Narco-state is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade. The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers. Other well-known examples are Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, Myanmar and Syria, where drug cartels produce, ship and sell drugs such as captagon, cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
The Norte del Valle Cartel, or North Valley Cartel, was a drug cartel that operated principally in the north of the Valle del Cauca department of Colombia, most notably the coastal city of Buenaventura. It rose to prominence during the 1990s, after the Cali and Medellín Cartels fragmented, and it was known as one of the most powerful organizations in the illegal drug trade. The drug cartel was led by the brothers Luis Enrique and Javier Antonio Calle Serna, alias "Los Comba", until its takedown in 2008 by the authorities of the Colombia, Venezuela and with cooperation of the United States DEA.
Juan Ramón Matta-Ballesteros is a Honduran former major narcotics trafficker who has been credited with being one of the first to connect Mexican drug traffickers with the Colombian cocaine cartels. This connection paved the way for a major increase in the amount of cocaine smuggled into the United States during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Matta was indicted for operating several major cocaine smuggling rings in United States in the early 1980s. He was also one of the narcotics traffickers accused of the kidnap and murder of American DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.
The Guadalajara Cartel also known as The Federation was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in 1980 by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered from the cocaine trade. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border. It had operations in various regions in Mexico which included the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Colima, Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa among others. Multiple modern present day drug cartels such as the Tijuana, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels originally started out as branches or "plazas" of the Guadalajara Cartel before its eventual disintegration.
Eduardo Arellano Félix is a Mexican drug trafficker, brother of Benjamín, Ramón, Javier and sister, Enedina, all drug traffickers. The Arellano-Félix Organization, also known as the Tijuana Cartel, has been responsible for numerous murders and the smuggling of thousands of tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine for more than a decade. The DEA believes that the Arellano-Félix brothers were responsible for the numerous smuggling tunnels that were found in January 2006.
José Rafael Abello Silva was a top-ranking member of Colombia's notorious Medellín Cartel. He was considered among the major drug traffickers in the Santa Marta region and the reputed chief of Caribbean coast operations on the cartel's behalf. During January 1987, Abello was included in a group of 128 major narcotics figures whose capture was ordered by President Virgilio Barco. Although he was captured in Barranquilla during that same month, he was released shortly thereafter, apparently with the help of Miguel Pinedo Barros, a senator in La Guajira and reputed protector of cocaine traffickers.
Pablo Acosta Villarreal, commonly referred to as El Zorro de Ojinaga was a Mexican narcotics smuggler who controlled crime along a 200-mile stretch of U.S.-Mexico border. At the height of his power, he was smuggling 60 tons of cocaine per year for Colombian cartels in addition to the large quantities of marijuana and heroin that were the mainstay of his business. He was the mentor and business partner of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the "Lord of the Skies", who took over after Acosta's death.
Daniel Barrera Barrera, also known as El Loco, is a Colombian drug lord suspected of being the boss of the illegal drug trade in Colombia's eastern plains. He was arrested in Venezuela on September 18, 2012 after trafficking drugs for more than 20 years. The arrest of the drug lord, according to news reports in the New York Times, was the result of a complex four-nation endeavor. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos named Barrera "the last of the great kingpins".
Juan García Abrego is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former leader of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. He started in the cartel under the tutelage of his uncle Juan Nepomuceno Guerra.
Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, commonly referred to by his alias El Azul, was a Mexican drug lord and member of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guadalajara Cartel and Juárez Cartel, three large and powerful criminal organizations. Originally a member of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) police agency, he founded the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s along with other drug kingpins in Mexico. Following its disintegration in the late 1980s, he went on to lead the Juárez Cartel and eventually settled in the Sinaloa Cartel. He worked alongside Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García, once considered world's most-wanted, powerful and rich drug lords.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, commonly referred to by his alias El Viceroy, is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former leader of the Juárez Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. The cartel is based in Chihuahua, one of the primary transportation routes for billions of dollars' worth of illegal drug shipments entering the United States from Mexico annually. He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords until his capture in 2014.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Guzmán-Zambada Organization, the Federation, the Blood Alliance, or the Pacific Cartel, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. It was established in Mexico during the late 1980s as one of a various number of subordinate "plazas" operating under a predecessor organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel. It is currently headed by Ismael Zambada García and is based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in many world regions but primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. and presence in a number of other regions in Latin America as well as in cities across the U.S. The United States Intelligence Community generally considers the Sinaloa Cartel to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world, making it perhaps even more influential and capable than Pablo Escobar's infamous Medellín Cartel of Colombia was during its prime. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center and other sources within the U.S. the Sinaloa Cartel is primarily involved in the distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, cannabis and MDMA.
The Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute is a United States federal law that targets large-scale drug traffickers who are responsible for long-term and elaborate drug conspiracies. Unlike the RICO Act, which covers a wide range of organized crime enterprises, the CCE statute covers only major narcotics organizations. CCE is codified as Chapter 13 of Title 21 of the United States Code, 21 U.S.C. § 848. The statute makes it a federal crime to commit or conspire to commit a continuing series of felony violations of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 when such acts are taken in concert with five or more other persons. For conviction under the statute, the offender must have been an organizer, manager, or supervisor of the continuing operation and have obtained substantial income or resources from the drug violations.
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, commonly referred to by his alias El Mochomo, is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former leader of the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords. Beltrán Leyva was responsible for smuggling multi-ton shipments of cocaine and methamphetamine to the United States from Mexico and South America between the 1990s and 2000s. He worked alongside his brothers Héctor, Carlos, and Arturo.
The illegal drug trade in Guatemala includes trans-shipment of cocaine to the United States. According to some reports, Mexican drug cartels such as Sinaloa have also established poppy growing operations there. There is a reported relationship between the Mexican Los Zetas cartel and the Guatemalan Kaibiles military force.
The illegal drug trade in Latin America concerns primarily the production and sale of cocaine and cannabis, including the export of these banned substances to the United States and Europe. The coca cultivation is concentrated in the Andes of South America, particularly in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; this is the world's only source region for coca.
Óscar Malherbe de León is a Mexican imprisoned drug lord and former high-ranking leader of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas. He was the main intermediary of the Gulf Cartel in Colombia, responsible for shipping large sums of cocaine from the Cali Cartel in the 1990s. Before becoming a drug trafficker, Malherbe worked as a shoeshiner and car washer. He then turned to the auto theft industry and was recruited in 1976 by Casimiro Espinosa Campos, a former leader of a cell within the Gulf Cartel. By age 22, the Mexican authorities had charged Malherbe with at least 10 homicides. In 1984, Espinosa was killed by Juan García Abrego, then-leader of the Gulf Cartel, who later appointed Malherbe as one of his top lieutenants and moneymen.
The Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, better known as the Kingpin Act, is landmark federal legislation in the United States intended to address international narcotics trafficking by imposing United States sanctions on foreign persons and entities involved in the drug trade.
Gilberto Barragán Balderas is a Mexican suspected drug lord and high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico. He joined the cartel in the late 1990s and was a trusted enforcer of kingpin Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez. Barragán Balderas was the regional boss of Miguel Alemán and helped coordinate international drug trafficking shipments from South and Central America to Mexico and the U.S. His role in the cartel also included providing them with information on the movement and location of Mexican security forces to ensure safe passage of their cocaine and marijuana shipments. In 2008, an indictment issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia detailing his criminal activities was unsealed in court.
Ediel López Falcón, also known as La Muela or Metro 5, is a Mexican convicted drug lord and former high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was the regional boss of Miguel Alemán and helped coordinate international drug trafficking shipments from South and Central America to Mexico and the U.S. His roles in the cartel were also to coordinate oil theft operations. In 2012, he was indicted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for drug trafficking activities. After fleeing Mexico to avoid gang-related violence, López Falcón was arrested in Texas during a sting operation in 2013. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2015. He is currently imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix in New Jersey. His expected release date is in 2029.