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Mexican drug war

The Mexican drug war (also known as the Mexican war on drugs; Spanish: Guerra contra el narcotráfico en México, shortened to and commonly known inside Mexico as War against the narco; Spanish: Guerra contra el narco)[29] is an ongoing asymmetric[30][31] armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence.[32] The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.[33]

Violence escalated after the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989. He was the leader and the co-founder of the first major Mexican drug cartel; the Guadalajara Cartel, an alliance of the current existing cartels (which included the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, and the Sonora Cartel with Aldair Mariano as the leader). After his arrest, the alliance broke and high-ranking members formed their own cartels, fighting for control of territory and trafficking routes.


Although Mexican drug trafficking organizations have existed for several decades, their influence increased[34][35] after the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. By 2007, Mexican drug cartels controlled 90% of the cocaine entering the United States.[36][37] Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.[38][39][40]


Federal law enforcement has been reorganized at least five times since 1982 in various attempts to control corruption and reduce cartel violence. During the same period, there have been at least four elite special forces created as new, corruption-free soldiers who could do battle with Mexico's endemic bribery system.[41] Analysts estimate that wholesale earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6 to $49.4 billion annually.[36][42][43] The U.S. Congress passed legislation in late June 2008 to provide Mexico with US$1.6 billion for the Mérida Initiative as well as technical advice to strengthen the national justice systems. By the end of President Felipe Calderón's administration (December 1, 2006 – November 30, 2012), the official death toll of the Mexican drug war was at least 60,000.[44] Estimates set the death toll above 120,000 killed by 2013, not including 27,000 missing.[45][46] Since taking office in 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared that the war was over. His comment was criticized, as the homicide rate remains high.

Paramilitaries[edit]

Paramilitary groups work alongside cartels to provide protection. This protection began with a focus on maintaining the drug trade, then moved to theft from other valuable industries such as oil and mining. It has been suggested that the rise in paramilitary groups coincides with a loss of security within the government. These paramilitary groups came about in a number of ways. First, waves of elite armed forces and government security experts have left the government to join the side of the cartels, responding to large bribes and an opportunity for wealth they may not have received in government positions. One such paramilitary group, Los Zetas, employed military personnel to create one of the largest groups in Mexico. Some of the elite armed forces members who join paramilitaries are trained in the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas). One theory is that the paramilitaries have sprung out of deregulation of the Mexican army, which has been slowly replaced by private security firms.[234] Paramilitaries, including the Zetas, have now entered uncharted territories. Branching out of just protecting drug cartels, paramilitary groups have entered many other financially profitable industries, such as oil, gas, kidnapping, and counterfeiting electronics. There has been a complete and total loss of control by the government, and the only response has been to increase army presence, notably an army whose officials are often on the drug cartels payroll. The United States has stepped in to offer support in the "War on Drugs" through funding, training and military support, and transforming the Mexican judicial system to parallel the American system.[235]

Effects internationally[edit]

Europe[edit]

Improved cooperation between Mexico and the U.S. has led to the arrests of hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel suspects in U.S. cities and towns, but the U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S. rate.[38] In 2008, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced that an international drug interdiction operation, Project Reckoning, involving law enforcement in the United States, Italy, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala had netted more than 500 organized crime members involved in the cocaine trade. The announcement highlighted the Italian-Mexican cocaine connection.[53]


Concerns about European security and the trafficking of drugs through the European continent have grown in recent years, and, in December 2022, Europol (the law enforcement agency of the EU) and the DEA released a joint report on the situation involving Mexican drug trafficking through the EU.[388]


In December 2011, the government of Spain remarked that Mexican cartels had multiplied their operations in that country, becoming the main entry point of cocaine into Europe.[389]


In 2012, it was reported that Mexican drug cartels had joined forces with the Sicilian Mafia, when Italian officials unearthed information that Palermo's black market, along with other Italian ports, was used by Mexico's drug cartels as a conduit to bring drugs to the European market, in which they had been trafficking drugs, particularly cocaine, throughout the Atlantic Ocean for over 10 years to Europe.[390]


In 2016, investigation into transatlantic drug trafficking revealed that the Kinahan Clan, Ireland's largest drug trafficker, among other prominent drug traffickers in Mexico, South America, West Africa, and Europe had created an informal "Super Cartel" in an attempt to improve business and increase buyers. However, the extent of the prevalence of the Super Cartel is largely unknown, since many trafficking relationships may exist without any real central plan.[391]


The 2017 guest list to the wedding of Daniel Kinahan led to the discovery of most of the key players in the Super Cartel Alliance. Those that have been most investigated include top underworld figures such as: Ridouan Taghi, Ricardo Riquelme Vega, aka El Rico, caged assassin Noufal Fassih and Italian Camorra boss Raffaele Imperiale.[392]


In 2022/2023 - In January 2023, two alleged drug lords said to be kingpins in the mostly European Super Cartel were released just two months after being arrested in Dubai. Edin Gacanin, (Tito) a Dutch-Bosnian national described by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as one of the top 50 drug traffickers in the world, and Zuhair Belkhair, a Dutch-Moroccan accused of trafficking huge amounts of cocaine through the port of Rotterdam, were among 49 suspects arrested in a massive, highly-publicised, international police operation. Most of the others arrested are awaiting trial or have pled guilty.

Guatemala[edit]

The Mexican Army crackdown has driven some cartels to seek a safer location for their operations across the border in Guatemala, attracted by corruption, weak policing and its position on the overland smuggling route.[393][394] The smugglers pick up drugs from small planes that land at private airstrips hidden in the Guatemalan jungle. The cargo is then moved up through Mexico to the U.S. border. Guatemala has also arrested dozens of drug suspects and torched huge cannabis and poppy fields. The U.S. government sent speedboats and night-vision goggles under a regional drug aid package.[395]


In February 2009, Los Zetas threatened to kill the president of Guatemala, Álvaro Colom.[396] On March 1, 2010, Guatemala's chief of national police and the country's top anti-drugs official were arrested over alleged links to drug trafficking.[394] A report from the Brookings Institution[397] warns that, without proactive, timely efforts, the violence will spread throughout the Central American region.[398]


According to the United States government, Los Zetas control 75% of Guatemala through violence, political corruption and infiltration in the country's institutions.[399] Sources mentioned that Los Zetas gained ground in Guatemala after they killed several high-profile members and the supreme leader of Los Leones, an organized crime group from Guatemala.[400]

West Africa[edit]

At least nine Mexican and Colombian drug cartels have established bases in 11 West African nations.[401] They have reportedly worked closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for access to the lucrative European market. The Colombian and Mexican cartels have discovered that it is easier to smuggle large loads into West Africa and then break that up into smaller shipments to Europe – mostly Spain, the United Kingdom and France.[401] Higher demand for cocaine in Western Europe in addition to North American interdiction campaigns has led to dramatically increased trafficking in the region: nearly 50% of all non-U.S. bound cocaine, or about 13% of all global flows, is now smuggled through West Africa.[402]

Canada[edit]

The Mexican Army severely curtailed the ability of the Mexican drug cartels to move cocaine inside the U.S. and Canada, prompting an upsurge in gang violence in Vancouver in 2009, where the cocaine price has increased from $23,300 to almost $39,000 per kilo as the Canadian drug markets experienced prolonged shortages.[38] As evidence of this pressure, the U.S. government stated the amount of cocaine seized on U.S. soil dropped by 41 percent between early 2007 and mid-2008.[38] Since 2009, Vancouver has become the Mexican drug cartels' main center of operations in Canada.[403]

South America[edit]

Patricio Pazmiño, the Interior Minister of Ecuador, stated that the February 2021 riots at three prisons that took 79 lives were related to Mexican and Colombian drug gangs. The government intercepted a record 126 tons of cocaine in 2020.[404]


On September 8, 2021 National Prosecutor Jorge Abbott declared that Mexican cartels were attempting to establish themselves in Chile.[405] It is known that Sinaloa Cartel has attempted to use Chile as a transit route for the shipment of cocaine to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.[405] The activity of Jalisco New Generation Cartel includes an attempt at establishing a drug laboratory in Iquique as well as the import of marihuana through the port of San Antonio.[405]

Buscaglia, Edgardo (2013). Vacíos de Poder en México: Como Combatir la Delincuencia Organizada. Editorial Penguin Random (Debate), Edición Kindle

Atuesta, L. H., Siordia, O. S., & Lajous, A. M. (2018). "The 'War on Drugs' in Mexico: (Official) Database of Events between December 2006 and November 2011." Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Vulliamy, Ed, Amexica: War Along the Borderline, Bodley Head, 2010.  978-1-84792-128-4

ISBN

(2012). El Narco: The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4088-2433-7.

Grillo, Ioan

Deibert, Michael (2014). . Globe Pequot. ISBN 9780762791255.

In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico

Gutierrez Aire, Jose, Blood, Death, Drugs & Sex in Old Mexico, CreateSpace, 2012.  978-1-4775-9227-4

ISBN

book about the current phase of the drug war by journalist Malcolm Beith.

The Last Narco

Wainwright Tom, Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel, PublicAffairs, 2016. ISBN 9781610395830

[1]

Tuckman, Jo, Mexico: Democracy Interrupted, Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780300160314

[2]

Map of Mexican drug war violence

Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels on the border between the United States of America and Mexico.

Borderland Beat

Bowers, Charles (2009). . Archived from the original on February 23, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2009. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) An academic paper examining both the emergence of kidnapping as a drug war spillover, and statewide variance in Mexico's kidnapping statutes.

"The Mexican Kidnapping Industry"

– written by the Strategic Studies Institute.

The Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies

. Ongoing reporting on Mexico's drug war and involved cartels.

Mexico page on InSight Crime

. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 6, 2014. Retrieved September 12, 2016.

"Full Coverage Mexico Under Siege"

The Atlantic: Mexico's Drug War

Foreign Policy Association Headline Series.

George Grayson, "Mexico's Elite Must Commit to Fighting Drug Cartels"

Juarez, City of Death, City of Hope

June 15, 2012

Cocaine Incorporated

How American guns turned Mexico into a war zone (by Stuart Miller, LA Times, Feb 24, 2021)