Mexico
Mexico is home to the hemisphere’s largest, most sophisticated and violent organized criminal gangs. 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 into Canada and 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, and they have faced increased competition within Mexico. They have penetrated the police and border patrols on nearly every level, in some cases starting with recruits for these units. They play political and social roles in some areas, operating as the de facto security forces.
Mexico Criminal Groups
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Tijuana Cartel
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The Tijuana Cartel, also known as the Arellano Felix Organization, is based in one of the most strategically important border towns in Mexico, and continues to export drugs even after being weakened by a brutal internal war in 2009. Due to infighting, arrests and the deaths of some of its top members, the Tijuana Cartel is a shell of what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was considered one of the most potent and violent criminal organizations in Mexico. After the arrest or assassination of various members of the Arellano Felix clan, the cartel is now headed by Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the Arellano Felix brothers who once bloodied Mexico and southern California with their brutish and authoritarian style. With the powerful Sinaloa Cartel moving into Tijuana in force, Sanchez Arellano is struggling to keep a grip on this lucrative drug and human trafficking corridor.
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Sinaloa Cartel
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The Sinaloa Cartel, often described as the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere, is an alliance of some of Mexico’s top capos. The coalition's members operate in concert to protect themselves, relying on connections at the highest levels and corrupting portions of the federal police and military to maintain the upper hand against its rivals.
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Juarez Cartel
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The Juarez Cartel is responsible for smuggling tons of narcotics from Mexico into the U.S. throughout its long and turbulent history, and the group’s intense rivalry with the Sinaloa Cartel helped turn Juarez into one of the most violent places in the world. Despite recent news reports about its decline, the Juarez Cartel remains one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico and the region. Small cells carry out different types of operations ranging from transportation and distribution of drugs; street gangs, mostly in the north, act as the enforcement wing and are involved in human trafficking and kidnapping operations.
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Gulf Cartel
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The Gulf Cartel is one of the oldest and most powerful of Mexico’s criminal groups but has lost territory and influence in recent years to its rivals, including its former enforcer wing, the Zetas. Working with Colombian suppliers, this group moves drugs north from its stronghold in Tamaulipas, and is known to outsource other activities, especially those related to human trafficking, to local “enforcer” gangs. Its one-time boss, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, was considered the country’s most powerful underworld leader at one point, and its enforcers, the Zetas, considered Mexico’s most feared gang.
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Beltran Leyva Organization
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Led by the Beltran Leyva brothers, this Mexican drug trafficking organization worked with the Sinaloa Cartel before it seceded in 2008, managing the groups’s hitmen networks and controlling the state of Sonora and the lucrative port of entry in Acapulco. After a series of arrests and deaths at the hands of rivals and government authorities, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO), once one of Mexico’s bloodiest and most powerful criminal organizations, is gravely weakened. It is currently run by Hector Beltran Leyva, alias "El H," the middle sibling. The arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, alias "El Mochomo," in 2008 sparked a battle with the Sinaloa Cartel, and the group's precipitous fall.
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Familia Michoacana
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At the height of its power, the Familia Michoacana’s brutal tactics, strong base of operations and pseudo-religious ideology made it a formidable operation and a point of fascination for outsiders. However, the group has suffered a series of heavy blows, most notably the death of leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, alias "El Chayo," in December 2010, and is now thought to have been largely supplanted by a splinter group known as the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar).
The Familia and the Caballeros draw on their strategic location in Michoacan state, access to one of the country's most important ports, and sophisticated modus operandi. They use a perverse and self-serving quasi-religious ideology to keep recruits coming. The Familia emerged in the early 2000s as a strange mixture of drug traffickers and former vigilantes, helped by the Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, which has since split and formed its own organization.
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Zetas
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The Zetas, once the military wing of the Gulf Cartel, are now among one of the most violent groups in Mexico, with a growing presence in neighboring Guatemala. The Zetas started out as an enforcer gang for the Gulf Cartel, taking their name from the radio code used for top-level officers in the Mexican army. Not only are they highly organized, but their use of brutality and shock tactics -- petrol bombs, beheadings, and roadblocks -- has led the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to describe them as perhaps “the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and violent of these paramilitary enforcement groups."
Mexico News Map
