The hardest work is always right before an event or project comes to fruition. Conceiving an idea is pleasurable; the idea has no limits beyond one’s imagination. Building a plan around an idea has its charms; one essentially plays chess against reality as it whispers seductively that the plan should be less ambitious, perhaps it is too much. Finding the means to overcome these obstacles is a heady pleasure.

Assembling a team to implement the planned vision is tricky. The personnel have to be the right combination of committed and talented, yet docile and subject to one’s control. Delegating responsibilities to team members is perhaps a leader’s most difficult task. One has to know how far to trust the judgment, talent and loyalty of the men one has chosen.

El Jefe had been meticulous in planning this initial operation. Though not a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, he understood the need for diversification. This market driven pressure was no less true in crime than it was in any other business. ThoughEl Jefe preferred to think of himself as a warrior, he acknowledged that in many instances he was better served by his businessman’s sensibilities.

Cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and even marijuana were excellent commodities to take north into Texas for distribution. He had made the initial arrangement with a subset of the Crips, a notorious and nationally organized gang in the United States of America. He would have preferred to work with a Mexican or Latino gang, but given that his ultimate ambition was to compete, supplant, and eventually destroy such competition, discretion required he do business with the ridiculously dressed representative of the black gang.

Because he was interested in and had purchased in volume, vehicles were necessary to transport the products, and in time bring back pallets of money to him. Even without his involvement, the North American Drug Enforcement Agency estimated that eighteen to thirty-nine billion dollars in currency left the United States for Mexico annually.El Jefe could see no reason why the vast majority of that money should not be his.

Diversity required not only varied illegal drugs to be transported, but other products as well. One of the most lucrative markets was in human trafficking. And even that had variations in the wholesale market. Forced labor had value in the north as well as in Mexico, but the truly interesting money came from sex trafficking, particularly of children. Like many executives,El Jefe felt little need to respect the laws, rules, and even morality that governed lesser men, so he was not touched by the human misery of this enterprise. He had obtained a product for which many would pay handsomely. He would maintain the product reasonably, and expect to profit significantly. There were always willing buyers if one knew how to locate the markets. Happily, demand was such that people came to him.

While transporting human product into the United States was lucrative, child and general sex tourism was profitable in Mexico as well. Virtually all Mexican cities had theirzonas de tolerancia, where prostitution catering to all tastes flourished. Once in thezona, the forced prostitutes were without social support or hope of legal protection. Annually, over 16,000 women and children are kidnapped and forced into prostitution in thezonas. Last year,la policía rescued seventy. Against this figure, roughly 50,000 were trafficked into the United States of America annually.

The extended community