Drug cartels and regional integration.

Turf battles between Mexico's drug cartels have claimed more than 1,000 lives during the past year. The Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are battling for control over the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, located across the border from the Texas town of Laredo. U.S. Interstate 35, which runs from the Rio Grande to Lake Superior, begins in Laredo. The cartel that wins control in Nuevo Laredo will thus be positioned to exploit 1-35, as well as the projected "Trans-Texas Corridor," a 12-lane, 4,000-mile long traffic artery that would accelerate the economic integration of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

In the effort to retain its foothold in Nuevo Laredo, the Gulf Cartel has retained the services of "Los Zetas," a paramilitary group of hired assassins with special forces training. "The Zetas ... feature 31 ex-soldiers once part of an elite division of the Mexican army--the Special Air Mobile Force Group," observed the October 22, 2003 Brownsville Herald.

According to Mexican Defense Minister Ricardo Clemente Vega, the Zetas have also recruited at least a handful of Guatemalan commandos referred to as the "Kaibiles"--a name borrowed from an ancient Mayan prince. "There are groups of soldiers, Kaibiles, in Guatemala ... who appear to want to work with the Zetas," Vega explained in testimony before the Mexican Senate on September 27.

Javier Ibarrola, a military affairs columnist for Mexico's Milenio newspaper, told the Dallas Morning News that "there are indications the Kaibiles are already working in northern Mexico." The Zetas were trained as counternarcotics agents before being "flipped" by the drug lords whom they had targeted. The Kaibiles are a different story, according to Ibarolla: "Their preparation is different. Their intentions are different: simply to kill."

The possible merger of Mexican and Guatemalan drug gangs underscores the severe threat to homeland security posed by the Bush administration's ongoing effort to merge the U.S. with Mexico inside a common "security perimeter."