Mexico is home to some of the hemisphere’s largest, most sophisticated and violent organized criminal groups. These organizations have drawn from Mexico’s long history of smuggling and its close proximity to the United States, the world’s largest economy, to grow into a regional threat.
The cat-and-mouse game of evading law enforcement was taken literally by drug smugglers recently in Panama, who hid cocaine on a feline and sent it into a prison.
Every few years, a new spectacular tactic used by criminal groups captures the world’s attention. But like the narco-tank seen in 2011, bomb-strapped drones in Mexico haven’t actually offered much…
The conviction of Ismael Zambada-Imperial, son of the Sinaloa Cartel's top leader, in the US may be a headline-grabber but does nothing to blunt the group's ability to bring cocaine…
Mexico is home to some of the hemisphere’s largest, most sophisticated and violent organized criminal groups. These organizations have drawn from Mexico’s long history of smuggling and its close proximity to the United States, the world’s largest economy, to grow into a regional threat. Their networks stretch from Argentina to Canada and even into Europe. They traffic in illegal drugs, contraband, arms and humans, and launder their proceeds through regional moneychangers, banks and local economic projects. Their armament, training and tactics have become increasingly sophisticated as the Mexican government has ramped up efforts to combat them.
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Mexico's criminal landscape has morphed in recent years from one dominated by a handful of powerful cartels into a fragmented web of nearly 200 criminal groups defined by fragile and fast-changing alliances. While the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG) still dominate the scene, other upstart, hyperviolent groups have carved out a place for themselves through oil theft and other predatory crimes like extortion and kidnapping.
Mexico has once again dominated a list of the most violent cities in the world but smaller towns have now shot up the rankings, reflecting new hotspots where criminal groups…
A series of operations carried out by the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office against networks dedicated to trafficking Mexican poultry, shed light on how poultry smuggling works in the border area.
Methamphetamine use in Mexico has grown exponentially in recent years and now rivals marijuana as the drug most cited by patients in treatment for substance abuse.
The deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl has displaced heroin as the leading driver of the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States and is contributing to a deadly scramble for market-control…
Long considered a backwater, low-class drug, methamphetamine availability and use has exploded in the United States in the last few years in places where it had never been consumed in…
The shuttering of a state prison in Mexico is an unconventional response by officials trying to combat poor living conditions for inmates but this will do little to address fundamental…
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