The Sierra Madre's Amapola War

Out of the morning sun the helicopters come, flying at treetop level to avoid the treacherous downdrafts in Mexico's rugged, majestic Sierra Madre Occidental. A copter scarcely touches down before soldiers leap out, their Belgian FAL rifles at the ready. The troops belong to a 2,300-man special force drawn from the best units in the Mexican army. They are carrying out a mission, code-named "Operation Condor," that began last month. Their enemy is an empire where marijuana grows by the acre and the blood-red amapola poppy--the opium plant--flourishes.

In the U.S. alone, narcotics agents last year "removed" Mexican drugs worth close to $600 million from the underground market. The Mexican government is determined to wipe out all of this prosperous drug traffic. TIME Correspondent Bernard Diederich visited the Condor base headquarters at Jose del Llano, joined a party of helicopter raiders and sent this report:

With his cavalry riding crop, peppery General of Division Jose Hernandez Toledo, 55, taps at a map of the near-unpenetrable 35,000-sq.-mi. area that his troops intend to cover during the next four months. He outlines their objective in bluntest terms: "I will stay here until I have completed the mission my President gave me--rid the mountains of this curse." Adds an aide: "You had better advise New York that Mexican Brown is going to be in short supply from now on."

Traveling by helicopter, STOL transport and on foot through dense and hidden areas, Hernandez Toledo's army so far has arrested 770 people and uprooted or destroyed 1,214 fields of amapola poppies and 419 stands of marijuana on "farms" that sometimes cover 30 acres. But there are at least another 11,000 places to be attacked before the job is completed. The general will do well to obliterate 85% of the dope fields in this annual exercise, since many are carefully camouflaged in the mountains to protect them from the scourgelike troops and from effective baths from the air of Gramoxone and Esteron herbicides.

The amapola war is difficult because nearly all the estimated 20,000 peasants of the area are involved in the trade. Small children and women tend the crops, while the men handle the processing and marketing end of the business. Once harvested and processed, the heroin is sent across the border to the U.S. by "mules," or couriers. Sometimes the dope is buried in otherwise legitimate shipments. The drugs also move by air and sea, but it is hazardous to fly into any of 1,800 makeshift landing strips that have been dug out of the mountains. At least 50 hulks of wrecked airplanes litter the region; most crashed because they were overloaded, although locals like to joke that the pilots were overcome by the aroma of the marijuana they were transporting.

The drug traffickers are easily identifiable in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, mainly because they are among the people who can afford expensive American cars with four-wheel drive to make it through the Sierra Madre Occidental for their treasure. The bosses dominate the local culture to such an extent that after a recent mountain shootout in which one soldier and twelve civilians were killed, local chiefs called in friendly newsmen to report the incident as a case of government brutality inflicted upon defenseless civilians. For printing the story, the reporters received about $450 apiece.

Condor is having some impact: drugs are scarcer on U.S. streets, but how long-lasting that will be is still difficult to determine. U.S. narcotics agents are impressed by the aggressive Mexican efforts, but they have also learned in Nepal, Turkey and Southeast Asia that peasants who have finally found a lucrative cash crop can be wily and aggressive. In Mexico the destruction of planted fields and the arrests of several overlords, including Jorge Favela--a local godfather who has been sought in half a dozen other countries for drug trading--have led to fierce internecine battles for control of the business. The favored weapons are M-1 American-made carbines, preferred in the mountains for their light weight and accuracy; lately gunmen have been using Soviet-made AK-47 automatic weapons. brought home by U.S. veterans of Viet Nam and exchanged for drugs. As a result, the drug dealers in Culiacan are helping Condor's work; the death rate last year was running at 2.7 corpses a day. Postsiesta funerals, rolling through the streets of the provincial capital, have become commonplace, although judicious citizens take pains to ignore the processions. Explains a local journalist: "If you don't watch the funerals and don't get involved, this place is as safe as Disneyland." And much more unreal.

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