The United States, Mexico, and the Mutual Securitization of Drug Enforcement, 1969–1985

Abstract

On February 7, 1985, Mexican drug kingpins abducted Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, stationed in Guadalajara, Mexico, then the epicenter of Mexico’s drug trade. Mexican and U.S. authorities conducted an intensive manhunt for both Camarena and his kidnappers, and the incident produced bitter conflict between Mexican leaders and the administration of Ronald Reagan. After nearly a month, the mutilated bodies of Camarena and Alfredo Zavala Avelar, a Mexican pilot who flew missions with him, turned up in the state of Michoacán.1 Camarena had cultivated alliances that ultimately led him to his death while embedded in the DEA’s fight against the drug trade in Mexico. According to the DEA’s institutional history, Camarena was “close to unlocking a multi-billion dollar drug pipeline,” a pipeline purportedly linked to the Mexican government.2 To many Americans, Camarena’s death and the escalation of U.S. antidrug efforts in Mexico that followed seemed like an anomaly. The U.S. investigation into Camarena’s murder, Operation Leyenda, was the largest law enforcement operation undertaken by the DEA. Post-Camarena drug enforcement energies were reflected in Reagan’s April 1986 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 221, which sanctioned an active, overseas “war on drugs.” The international drug trade not only posed a legitimate threat to U.S. security interests, the directive said, but also that of its democratic allies. In what followed, the U.S. government cleared a path for military involvement in the global fight against narcotics and empowered agencies such as the DEA.