“It looks like we’re looking at a first.” That was the message Jorrit van den Berg heard from an agent with the specialized unit dedicated to dismantling drug labs in the Netherlands. A veteran chemist by trade—who previously uncovered forged masterpieces by analyzing paint composition—he had joined the Dutch government’s Forensic Institute more than twenty years earlier.
There, he became an expert in tracing the origins of synthetic drugs by analyzing their ingredients and production methods—a process known in scientific jargon as the “synthesis route.” By following this path, Van den Berg is able to construct a remarkably precise profile of the “cook” who manufactured a specific batch of pills, as well as the region or country where they might be operating.
On Friday, May 10, 2019, the anti-narcotics police had summoned him on an emergency basis: hidden within the cargo hold of a freighter—the *Arsianco*—was a clandestine amphetamine laboratory. The vessel was docked at the port of Moerdijk, a major container hub situated adjacent to an industrial zone, forty kilometers from Rotterdam.
When he arrived at the site to conduct the forensic analysis, Van den Berg noticed an unfamiliar scent—neither sweet nor acidic, unlike the odors he had encountered at similar locations he had previously examined. There were other unusual aspects as well: methamphetamine labs were a rarity in the Netherlands during those years, since—unlike other synthetic drugs such as ecstasy (MDMA) and speed (amphetamine)—”ice,” or crystal meth, was difficult to produce and less profitable. Furthermore, during the police operation in Moerdijk, three “cooks” had been arrested—individuals whose origins immediately aroused suspicion: they were Mexican nationals hailing from the state of Sinaloa.
This passage is drawn from an ambitious investigative project by journalist Arthur Debruyne—a former Mexico correspondent for Belgian and Dutch media outlets such as *Het Financieele Dagblad*—which was recently published in book form under the Aguilar imprint of Penguin Random House, titled *El narco mexicano en Europa: Cocineros mexicanos en los Países Bajos: la nueva cara global del tráfico de drogas* (The Mexican Narco in Europe: Mexican Cooks in the Netherlands—The New Global Face of Drug Trafficking).
“It was arduous work, involving sources who didn’t readily divulge information during our initial meetings,” explains Debruyne from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he relocated after living in Mexico for six years.
The Belgian journalist interviewed prosecutors, anti-narcotics officers, and several of the 24 Mexican cooks arrested in the Netherlands and Belgium in recent years; additionally, he gained access to court records and attended several of their trials. This investigation—which took him approximately three years to complete, involving frequent travel between Mexico and Europe—would not have been possible without the support of two funding bodies (one Dutch and one Belgian) that contributed 25,000 euros (slightly over half a million pesos) to the journalistic project. The book—originally published in Dutch in 2023—sheds light on a largely undocumented criminal phenomenon: the proliferation of Mexican crystal meth cooks, a trend that has taken root in the Netherlands and Belgium, and which—for at least the past two years—has also spread to Poland and France. But above all, Debruyne’s investigative report demonstrates once again how—to society’s misfortune—drug trafficking becomes more cunning and innovative the more it is pursued.
A “Mexican Revolution” in the Dutch Drug World
Arthur Debruyne learned about the Moerdijk laboratory on the very day the Dutch maritime police issued a press release. “Large drug lab dismantled on cargo ship,” he read intently from his apartment in Mexico City. He was surprised to learn that just a few months earlier—in February—authorities had already raided another methamphetamine lab in Wateringen, a town just outside The Hague, the political capital of the Netherlands. On that occasion, they had also arrested three other cooks. Once again, they were Mexican nationals; once again, they were from Sinaloa.
What had seemed extraordinary soon evolved into a disturbing pattern. “The Dutch police,” Debruyne recalls, “began dismantling one crystal meth lab after another—always with Mexican nationals involved.” Then it happened in Belgium, where cooks from Mexico were also arrested. The Sinaloans were joined by Michoacanos from the Tierra Caliente region.
Over time, he recounts, “a sizable group of Mexicans who had traveled to the Netherlands to manufacture methamphetamine gathered at the Ter Apel prison—where foreign criminals serve out their sentences before being deported.” These cooks had not traveled all the way to Europe merely to produce just *any* methamphetamine. No. They had spent ten hours crossing the Atlantic Ocean to create a unique type of crystalline methamphetamine—one that revolutionized the drug market in the Netherlands… and the world.
Debruyne explains this in technical detail in his book, but in basic terms, what the chemists in the employ of Mexican cartels achieved was the ability to produce high-quality crystals without simultaneously generating a useless variant of methamphetamine. It is worth noting that for European cooks, separating these two variants of the substance was—and remains—an extremely complicated task. Ultimately, they are forced to discard half of their production as waste. And that makes it unprofitable. What happened was that Mexican drug traffickers—demonstrating incredible ingenuity—learned to use a natural component found in grapes and other fruits—tartaric acid—to separate the two types of methamphetamine. And they went a step further: their expert chemists managed to transform the “bad” ice into “good” ice, effectively doubling its yield as if by magic.
No one but the Mexicans possessed the recipe—a formula that soon became known in the international underworld as “the Mexican method.” “Crystal meth was the last synthetic drug that the Dutch had been unable to mass-produce,” explains Debruyne. Thanks to the Mexicans, they could now dominate that market as well.
“Disposable” Workers for European Organized Crime
Brothers Diego and Víctor—both in their thirties—and their older cousin Candelario were the Mexicans arrested in Moerdijk. During their trial, it was acknowledged that they were not the “bosses” of the laboratory. They were sentenced to four years in prison. Debruyne, who closely followed their cases as well as those of other Mexican “cooks,” asserts that they all share the same background—one far removed from the image typically ascribed to them in Europe. Diego and his brother come from a family of subsistence farmers. Out of necessity, they had to cultivate marijuana and opium poppies—the raw material for heroin—on their ranch in Durango, located within the mountainous region known as the Golden Triangle, which spans the states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa.
With the arrival of fentanyl, the price drug traffickers paid for their crops plummeted, and the family was forced to relocate to Culiacán. It was there that the brothers began working in methamphetamine laboratories—facilities that proliferate throughout the region. That is, until one day in mid-2018, when a broker—an intermediary—proposed that they do the very same work, but for a short stint and for better pay, in the Netherlands.
“The Mexican drug element in Europe consists of workers from the lowest rung: they’re cooks and people tasked with disposing of waste; they’re, in reality, the foot soldiers of the drug trade. And yes, they’re indispensable, but at the same time, they’re disposable—replaceable,” notes Debruyne. This personnel lacks formal training in chemistry. They know how to execute the recipes with remarkable skill, but if a problem arose—for instance, needing to substitute a chemical component—they had to request and follow instructions from specialists via text message.
The Mexicans were hired by small networks of Dutch traffickers as imported labor. The journalist illustrates it this way: “It’s like hiring a plumber: he comes to your house, fixes whatever needs fixing, you pay him, and he leaves. It’s the same with the cooks: they operate independently, work for a few weeks in a warehouse, produce a ton or more of crystal meth, get paid $10,000 or $20,000 each, and—*adiós*—they leave to go work for another local trafficker.” They don’t own the drugs they produce. This is because the Dutch traffickers control the chemicals, the precursors, the warehouses, and the contacts for selling the merchandise. “The cooks don’t even speak the language,” adds Debruyne.
The book sheds light on the squalid living conditions endured by these Mexicans—conditions that even border on exploitation: they slept inside the laboratory itself, on mattresses thrown on the floor right next to drums filled with chemicals. They breathed in toxic fumes day and night. When police raided these locations, it was common to find empty blister packs of headache medication scattered about.
Debruyne notes that, in communications intercepted by authorities, the Dutch traffickers referred to the Mexicans in derogatory terms. They called them “the *taquitos*,” “the little *sombreros*,” or “the Spaniards.” “They would get annoyed because the Mexicans asked for food or simple necessities. They were expected to produce *ice* and keep their mouths shut.” This treatment of subordination stood in stark contrast to the extreme alarm their presence sparked among security forces, the media, and the Dutch public. The notion took hold that they “were the vanguard of Mexico’s powerful criminal drug organizations, arriving to seize a share of the market,” explains Debruyne, who recalls sensationalist headlines taking it as a given that “the bloodthirsty Sinaloa Cartel” was establishing a foothold in the country.
The reality was entirely different. Neither in the aforementioned police wiretaps—and certainly not in the subsequent investigations—did any threats from the Mexicans against the Dutch surface, nor was there any indication to resort to violence. “What’s more,” the journalist points out, “they were never found with a single weapon.”
A “Passing Phenomenon” That Won’t End: The Mexican Cooks
In the spring of 2022, Debruyne writes in his book, the Dutch and Belgian police forces exchanged “good news.” The methamphetamine labs they were dismantling in both countries were still producing the drug using the “Mexican method.” But in those spaces—and here came the “positive” part—the workers were exclusively Dutch, suggesting that the Mexican formula was now “circulating freely among local cooks.”
The journalist explains that “the Mexicans truly did everything to safeguard their recipe. They knew that it underpinned the entire commercial value of their operation.” Indeed, the Dutch attempted to copy it in many ways. For instance, they would often station one of their own inside the labs alongside the Mexicans to observe their procedures and memorize them.
“In the end, they succeeded, and the few Mexicans remaining in the Netherlands or Belgium are now in prison,” Debruyne notes. In fact, just a few months ago, he visited one of them: Pavel N. G., alias Pablo Icecobar. This broker from Michoacán was arrested in the Netherlands and sentenced in November 2023 to nearly 15 years in prison—double the sentence received by the Dutch trafficker who had utilized his services to set up meth labs and bring in cooks from Mexico. In the book, the author summarizes it this way:
“There was no grand plan behind the proliferation of methamphetamine in the Netherlands and Belgium. It was not the result of [a decision by] a cartel with aspirations of dominance, but rather of individual actors pursuing their own interests.” In a section toward the end of the book, it is suggested that the Mexican cooks were a “passing phenomenon” and “useful only as long as they were needed.”
But Debruyne isn’t naive, either. He notes that, while there have been no further arrests of Mexicans, “that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re no longer present in the criminal underworld.” And while the potential reappearance of Mexican meth cooks in Europe remains a latent threat, other European nations are currently grappling with their incursions.
In September 2024 and September 2025, Poland’s investigative police announced that they had dismantled two large-scale methamphetamine production laboratories. At the first site—located in a small town in the eastern part of the country—they arrested four Mexican meth cooks. At the second site, near the northern border with Germany, they detained two more.
In June 2024, an “ice” laboratory was discovered in a rural area near the French Riviera. Sixteen people were arrested—most of them French nationals, though the group also included a Mexican-American. A senior police official in Marseille, the force handling the case, told the national public broadcaster that the criminal group had received “logistical and technical support from the Sinaloa Cartel,” and that investigators had confirmed “the presence of chemistry specialists brought in from Mexico.”
Arthur Debruyne’s book did not quite manage to capture this shift of the trade to other markets. But for him, there is a logical explanation: “In the Netherlands, the pursuit of Mexican cooks became a police priority because they were tarnishing the country’s reputation—that of being a hub for synthetic drug production; they didn’t want to add crystal meth to the mix.” It is no coincidence, Debruyne notes by way of anecdote, that Belgian police officers refer to the Netherlands as “the Mexico of Europe.”
To the journalist, the phenomenon has simply migrated to European countries where local drug trafficking networks still require the expertise of Mexican cooks. “But I’d bet you that those arrested there are just like the ones in the Netherlands: mere laborers, not kingpins,” Debruyne concludes.
Source: Milenio
Discover more from Cartel Insider
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
