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. This increased security pressure has caused a dramatic change in Mexico's underworld, as the fall of numerous drug bosses has precipitated the fragmentation of monolithic cartels into a vast number of splinter groups. These groups are more local in scope than their predecessors and rely on a more diverse criminal portfolio to generate illicit revenue.
Geography
Sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, and with vast borders with the United States and Central America, Mexico is perfectly positioned as an international gateway for illegal drugs, natural resources, arms and humans.
The country’s long coastline fosters maritime smuggling operations through the Gulf, and has turned port cities like Veracruz, Lazaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo into key strongholds for criminal groups that rely on international shipping. Its many mountain ranges – including the eastern and western Sierra Madre – allow criminal groups to establish clandestine rural strongholds for training new members, cultivating poppy and marijuana, and escaping law enforcement patrols. Tropical forests, as well as one of the world’s highest rates of biodiversity, stimulate a thriving trade for the trafficking of flora and fauna.
The country has long been a transit point for Central American migrants trying to reach the US.
History
Mexico's role in organized crime has been defined by its neighbor's status as the most powerful consumer economy in the world. For two centuries, entrepreneurs and contraband traders have moved goods across the vast border region. Migrants too have long crossed the·border, many remaining in places like California where agricultural work was steady.
By the 1960s, illicit drugs like marijuana and then heroin were being produced in Mexico, mostly in·the state of Sinaloa along the western coast. The drugs were typically into the southwest United States. These patterns repeated themselves on a larger scale as drug traffickers from Colombia moved their trafficking routes from the Caribbean towards Mexico in the early 1980s.
The shift opened the way for Mexico's first large drug trafficking organizations. Honduran Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, for instance, split his time between Honduras, Colombia and Mexico, providing a bridge between Colombia's Medellín Cartel and what would become the Guadalajara Cartel. The Guadalajara Cartel was made up of a tightly knit group of traffickers from Sinaloa state. Many were related, by marriage or otherwise, or were acquaintances from small, rural farming towns where marijuana and opium poppy were cultivated. Under the leadership of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, alias "El Padrino," the cartel flourished in the early 1980s, providing the roots for nearly all of today's drug trafficking activities.
Around the same time, Juan García Abrego, one of the few criminal bosses who did not come from Sinaloa, established his operations in Tamaulipas state on the Gulf Coast. Abrego worked closely with Colombia's Cali Cartel, rivals to the Medellín Cartel. He also developed powerful political allies, including Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of Mexico's future president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
The brazen way these drug trafficking organizations operated contributed to their later downfall. An undercover agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) infiltrated Abrego's organization. The agent's tape recordings would play a major role in the conviction of Abrego years later in a Houston courtroom. In February 1985, Guadalajara Cartel members kidnapped US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena, tortured and killed him. The United States pressured Mexico to act swiftly, and the traffickers went on the run. During the years that followed, many of them were arrested, including then-nominal leader Rafael Caro Quintero, who was detained in Costa Rica in April 1985. Almost exactly four years later, Mexican authorities captured Guadalajara Cartel head Félix Gallardo.
From jail, Félix Gallardo attempted to divvy up the territory. There were three major groups: the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix clan, the Juárez-based Carrillo Fuentes clan and the Sinaloa-based group led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias "El Chapo," as well as his partner Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, alias "El Güero." The competition among them sparked conflict almost immediately. The Arellano Félix clan and the Sinaloa Cartel began a tit-for-tat war that included a massacre at a Puerto Vallarta nightclub and the death of a Mexican archbishop who was supposedly mistaken for Guzmán. Guzmán was arrested shortly thereafter, in 1993, and the Arellano Félix operation flourished.
Still, the most lucrative and powerful of these groups was the Juárez-based cartel led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, alias "El Señor de los Cielos." Named for his use of airplanes to move product into the United States, his empire rivaled that of his former partner, Pablo Escobar of the Medellín Cartel. For a time, Carrillo Fuentes was able to create a so-called "federation" that kept most of the factions from fighting with one another. But his death in July 1997, following plastic surgery, opened the way for many of his associates to strike out on their own, including the Beltrán Leyva clan; Ismael Zambada García, alias "El Mayo"; and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, alias "El Azul." Bloodshed inevitably followed, and has continued as criminal organizations position and reposition themselves, especially along the US-Mexico border.
The Sinaloa Cartel, led by Guzmán, was in the middle of most of these battles. The cartel's power stems from its control over marijuana and poppy cultivation in the so-called Golden Triangle -- which is made up of the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua -- as well as on the cartel's ingenuity and multinational approach. Guzmán, for instance, commandeered an entire hangar at the Mexico City airport to serve his interests and built long tunnels into the United States from Mexico to get his product to market. While his 1993 arrest slowed his rise, he remained a force even while behind bars. His brother, Arturo Guzmán Loera, alias "El Pollo," took control of the operations. His cohorts, in particular Zambada, the Beltrán Leyva Organization and Esparragoza, kept him flush with cash. And when it seemed that Guzmán might be extradited to face trial in the United States, these allies engineered his escape from a high-security prison in 2001.
The escape set the stage for another "federation," this time led by Guzmán himself. The new "federation" was developed after a meeting in 2002 that included the Beltrán Leyva clan, Zambada, Esparragoza and remnants of the Carrillo Fuentes clan in Juárez. It quickly took control of the Arizona-Mexico border area and also competed with the Tijuana faction for control of the Baja California entryway, sparking another round of fighting between Guzmán and the Arellano Félix clan. At the same time, the "federation" sought to win corridors in the east from the Gulf Cartel, provoking a battle over perhaps the border's most prized legal passageway, Nuevo Laredo, which plunged that area into violence in 2003-2004.
For its part, the Gulf Cartel had morphed since the arrest of Abrego. The new Gulf Cartel leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, alias "El Mata Amigos," had beefed up his own personal security, luring 31 members of Mexico's special forces into his group in the late 1990s. The new paramilitary group took on the name the Zetas, a reference to their government radio handles, and quickly spread the cartel's reach using military tactics and macabre displays of force that included beheadings and targeting of rival cartel members' families. The Zetas also trained an upstart group of traffickers in Michoacan state along the eastern seaboard, an important cocaine depot and hub of methamphetamine production long controlled by an organization known as the Milenio group. This new group would soon break out on their own, overtaking both the Milenio organization and their progenitors, the Zetas, calling themselves the Familia Michoacana, the "family" part being a reference to the pseudo-religious philosophy espoused by its leaders. The Familia's debut: rolling several severed heads into the middle of a crowded night club in 2006.
The breach of the drug traffickers' "code" changed the fight, and the war among them worsened. The Sinaloa Cartel responded with their own brand of paramilitary organizations. Under the leadership of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, alias "El Jefe de Jefes," Sinaloa formed gangs and "special forces" that responded in kind to the Zetas' use of force. The terror inevitably spread, as did the drug traffickers' business interests. Soon both the Zetas and the Familia were into other illicit businesses like kidnapping, extortion and piracy.
In the meantime, the large drug trafficking organizations began to fragment. The "federation" split in 2004 when Guzmán allegedly ordered a hit on Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, alias "El Niño de Oro," the brother of Juárez Cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The Juárez Cartel responded by killing Guzmán's brother, Arturo, who was jailed in a maximum security prison. The fight trickled into Ciudad Juárez, which quickly became one of the most dangerous cities in the world, in large part because of the battles between these two drug trafficking organizations.
The traditional cartels also fractured. When authorities arrested the youngest of the Beltrán Leyva clan, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, alias "El Mochomo," in January 2008, Alfredo's older brother, Arturo, blamed Guzmán. The Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) began an all-out battle against Guzmán, Zambada and Esparragoza that left hundreds dead throughout the country. The BLO also allied themselves with their former rivals, the Zetas, who were breaking from their former masters, the Gulf Cartel. The split came to a head in 2010, when the Gulf Cartel killed a Zetas operative and refused to turn over the commander who had carried out the hit. Battles between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel for control of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon followed. Tijuana was also hit by violence when the the Arellano Félix clan began battling their former top hitman, Teodoro García Simental, alias "El Teo."
The fighting accelerated after the Mexican government developed a policy of taking the battle to the criminal gangs. Beginning in late 2006, the administrations of President Vicente Fox and his successor Felipe Calderon made it a priority to disrupt drug traffickers' operations in Mexico using more army and police, better intelligence gathering equipment, more training and new laws that gave more tools to the justice system to develop cases against these traffickers. After six years of what became known as "Calderon's War", and over 47,000 organized-crime-related deaths, President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in January 2013 with promises of a paradigm shift. The central tenant of this shift was to focus on crime prevention, in contrast with the reactionary strategy of Calderon. But despite the change in rhetoric, Peña Nieto has so far taken few concrete steps to move away from the militarized security strategy endorsed by his predecessors. In fact, there have even been calls by some policymakers to involve the military more deeply in the fight against crime.
Since 2002, the Mexican government has arrested or killed several top drug traffickers, among them Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, arrested in 2003 and later extradited to the United States; Arturo Beltrán Leyva, killed by Mexican marines in December 2009; Teodoro García Simental, arrested in January 2010; Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, arrested in September 2012; Heriberto Lazcano, killed in October 2012; and Guzmán himself, arrested in February 2014 after rising to become the world's most wanted criminal. The Mexican government was dealt an embarrassing blow when Guzmán escaped from a maximum security prison for a second time in July 2015. However, he was recaptured in his home state of Sinaloa six months later and was extradited to the United States in January 2017. Guzmán was eventually convicted for leading a criminal enterprise and sentenced to life in prison.
Current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, took office in 2018 by a wide margin, having run as a populist outsider with a plan to eradicate government corruption and demilitarize the fight against cartels. However, corruption has continued, or possibly even worsened, under his watch. And his decision to create a new law enforcement body, the National Guard, has reinforced a culture of brute-force clashes with cartels, as well as pressuring Central American migrants to seek new, more dangerous routes to the US. AMLO’s biggest success against organized crime involved clamping down on oil theft by the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in the state of Guanajuato. However, overall, cartel violence and high rates of homicide have continued to plague the nation.
Part of AMLO’s struggles come from the fact that he is governing in an era of rapid criminal innovation. Under his watch, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Genación – CJNG), an offshoot of the Milenio Group and Sinaloa Cartel, has been executing a massive expansion plan, coopting local officials across a half-dozen states and winning the support of residents through gift-giving. Meanwhile, other cartels have become increasingly involved in other links of the drug supply chain, especially production coming from South America. In Colombia, for instance, some cartels are widening profit margins by negotiating directly with cocaine providers such as dissident groups once belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC). They are also establishing permanent bases in Central America and undermining governments in smaller, less stable nations. To make up for lost revenue, some are also transitioning into human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion and the mass production of synthetic drugs.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, criminal groups saw another opportunity for innovation, using the public health crisis to deepen their roots in communities, diversify their business models and expand into new territory. Members of the Gulf Cartel and Los Viagras were documented handing out boxes of food to residents struggling with the economic downturn. The Sinaloa Cartel, faced with closed borders and blocked transit routes, put its energy into improving domestic Fentanyl production. The CJNG took advantage of a weakened government presence in some areas of Mexico, such as Zacatecas, to claim new territory.
Criminal Groups
Many of the large and powerful drug cartels that once dominated Mexico's underworld are now shadows of their former selves. The Gulf Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva Organization, the Zetas, Familia Michoacana, the Juárez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel and the Knights Templar all saw top leaders killed or arrested in past years, leaving their organizations in varying states of decline. The exception is the Sinaloa Cartel, which despite the recapture of El Chapo remains the most prolific drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere.
The Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which got its start working with the Sinaloa and Milenio cartels in the early 2010s, has emerged as the other giant of drug trafficking in Mexico. The group makes use of a mixture of ruthless violence and altruistic community building, such as delivering gifts to children and promising to rid areas of other criminal groups. This has allowed it to spread from its original stronghold in the state of Jalisco to much of central Mexico, although not without bloody feuds starting up in Michoacán, Zacatecas and Mexico state, among other places. Currently, its influence appears to extend to virtually all of Mexico, with the exception of Sinaloa and parts of Chihuahua and Durango.
Other smaller criminal groups, many of them offshoots of the once-mighty Zetas, continue to operate on a local and state level, often focusing on "predatory" activities such as extortion and kidnapping, this includes trafficking contraband, weapons, humans and other illegal goods through and across the country's borders. These groups operate with the complicity of, and often in conjunction with, government officials and members of the security forces.
Security Forces
Mexico has about 370,000 police, split into federal, border, traffic, state and municipal police. President Peña Nieto has slowly implemented a plan to unify the latter two under a single command and create a national gendarmerie. The police divide their functions between preventative and investigative. Reports suggest that as many as one in ten of Mexico's police officers may be unfit for service, and corruption is a common problem. Most Mexicans believe the police are under the control of organized crime, according to a recent study, and underreporting of crimes is a serious and ongoing issue.
Mexico's roughly 80,000-strong armed forces are also involved in domestic security operations. However, despite attempts at reforms, the military continues to commit abuses during the course of its crime-fighting duties, almost all of which go completely unpunished. In addition to long-standing human rights concerns, critics have also pointed out that the deepened involvement of the military in domestic security has not led to long-term reductions in criminality or violence.
Most recently, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and created yet another security force known as the National Guard to try and quell rising violence and insecurity. The force has some 60,000 members and was established as an alternative to the military in the fight against organized crime with an emphasis on citizen security. However, the new force is not a clean break from the militarized approach of the past. The National Guard will initially be populated by veterans of the Mexican military and federal police, and though it operates under the civilian Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection, it is headed by a military officer.
Mexico has a long history of complicated security ties with the United States. Although the two countries have cooperated in the past on many issues related to organized crime, friction in the bilateral relationship has often been evident, and US anti-drug, customs and intelligence agents have a limited capacity to operate in the neighboring country. Mexican crime groups have also demonstrated an ability to infiltrate and corrupt US law enforcement agencies. What's more, some Mexican security forces, such as the National Guard, have been functioning mainly as a glorified immigration police under increased pressure from the US government to halt the journey of migrants heading to the United States.
The Mexican government spent an estimated $11.7 billion on security in 2015, an amount that was up significantly since 2009. But a July 2017 report found that this increase in spending had not translated into lasting security gains for the country.
Judicial System
Mexico's federal courts system is headed by the Supreme Court, and features an Electoral Tribunal as well as circuit and district courts. The criminal justice system has been marked by corruption, high rates of impunity and a significant backlog of cases.
In an attempt to increase transparency and expand the rights of the accused, congress passed an amendment in 2008 mandating the courts to switch from a written inquisitorial system to oral adversarial trial proceedings by mid-2016. Over a year after the implementation deadline, there had been some progress, but much remains to be done.
One notable feature of Mexican legal tradition is the "amparo," which is similar to an injunction in the United States. Many drug lords have filed amparos in order to delay their extradition proceedings, often for extended periods of time.
In 2014, Mexico’s Congress made important judicial reforms by enacting a constitutional reform to replace the country’s Attorney General’s Office with an autonomous National Prosecutor’s Office that officially began operating in 2018. At the state level, almost all of Mexico’s states have followed suit.
However, there have since been proposals to give the National Guard and other security forces the autonomy to carry out criminal investigations independent of the prosecutor’s office, which would undermine efforts to increase accountability and oversight of criminal investigations.
Prisons
Mexico's prisons are generally overcrowded and understaffed, resulting in squalid living conditions, periodic outbursts of violence and widespread corruption. Although prison guards are often the most vulnerable in part because of their low pay, El Chapo's July 2015 escape underscored how even high-level prison officials could be prone to corruption.
According to the most recent statistics from the International Centre for Prison Studies, Mexico's prison system is operating at 125 percent its maximum capacity. This overcrowding has been fueled in part by a practice known as "arraigo," in which suspects can be held for up to 40 days without charges, with a possible 40-day extension if they are suspected of organized crime. A large proportion of inmates in Mexico are being held in pretrial detention.
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