Ever an infamous American crossroads, Las Vegas shimmers in blinding sunlight or new moon night. Its shadows run deep.

For a reminder of the depth of those shadows, look no further than the tangled international narcotics trafficking scandal that surrounds the Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to disrupt Mexico’s H-2 cartel and its efforts to expand its US market share. When a six-year DEA case burst into the news with the arrest last October at the Los Angeles International Airport of Mexico’s former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda on charges he worked with the powerful drug cartel based in the western state of Nayarit and led by Juan Francisco Patron Sanchez. Cienfuegos served as the country’s defense minister under President Enrique Pena Nieto from 2012 to 2018.

The arrest of one of Mexico’s elite military men set off a diplomatic imbroglio that continues to strain relations between the US and Mexico. By November, on the order of then-Attorney General William Barr, the drug trafficking and conspiracy charges against Cienfuegos were dropped and he returned to Mexico, where President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was still clucking about the DEA’s supposedly fabricated case against the respected retired general.

The Mexican government’s announcement that it would conduct its own investigation brought only cynical laughter from those who know it best. In a DEA career spanning more than three decades, Michael Vigil rose from undercover agent to the head of international operations. He’s heard this joke many times.

The punchline: By mid-January, the Mexican president’s second banana announced the exhaustive investigation had produced no charges against the retired general Cienfuegos.

“The investigation against the H-2 organization in general and Cienfuegos specifically represented years of very physical work by DEA investigators and others, so it’s very frustrating, and there was a lot of anger,” Vigil says. “Everyone knew that once Cienfuegos returned to Mexico he would never be prosecuted, which is exactly what happened.”

Lopez Obrador’s protests aside, Vigil reels off just a small sample of the evidence produced showing that Cienfuegos used his position to provide H-2 with protection against law enforcement and the treacherous competition. There is also evidence Cienfuegos protected the cartel’s importation of Colombian cocaine, but apparently was unable to protect the cartel’s leader Sanchez who was killed by Mexican marines in a 2017 shootout.  

The Cienfuegos military muscle helped enable the break-away drug organization, an offshoot of the enormous Sinaloa cartel, to survive against the ultra-violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The H-2, once best known as the Beltran Leyva Organization after the five brothers who headed it, is said to have paid “El Padrino” Cienfuegos millions in bribes for his protection.

A recently released tranche of US documents in the case gives insight into its origins. Shortly after the Cienfuegos arrest, Acting DEA Administrator Timothy Shea attempted to inform the Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary of the origins of the investigation. It began, not with Cienfuegos in mind, but with an attempt to get a handle on a hotbed of heroin trafficking activity in Southern Nevada.

“The DEA initiated an investigation in 2013 targeting Las Vegas, Nevada-based retail-level heroin distributors believed to be supplied by the [Sanchez] drug trafficking organization …based in Nayarit, Mexico,” Shea wrote. The US Justice Department relied upon state court-authorized wiretaps and “intercepts of communication devices used by members of the Las Vegas distributors,” Shea wrote.

Far from a simple local network, the investigation uncovered evidence that once again showed Las Vegas as a substantial hub of narcotics distribution, a major relay point for drugs originating in Mexico and moving through Southern California and Arizona. Federal wiretaps were later obtained that implicated Cienfuegos’ connection to Sanchez.

Vigil sees the H-2’s use of Las Vegas as a distribution center as more than a coincidence of geography. Like other drug organizations, it’s forever seeking to expand its footprint in a highly competitive market. Cartels that once specialized in marijuana or heroin, now commonly also ship cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl north for wide distribution to an insatiable market.

“Some of the heroin, in particular, winds up in Las Vegas,” Vigil says, pointing to a surge in opioid use. “Like a lot of criminal organizations, they also want a foothold in Las Vegas that they can use as a transshipment point. Given the fact Las Vegas casinos handle a tsunami of cash, members of the organizations can easily launder a lot of money.”

All the listening, starting with the state court wiretap in Nevada, originated in the US, making Lopez Obrador’s nonsense about a failure to follow Mexican judicial protocols even more laughable. There were no wiretaps in Mexico, and the vaunted military man was retired at the time of his August indictment and October arrest.

Vigil makes no secret of his disdain for the lies pouring out of the Mexican president’s administration, including recent misdirection by the country’s attorney general, Alejandro Gertz, who recently called the evidence against Cienfuegos unreliable and part of an attempted “lynching” of the former military man. Vigil calls the comments two-bit sleight-of-hand.

“Gertz does not even create the illusion of doing an investigation,” he says. “After two months he publicly states there was no evidence against Cienfuegos. A huge process of disinformation has started in Mexico with Lopez Obrador attacking the DEA saying we had fabricated evidence. Never mind that the investigation did not focus on Cienfuegos initially. How can it be the act of vengeance when he was not a target at the beginning?”

While everyone is busy watching the international political fight, it’s instructive to remember that the infamous case originated in the shadows of our own backyard.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR. His newest book—a biography of iconic Nevada civil rights and political leader, Joe Neal— “Westside Slugger: Joe Neal’s Lifelong Fight for Social Justice” is published by University of Nevada Press and is available at Amazon.com. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith