“Silver or Lead” Principle

The “Silver or Lead” Principle is the Barrera organization’s compact expression of power: cooperation can bring money and protection, while refusal can bring death. It operates both as a direct threat to officials and as a broader system joining violence to commercial incentives. Under Adán Barrera, that combination becomes more than a bribe-or-bullet ultimatum: it supports a business model that attracts traffickers, weakens Güero Méndez, and helps turn the organization into a force able to bargain with the Mexican state.

The Choice Behind the Phrase

In the organization’s routine dealings with local police and army commanders, a lieutenant arrives with a bag of cash and presents the choice in the principle’s exact terms. The message requires little explanation: accept the money and become rich, or refuse and risk being killed. The exchange is deliberately stark, reducing official cooperation to two outcomes and making the violence behind the offer unmistakable.

The division of labor makes the threat operational. If an official chooses money, the matter belongs to Adán Barrera; if the official chooses death, it belongs to Raúl Barrera. Most choose the money. The principle therefore does not describe violence as a last resort separate from business. The possibility of violence gives the payment its force, while payment allows the organization to secure cooperation without having to kill every official who might obstruct it.

Protection as a Business Arrangement

The same logic appears in the organization’s offer of protection to other traffickers. In a conversation with García Abrego, a Barrera explains Guadalajara’s value not as a crop-producing or border location but as a safe base from which to serve the Federación. He offers to share his resources and says that his friends and protection will become García Abrego’s. When asked what that protection costs, he calls the fee modest while acknowledging that protection is expensive. Adán recognizes the larger design taking shape: a federation positioned around a central authority that need not rely on a formal title to command loyalty.

That exchange clarifies an important aspect of the principle. Protection is not simply safety offered for free; it is a paid relationship backed by a capacity to punish. The organization’s influence depends on controlling access to security, alliances, and the routes on which business relies. A payment can purchase cooperation, but the offer carries weight because the organization can make refusal dangerous.

The Twelve-Percent System

Adán also applies the principle through pricing. Rather than collect more than 30 percent from a small number of traffickers, he proposes taking 12 percent from many. His calculation is that a lower fee will draw more people into the business and generate greater overall income. In the war against Güero Méndez, Raúl initially credits violence for the gains; Adán argues that the Barreras’ lower costs are decisive. Traffickers can work with Adán for a cheaper arrangement, or face Raúl’s violence. The phrase thus describes the hard edge of a market strategy as well as a literal threat.

The rules make the arrangement concrete. A dealer must report the type and weight of the drugs, the prearranged sale price, and the expected delivery date in the United States. Prices are usually between $14,000 and $16,000 per kilo. The 12 percent is due within 48 hours of the planned delivery date; the agreed price provides a floor, so a lower sale does not reduce the amount owed, while a higher sale increases it. A dealer unable to pay on time must negotiate a payment plan with Adán—or face the alternative represented by Raúl.

The fee covers passage through the organization’s territory, not automatically every security service. Dealers may arrange their own protection with local police, federal officers, or an army commander, but still owe the 12 percent if a shipment is seized. Alternatively, the Barreras can arrange security for the cost of the bribe plus a handling fee. Under that package, they guarantee the shipment’s safety on the Mexican side and reimburse its wholesale purchase cost if it is seized—not the higher retail income expected in the United States. Raúl and his gunmen enforce the guarantee against theft and hijacking. Protection becomes a service with specified terms, backed by the same coercive power that makes the threat credible.

From Coercion to Political Power

The principle’s reach extends beyond individual officials and trafficking partners into the organization’s political position. The evidence shows the Federación helping the ruling party’s candidate steal the 1988 election: when an opposition victory seemed likely, the computers counting votes supposedly malfunctioned. Years later, the organization’s power is visible in a different kind of exchange. Following the peso’s collapse, it makes its return of narco-dollars conditional on a favorable trade environment; the president can speak publicly of breaking the cartels, but the organization expects him not to act against them.

These episodes are not identical to a lieutenant’s face-to-face cash offer, but they reveal how the underlying balance scales upward. Money can secure cooperation, influence the conditions under which the state acts, and make resistance costly. The organization’s power consequently rests on more than the threat of a gun: it combines enforcement with economic leverage and political bargaining. The recurring phrase compresses that system into a choice, while the organization’s growth shows how the choice can become an entire structure of governance and business.