Monday, August 16, 2010

The Dark History of the DFS

The DFS was the Directoriate of Federal Security. Top Comandante, the Tiger of Colima, Florentino Ventura Gutierrez helped set it up in 1948. It would serve as Mexico's internal police, the Central Intellingence Agency of Mexico. Later on the agency would turn into something nefarious and sinister and the DFS would be synonimous with crime, murder, torture and corruption.

The DFS was responsible for investigating and controlling subversives in Mexico. They were the country's secret police, a band of men who formed the elite team of the Federal Security Directorate.

Under the command of several Comandantes, men who would prove to be shady and nasty, the DFS began controlling drug trafficking and vice in Mexico in the 70's. The top levels of Government, going down to the DFS, would control and administer the first drug cartel that was being born in Mexico: The Guadalajara Cartel.

In the 70's several rag tag families of Sinaloan descent ran the drug trafficking business in the north of the country. These families fought amongst each other and caused the capital city of Culiacan to be called Little Chicago, for its daily murders and shootouts and public places, reminiscent of 1920's Chicago.

The DFS approached these families and told them to stop the violence. To unite and form a conglomerate of power. When the Mexican government introduced Plan Condor in 1977 in the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Durango, the traffickers needed a new base of operations. What better place than Mexico's second largest city? Home to Tequila and Mariachis. Guadalajara.

The DFS agents relocated the traffickers to the city. The DFS provided protection and guns to the narcos. The DFS introduced the mafiosos to the municipal and state police; who needed to be paid off and how much. Using their cover as Mexicos top security force, they protected the narcos. In order to work freely and without problems the narcos would kick up 25 percent of profits to the DFS.

The DFS would then later distribute money to the top honchos in the PRI government. All the way up to the Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Defense. The Defense Secretary would go after the little narcos but leave the kingfishes untouched. Large poppy and marijuana plantations would go "undetected" while small riverside drug labs got busted and the pictures put on Page One of the papers.

In the late 70s the DFS rented 700 tanker trucks used to ferry in Natural Gas from the US into Mexico. On the run north however, the trucks were loaded with bales of marijuana destined for Los Angeles and Phoenix. The DFS made millions, along with their narco friends. Many of the narcos had official DFS badges, which they flashed to other cops, to pull rank and work freely. No DFS agent could be arrested, fake or not.

In the 1980's the gig was up. The vast network of corruption was uncovered and the notorious DFS was broken up. Never in history had the world seen such a big police agency work so closely with the crime lords that ravaged to the country and with the top dogs in Government, all drinking out of the same bowl.