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Village is spawning cocaine peddlers

Recruits come here from Mexico hamlet
By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 31, 2005

Galo Montoya Acosta
NAUTLA, Mexico – When residents of this seaside community started immigrating illegally to San Diego about two decades ago, many told their relatives the money they earned came from working at La Jolla and Pacific Beach restaurants.
But a darker side to this migration has developed: Some Nautlans began selling cocaine in San Diego's upscale coastal communities.

A former Nautla resident, Galo Montoya Acosta, is believed to have pioneered the venture, U.S. federal drug investigators said. Young people who typically had no criminal records at home were recruited from the town of 8,000 and smuggled to San Diego, where they earned $500 to $1,000 a week taking orders for cocaine and delivering it, the investigators said.

Copycat groups sprouted, and since 2000, more than 120 Nautlans have been deported after being convicted on drug charges and jailed, U.S. authorities said.

They were rapidly replaced with new recruits, prompting U.S. federal agents to embark on a two-year investigation called Operation Veracruz, which dealt Montoya's group a major blow late last year. While U.S. drug agents say the ties to Nautla have been disrupted, it's unclear how long that will last.

To be sure, not all those who come to San Diego get involved in the drug trade. But Nautla's connection with San Diego illustrates what some see as a worst-case scenario: convergence of the drug trade and illegal immigration.

The situation shows how the demand for drugs in the United States has affected Mexico's most far-flung communities. Drug profits – along with money from legitimate, if illegal, work in the United States – have raised the standard of living, allowing people to build fancier homes and drive nicer cars. But some say it's a Faustian bargain, with the price being Nautla's youth.

"A lot of people here are worried," said Fidencio Vivanco San Roman, who teaches middle school. "There are some who go to the U.S. and return after years with money to buy things, but when you see a person come back in eight or 10 months with a brand-new car . . . that creates expectations among our youth."

Fear of the drug smugglers keeps many people quiet.

"We know it's a problem, but it's a secret that no one talks about," said the town's priest, the Rev. Juan Santiago Cornello Pineda. "Perhaps there will come a day when it all explodes in a way that the community has to face it as a social problem. Right now, no one wants to take responsibility."


'A happy community'
At Nautla's City Hall, Mayor Mario RodrÃÂ*guez y Salazar played a recorded song extolling the community's virtues when a reporter and photographer from The San Diego Union-Tribune visited in May. "It's a land of great men, and my heart belongs to it," the lyrics said.
City officials were frustrated that their town's reputation was taking a beating after Mexican news reports about Montoya and the arrests of Nautlans in San Diego.

RodrÃÂ*guez y Salazar, a physician whose business card defines him as "your doctor, your mayor and your friend," declined to comment on the allegations. He called the issue "a federal matter."
He said the problem isn't in Nautla, but in the United States, where "you have a serious problem being the principal (drug) consumers in the world."

Also sidestepping the matter was Ariel Aguilar, the city's treasurer. He said many people, himself included, went north illegally to earn a paycheck in ordinary but honorable jobs.

"We have been portrayed on television as a pueblo of drug traffickers, but this is a peaceful community, a happy community," he said.

Aguilar said he left a teaching job in Nautla, on the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles north of the city of Veracruz, to work at a La Jolla restaurant from 1992 to 1993. He started as a dishwasher and learned how to help prepare the food.

In Nautla, "I was buying a house and I had a child who was very sick. The salaries were low, so I decided to go to a place where I could earn more money," Aguilar said as he flipped through photos of himself at the restaurant.

Asked about Galo Montoya Acosta, the city's current mayor didn't seem to recall the name, though Montoya's father served as mayor from 1955 to 1958, according to Mexican news reports.

"There are many names like this," he said, as he scribbled down versions of Montoya with other Spanish surnames. Pressed further, he said, "I don't know him personally."

Montoya arrived in San Diego in the mid-1980s. During the 1990s, he contracted with a Tijuana-based smuggling ring to bring Nautlans to San Diego, U.S. drug investigators said.

Misha Piastro of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office said that in such a small town, most residents would have known of Montoya and his exploits.


Northern flow
Economic disparity in Nautla dates to the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Spanish and French colonists built plantations in the fertile coastal areas. Most Nautla residents, who are of mixed Spanish and Indian descent, ended up working on those farms, or as fishermen, plying the Gulf of Mexico and a nearby river.

The crops continued to flourish, but not the wages. Many of those jobs average about $200 a month, several residents said.
Pollution and oil exploration have taken a toll on the fishing, said some of the 200 fishermen based in Nautla. Since 1980, the town's population has decreased to about 8,000 from 12,787 as many people immigrated to the United States seeking higher wages. Some went to work at farms and factories in the Midwest.

Nautla city officials said they are trying to stanch the hemorrhage of young people who don't want to pick watermelons or cast nets into the sea.

The mayor said he hopes an upcoming hospital project and other plans will provide more construction work for locals.

And some see a long-term solution in making Nautla a destination for eco-tourism.

The community is known for a turtle refuge program run by a resident who scours the sands for eggs and brings them home, out of the reach of poachers, until they are ready to hatch. The shoestring program will soon become a major research facility funded by the federal government and staffed by experts.

But the lure of fast cash in the United States remains overpowering.

"The economic factors are taking precedence over the spiritual," the town priest said as he prepared for an afternoon Mass.


Closed ranks
Although Montoya's group was the oldest and largest, serving about 300 clients, U.S. investigators said other Nautlans run about a dozen organizations in San Diego County that have been selling cocaine.
The groups typically obtain the cocaine in the United States through Mexican suppliers, rather than risk transporting the drugs across the border, Piastro said.

The Montoya clients included middle-and upper-middle-class professionals who picked up the drugs at businesses, homes and parking lots, often within an hour of calling in their orders. Quantifying the total amount of drugs that the groups sell is not possible, but investigators documented sales of at least $100,000 per month by Montoya's group.
The ring recruited workers in their 20s and 30s through word of mouth, offering them San Diego apartments, cars and cell phones, Piastro said.

The benefits to Nautlans of earning dollars abroad are obvious: Brightly painted, two-story houses surrounded by walls and accented with columns stand in stark contrast to concrete-block homes with dirt floors and sagging roofs.

U.S. investigators believe most of the people involved in the drug trade have come from Nautla's central zone, which has a population of about 3,000. Not all of the nicer homes there were built with drug money. But at least three addresses have ties to people deported from San Diego after being linked to the drug rings.

No one, however, was home at any of those houses when a Union-Tribune reporter and photographer visited.

Some Nautlans denied knowledge of their relatives' involvement in drug sales.

For example, Rosalba Hoyos said family members Carolino and Javier Mota Hoyos are in Mexico City and send her used clothing that she sells from the front porch of her family's small, one-story home.

"If they were involved in drugs, then I would have a new car, a new house and not be wearing sandals that cost $3.50," Hoyos said, with a throaty laugh.

The DEA's Piastro, however, said both men had been deported after serving short sentences for drug-related offenses in San Diego. They are believed to have returned to San Diego, he said.

On the east side of Nautla, Alicia Artesan wouldn't say how to find her son Gerardo Ochoa or his cousins Alfredo and Hector. All three were deported after being linked to drug sales, Piastro said. Drug investigators believe they live in Veracruz state.

"Unfortunately, all the bad things that are happening in San Diego are being blamed on Nautla," Artesan said as she sat in a rocking chair, a dog dozing at her feet. "My son worked two years in a restaurant, and he worked (as) hard as a burro."

U.S. drug investigators said some Nautlans involved in selling drugs got jobs in restaurants as a cover.

Artesan said her son is busy these days managing the family's three ranches.

"Nautla is a place of people who work hard in fishing and on ranches," she said, her blue eyes flashing.


In defense of family
About 20 minutes east of Nautla, several of Montoya's deported relatives have settled in San Rafael, a charming riverfront town where French surnames are common.
His sister, Angelica de Angel Montoya, resides in a large, two-story home with a light-green exterior and a minimalist Mexican-European-style interior decor.

U.S. authorities said her husband, Miguel de Angel, ran one of the Nautla groups until he was arrested and deported two years ago. Angelica de Angel Montoya was convicted of perjury in the United States after registering a car used by drug dealers under a false name, Piastro said.

She denied allegations that the family was involved in drug dealing, saying they worked at restaurants in San Diego.
"My brother isn't what they say he is," she said, holding back tears. "I think that this is all happening because of the envy of other people."

She said she and her brother grew up in a middle-class family and that their parents worked in Nautla's government. Around 1985, she said, when he was 18 or 19, her brother went to San Diego because "he wanted to create his own fortune."

Montoya first worked at a fast-food restaurant, then at a gas station, his sister said. She said Montoya was arrested in San Diego on a drug charge.

"It was for his own use, I think," she said.

U.S. drug investigators said Montoya was convicted of possessing cocaine for sale in 1995 and of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance in 1998. One of the reasons Montoya got minimal jail time was that investigators were just starting to document the group's activities, Piastro said.

Montoya couldn't be reached for comment.

His niece, Denisse de Angel Montoya, said her uncle moved to Rosarito Beach about six years ago.

She said he earned money raising and training horses.

"He loved to ride horses," Denisse Montoya, 20, said in fluent English as she stood inside her mother's small clothing boutique in San Rafael. She said she attended La Jolla High School until being deported in 2002. The family returned to San Diego a week later, she said, then went back to the Veracruz area on their own in 2003.

The family believes the blame was unfairly pinned on them and Montoya by people who want to control the drug trade, cutting deals with U.S. authorities that now allow the other groups to flourish.

"Nautla has a lot of money, but people don't show it," Denisse Montoya said. "Everybody knows who is involved there."

U.S. drug investigators have denied protecting any group. They said they went after Montoya's group because it was the largest and most influential.

Frustrated with previous arrests that resulted in sentences of just a few months, investigators got approvalto use wiretaps to develop stronger cases. Investigators also targeted Montoya's customer base to attack the demand side of the problem.

The two-year effort involved immigration and other law enforcement agencies. It resulted in the arrests of about 25 drug dealers – as well as 61 drug users – most of whom were believed to be part of Montoya's network, said Damon Mosler, chief of the narcotics division of the San Diego County District Attorney's Office.

Most of the arrests were made in December 2004. Interestingly, few of the dealers were from Nautla. Montoya apparently had changed tactics and had been hiring people from other parts of Mexico to avoid detection, Piastro said.

Mosler said prosecutors are obtaining longer sentences of two to 10 years for many of the drug dealers and their suppliers. They hope Montoya's group will be permanently damaged and that other groups will take heed. Piastro said the groups that remain in business are in disarray, and that it's difficult to assess how much cocaine they may be moving.


A calm surface
So far, Nautla appears to have avoided the drug-related violence that has plagued other Mexican cities, but that doesn't mean it hasn't had casualties.
Since 2000, two Nautlans have been killed in San Diego County in what U.S. authorities believe were drug-related cases, which remain unsolved. Such violence is typically the result of drug organizations punishing their own members, or rival groups targeting each other.

One of the victims was Vicente Palacios Correa, whose body was found May 24, 2003, in a creek bed in Bonita. Palacios, who was shot in the head and neck, is believed to be distantly related to Montoya, U.S. drug investigators say

In Nautla, a man in his 20s who identified himself as Alejandro Palacios said his uncle, Vicente Palacios, used to work at a La Jolla restaurant. He didn't believe the killing was drug-related.
"Who knows who is responsible, but what can you do? . . . There is no justice," Palacios said as he picked ants off the wall of the two-story house where he lives with family members.

Palacios said he wasn't aware of a drug group recruiting young people to work in San Diego.

"There's no drug problem here," he said.

He said he works in ranching and agriculture, which keeps him in Nautla at an age when many young men work illegally in the United States.

"I'm doing fine," he said that May afternoon. "I don't have a desire to go to the United States. I don't want more. But if a person likes money, well, then it depends on the person."


Tough choices
On a dirt street corner, several teenage boys were lounging during a school holiday.
Earlier that week, they wore crisp uniforms as they marched through Nautla with their school bands. Now they were wearing baggy slacks and shirts, with caps scrunched backward on their heads.

They are at an age when most Nautla boys consider working in the United States, and the prospect of fast cash from selling drugs is something they said they were well aware of and grappling with.

"You could earn more money," said Arturo López Betancourt, 15, adding that he planned to become an engineer instead.

The drug problem isn't just in San Diego, they said. Nautla's youths are experimenting with cocaine, which is transported through this region on its way to the United States.

"Some are getting addicted, but they are pretty calm about it," said Diego Reyes Bonilla, 16.

In a town where many people denied and evaded questions about the drug trade, there was something refreshing about the youths' comments. Then some older boys in the neighborhood pedaled over on bikes. They wore gold jewelry and had a hard look about them. The younger boys, on the verge of making decisions that carry deep consequences, fell silent.