Having watched the great drug-war Netflix documentaries Narcos and Narcos Mexico and the excellent drug-war drama La Reina del Sur, I wasn’t too interested in watching another drug-war-related series. But when I realized that the Apple TV+ documentary “Cowboy Cartel” revolved around my hometown of Laredo, Texas, where I lived almost half my life and practiced law for 8 years, I couldn’t resist watching it.
While I can recommend Narcos and Narcos Mexico and La Reina del Sur (The English version is The Queen of the South), I can’t recommend “Cowboy Cartel,” except if you want to be reminded of what an exercise of inanity the war on drugs is — and a deadly and destructive inanity at that. Another valuable lesson from the Cowboy Cartel is that you can see how obtuse federal officials are who are waging the drug war.
The series revolves around a new, young FBI agent named Scott Lawson whose first duty assignment is Laredo. Attempting to find a niche for himself among all the other federal agents in Laredo, including the FBI, DEA, ICE, and Homeland Security, who, along with the Border Patrol, have turned Laredo into a veritable police state, Lawson starts delving into a money-laundering operation involving the purchase, sale, and racing of quarter-horses. The operation is being run by the most ruthless and brutal drug cartel in the history of Mexico, the Zetas, whose base is Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the Rio Grande from Laredo.
Ultimately, Lawson pulls in other FBI agents, DEA agents, IRS agents, and assistant U.S. Attorneys, who conduct a 3 1/2 year investigation that results in the conviction and 20-year prison sentence of one of three brothers who run the Zetas cartel. Other lower-ranking henchmen who were working in the money-laundering operation also got convicted.
At the end of the series, Lawson and the other feds who participated in the operation are exultant over their grand accomplishment.
Yawn! By the time I got to Episode 4, the final episode, I was practically falling asleep. The only thing that kept me awake was the absolute obtuseness and practical blindness of the federal officials involved in the entire operation — and their willingness to risk the lives of their families and children for absolutely nothing.
When I returned to Laredo in 1975 to practice law, the drug war was going strong. In fact, my very first trial was in federal district court. The federal judge in Laredo assigned me to represent an indigent man who was being accused of having conspired to possess and distribute cocaine. He was facing a 15-year prison sentence. He claimed to be innocent.
As I watched the young FBI agent Lawson on Cowboy Cartel, I couldn’t help but think back to the DEA agents who were doing the same thing that Lawson was doing when I returned to Laredo in 1975. Most of them were about the same age as I was and that Lawson is — late 20s and early 30s. Like Lawson, they were extremely dedicated. Like Lawson, they were doing their part to win the war on drugs. I got to know a couple of them on a personal basis. They were really nice guys. And they were as dedicated to bringing down the “bad guys” as Lawson and the rest of his team on Cowboy Cartel.
I showed the jury that the DEA had set up my client in a very sophisticated sting operation. The DEA agents obviously didn’t think that what they were doing was wrong because they were convinced that my client was a drug dealer. Since they couldn’t catch him committing a real drug-war crime, they simply made one up. But the jury would have nothing to do with that. In my very first jury trial — in federal district court against a large team of DEA agents and an experienced assistant U.S. Attorney — the jury returned with a not guilty verdict. My client, who had been held in jail since his arrest, walked out of the federal building in Laredo a free man.
There is something much more important to note, however, than a jury verdict in one drug case: No matter how many drug busts they made — no matter how many convictions they got — no matter how many drug dealers they sent to jail — no matter how many drug cartels and drug gangs they destroyed — it made no difference whatsoever with respect to the drug war itself. Those people and those cartels that they would bust — in Laredo, Miami, Medellin, Guadalajara, or wherever — would immediately be replaced by new ones. The pattern would just keep repeating itself indefinitely, year after year, decade after decade. It’s still repeating itself today.
That’s why watching Narcos and Narcos Mexico is invaluable. They show that notwithstanding the fact that the drug warriors busted massive, powerful drug cartels in South America and Mexico back in the 1970s and 1980s, it made no difference whatsoever in an overall sense. Oh sure, the people they busted were either killed or incarcerated but the drug trade continued because the incarcerated or dead people would be immediately replaced by new ones, which caused the pattern to then be repeated over and over again.
ICE agent Jaime Zapata
One of the interesting aspects of the Cowboy Cartel series was its mention of the murder by the Zetas of a federal ICE agent operating in Mexico named Jaime Zapata. The reason I found that fascinating is that the same thing happened back in the 1980s, when a DEA agent named Kiki Camarena got kidnapped, tortured, and executed by the Guadalajara Cartel. U.S. federal officials retaliated viciously for that murder. That retaliation obviously did not prevent the death of Jaime Zapata. Drug-war history just repeated itself.
The thing is this: Lawson and his team are doing the same things that their counterparts were doing back in the 1970s and 1980s. So, what good have all those drug busts been since the 1970s? What good did Lawson and his team do? Sure, they put away a drug lord and his henchmen, but so what? It certainly didn’t stop or even impede the overall drug trade.
Lawson and his team apparently just can’t see that. Like those DEA agents, assistant U.S. Attorneys, and federal judges in Laredo and elsewhere back in the 1970s, Lawson and his team are fighting to win the war on drugs. And they are getting nowhere in an overall sense.
But it’s actually worse than that. What Lawson and his team fail to realize is something that is very discomforting for them to acknowledge: It is they who are partly responsible for the very violence, mayhem, and official corruption that they lament!
Sure, it’s the drug cartels that do the killing and other acts of violence. But the reason those drug cartels and drug lords are in business is because of drug laws. It’s the drug laws that produce the black market for drugs. If there were no drug laws, there would be no drug cartels or drug lords, which means there would be no drug-war violence.
But it’s not just the existence of drug laws that is the problem. It’s also the enforcement of those drug laws that amplifies the black market. The harsher the enforcement, the higher the black-market prices and profits, which attracts ever more violent black-market gangs. So, from the 1970s on, as the DEA and other drug warriors, including U.S. Attorneys, assistant U.S. Attorneys, and federal judges, increased their drug-war crackdown, they were, at the same time, bringing into existence ever more brutal and ruthless cartels and drug gangs, like the Zetas, along with ever-increasing drug-war violence.
That’s the obtuseness of Lawson and his entire team, including the assistant U.S. Attorneys who were prosecuting the same type of people that assistant U.S. Attorneys were prosecuting back in the 1970s. The drug warriors just can’t see that or won’t permit themselves to see it.
But it’s even worse than that. What amazed me in Cowboy Cartel is that every one of the drug warriors who were investigating and prosecuting this case knew that there was a very real possibility that the Zetas would come to the United States and target the spouses, children, or other family members of the drug-war team. In fact, one IRS agent who was involved in the case even exhorted his wife and children to learn how to use a gun. That was ridiculous. If a Zeta assassin decided to kill a spouse or child of some federal agent, he would have easily done it. So, to bring down a money-laundering drug-war scheme, which was just one aspect of the overall Zetas drug operation, those federal drug warriors were willing to risk the lives of their families. And for what? For nothing in an overall drug-war sense. The drug dealers and money-launderers they were targeting were quickly replaced with new ones.
We also mustn’t forget what the drug war is ultimately all about — to prevent or discourage American adults from using drugs. What Lawson and his team fail to ask themselves is a very simple question: Why should people’s decision to ingest drugs be the business of government?
When I was a kid growing up in Laredo, Laredoans went into Nuevo Laredo for a fun time. In fact, Laredo was a big tourist hub for Americans who wanted to get a taste of Mexico. No one worried about being killed or kidnapped. That’s because the drug war was not yet being waged, at least not with any big ferocity.
Not anymore. Thanks to the drug war that federal drug warriors have been waging since the 1970s, no one in his right mind would go into Nuevo Laredo for fun or, for that matter, in other parts of Mexico where drug cartels reign supreme.
At the end of the series, an assistant U.S. Attorney involved in the case named Michelle Fernald explained how she was so committed to making America’s neighborhoods safe and Lawson explained how he wanted to spotlight the violence that drug cartels have brought to Mexico. It would be difficult to find a bigger case of obtuseness than that. What Fernald and Lawson and so many other drug warriors are obviously unable to see is that it is the drug war they are enforcing that is the very cause of the problems they lament.
