Sprays foil Mexican opium crops
SAN JOSE DEL LLANO, Mex
ico (AP) — Helicopter XC-GID
shuddered and bucked as pilot
Carlos Aguilar Lomeli hunting
opium-producing poppy fields
coaxed it up a windy canyon high
in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Four-hundred feet above flying
backup in another Bell 212 Juan
Florres watched Lomeli’s
machine laboring in the thin air, its
cargo hold filled with a plastic tank
containing 250 gallons of
gramoxone herbicide.
"Left come left Lomeli" Flores
called over the radio. "Straight
ahead now. You’re lined up."
With the 40-foot spray boom
barely skimming the tops of pine
trees, Lomeli suddenly found him
self over a one-acre clearing filled
with two-and-a-half foot high
crimson flowers.
For five seconds herbicide
drained from the helicopter. It
would leave the field about 350
miles south of Columbus, N.M.,
chemically burned in 36 hours.
Lomeli and Flores are agents of
the Mexican attorney general s of
fice and part of a 250-person,
18-helicopter task force waging a
ground and aerial war against
opium poppies.
The poppies come into season
in the spring and fall here, the
periods of maximum rainfall.
The task force with support
from the army covers a four state
area stretching from the southern
end of Sonora and Chihuahua,
which border Arizona, New Mex
ico and Texas in the north, down
through the coastal state of
Sinaloa, bordering Sonora on the
south, and parts of Durango, east
of Sinaloa.
The man who heads the task
force in the area, designated as
Region Six, is Carlos Aguilar
Garza.
Aguilar Garza, who is head
quartered in Culiacan, says the
area is by far Mexico's largest
producer of opium, the source of
heroin.
U S. drug enforcement officials,
who fly with the Mexican crews as
observers, say the area accounts
for a major portion of the heroin
sold in the United States. Mexico
has become the main supplier of
heroin the the States.
When the poppies are in sea
son, Aguilar Garza s pilots fly
seven days a week, working out of
bases such as this one, about 80
i nieves may nao
lock, stock, purses
Autumn traditionally gives life tc
the University campus once
again, after a slow-paced sum
mer. Students hurry to class, dasf'
to the bookstore to find texts 01
race to Oregon Hall to make re
gistration changes
But fall also breathes life to £
dreaded campus crime: thievery.
The prime time for thefts or
campus is fall term, says detective
Jack Cater of Campus Security
and new students who fall under
the misconception that everyone
is honest are those who often be
come the victims
Cater says two or three thefts
are reported on campus each day.
amounting to several hundred a
year
The largest percentage of re
porteo thefts are purses. Catei
said, ano bicycles are a close
secono
We have caught people m the
pas: stealing here and going tc
Corvallis to sell at Oregon State,
Cater said, adding that the trade
off goes both ways between uni
versities
The student bookstore loses
$40,000 annually to shoplifters, or
about $150 a day. Bookstore sec
urity officials claim the thefts are
committed mostly by students."
Cater says the student/
non-student ratio of apprehended
thieves on campus is probably
about '50-50
What can be done to alleviate
the problems of thievery at the
University? Cater said he hopes
new students will be a little bit
more cautious with their posses
sions this year He urges students
to keep an eye. or preferably a
hand, on purses and on packs. If
you must set belongings down,
even for a moment, watch them,
he advises
As Cater put it. How can you
tell the good guys from the bad
guys?
Fee hike flares voters
SALEM (AP) — Opponent o';
measure to double most Orego
mans auto license fees to SLC =
year filed what they said were
enough voter signatures Tuesday
to refer the issue to the voters.
Rep Wally Priestley
r
1' Doniand. said petitions filed wun
state elections officials contained
*,571 signatures
It will will require 30,823 signa
tures of registered voters to put
the measure on the November
1978 general election ballot.
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miles north of Culiacan.
The area to which Lomeli and
Flores were assigned recently
was in southern Chihuahua about
50 miles north of San Jose Del
Uano, where mountain ridges top
10,000 feet.
Looking down from Flores’
helicopter dozens of poppy fields
could be seen ranging from about
one-eighth of an acre to two acres.
The fields are easily disting
uishable, their lettuce coloring and
crimson flowers providing sharp
contrast to surrounding vegeta
tion.
There were no roads where the
recent spraying took place, al
though occasional huts and foot
paths were visible from the air.
“People are down the.? all
right," said Flores. “They take off
for cover when they hear the
sound of a helicopter.
“A few days ago, not too far
from here, somebody opened up
on one of the spray helicopters
with a machine gun,” he said.
“One observer was hit in the
arm and we counted 11 bullet
holes in the machine.”
Many of the pilots wear body
armor. All are armed, and the ob
servation helicopters sometimes
carry soldiers who may land and
try to arrest the growers.
Aguilar Garza said the poppy
fields are planted by peasants at
the bidding of narcotics traffickers.
He said the peasants, who are re
sponsible for handing over the
opium gum the plants yield, can
earn $2,000 to $3,000 a year, al
though they face penalties begin
ning with a minimum sentence of
more than five years in jail without
possibility of parole.
He said when poppies are not in
season, the same peasants may
grow marijuana.
‘‘Its a simple matter of
economics” he said. “Many of the
peasants believe they have no
other means of income.
“We know spraying the fields
and arresting people isn’t going to
solve the problem. The govern
ment is moving to find other indus
tries that can be offered to the
growers as a substitute.”
Aguilar Garza said “the peas
ants never use drugs themselves,
and may not be aware of the dan
gers they pose to others.”
He said about 1,300 persons
are arrested on narcotics charges
in his region each year, and that
the jails “are crammed full of nar
cotics offenders.”
Cruz Lopez Garza, Aguilar
Garza’s second in command, said
it takes about 35 acres of flowers
to produce 22 pounds of opium
gum, which will yield about two
pounds or one kilo, of pure heroin.
New York City police say a kilo
of pure heroin is cut seven to eight
times before it reaches the street,
where the end product currently
costs about $2.5 million a kilo.
Lopez Garza said that in the first
22 days of September, the aerial
campaign resulted in the destruc
tion of 2,341 separate fields, total
ing about 600 acres.
“We estimate we’re destroying
about 86 per cent of the fields”
Lopez Garza said. “The ones that
aren’t destroyed are the ones we
don’t see.”
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