard
helicopters who supervised the work of growing marijuana in the settlements of
Satobo, Ojinaga, Largo and Nicolas Bravo, and the municipality of Guerrero,
where the nearly 1,000 hectares were discovered.
According to the investigation, the system that they used for growing the drugs,
as reported by an official source who declined to be identified for obvious
reasons, is the one traditionally used by U.S. drug traffickers; because they
plant in one location and transport the drugs to another for processing,
storage and distribution.
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The National Union of Migratory Workers' Independent Federation Without Borders,
headed by Oscar Ramirez, was another entity which reported the incidents
publicly and to the governor, but has never received a response.
As a result of the probes into the matter made by the Office of the Attorney
General of the Republic; there have also been reports that the farmers are
still being held bcause, when the drugs were seized several escaped to the
northern and southern sections of the country, and many of them succeeded in
crossing the border to the United States.
In addition, it was reported that there are some settlements near the U.S.
border whizh have also been virtually abandoned by their residents, because
they too had been used for growing marijuana, for example, Ojo de Agua, Santa
Lucia and San Isidro.
With regard to the marijuana that is still planted, there are 60 hectares in
Sotabo and the result has shown up distributed in Ojinaga, Largo and Nicolas
Bravo.
Land to Be Appropriated
Mexicali LA VOZ DE LA FRONTERA in Spanish 27 Nov 84 Sec A p 10 -
[Text] Villa Aldama, Chihuahua, 26 Nov (EXCELSIOR)--Today, the SRA's [Secreta-
riat of Agrarian Reform] undersecretary of agrarian affairs, Rafael Rodriguez
Barrera, announced during a meeting at which the chief of the nation. turned
over to the farmers three farms on which 10.000 toas of marijuana had been
discovered and burned, that, at the instruction of the president of the republic,.
the cultivated land used for purpose's other than the growing of drugs would be
appropriated and definitively incorporated into the communal land holdings.
Those farms (thr distribution of which was requested by the National Peasant
Confederation) are located in the high sierra region of Tarahumara; and the
largest of them is the Bufalo, which has an area of 9,650 hectares, turned
over today to the Felipe Angeles communal farm for its expansion.
Rodriguez Barrera claimed that although the growing of plants which produce drugs
is not a strictly agrarian problem, but rather mainly a criminal one, it does
give rise to agrarian action, among other things.
Hence, he noted that the federal government is prosecuting and combating the
isolated cases of people who use land criminally for unspeakable purposes, such
as drug production; a crime of the "most dangerous" type. Therefore, when the
Secretariat of Agrarian Reform learns of such incidents, it will immediately
proceed to arrange for the legal means whereby the land, if it is privately
owned, may be turned over to requesting farmers so that they might put it to
the use it deserves.
He remarked that, in a government action restoring to the land the noble
purpbse that befits it, communal farmers from Coyame and Felipe Angeles
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received today the documents which vouch for the farms on which drugs had been
planted.
The agrarian meeting held in this location is part of the activities carried
out by the chief exeucutive during a 24-hour tour of this state, on which he
was accompanied by five state seLretaries, one undersecretary and Governor
Oscar Ornelas, among other officials and authorities.
Rodriguez Barrera commented that, with the measures announced today, the
agrarian reform process has a new historic dimension; because it now calls
for new methods not only associated with the need to turn over the land with
input, basic infrastructure and organization, but also with the complete
fulfillment of Zapata's ideal of granting it to those who are really working
on it.
He said that the agrarian policy is aimed at complete, integrated, rural
development, and stressed that the appropriation of propertier on which drugs
have been planted will be independent of the penal action prompted by these
incidents.
Jose Bernardo Ruiz Ceballos, secretary general of the Chihuahua League of
Agrarian Communities, for his part, claimed that it was individuals other than
Chihuahuans who were ringleaders in the recent incidents wherein those individu-
als engaged in growing drugs on large expanses of land.
Farmers Given Land
Nuevo Laredo EL MANANA in Spanish 29 Nov 84 Sec A p 10
[Test] Chihuahua, 28 November (NOTIMEX)=-It was announced officially today that,
on 30 November, over 140 farmers will take possession of the land expropriated
by the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, because it was being used for growing
marijuana.
The SRA's representative, Francisco Esparza Lopez, remarked that the area to
be turned over (in the municipalities of Aldama and Jimenez) amounts to over
9,600 hectares.!
The official explained that, of the 9,000 hectares of land, 5,000 belong to
Aldama and will be distributed among 87 farmers; whereas the other 4,000
hectares, in the municipality of Jimenez, would be distributed among the
other 53 farmers.
The land had been registered in the names cf Tiburcio Garcia, Ezequiel Carrasco,
Febronio Carrasco, Luis David Nunez and Carlos Smith; but it had been idle for
at least 2 years, insofar as the production of grain and vegetable was concerned.
On the contrary, the land had been used for growing, harvesting, storing,
processing and distributing drugs, primarily marijuana, the total volume of
which was estimated at over 5,000 tons by the Office of the Attorney General
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of the Republic which, in cooperation with the Army, confiscated the drUgS
And arrested those responsible,
This Operation, associated with "Operation Pacifica" was regarded as the
most. Spectacular carried out by the Mexican' authorities,
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