War between Mexico's government and various drug trafficking syndicates
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41,034 dead in war conflicts between identified parties from 2006–2020[35] (total 350,000–400,000 dead from organized crime homicides from 2006–2022)[36]
Although Mexican drug trafficking organizations have existed for decades, their power increased[41][42] after the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s, and the fragmentation of the Guadalajara Cartel in the late 1980s. The conflict formally began with President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) launching Operation Michoacán in 2006, which deployed tens of thousands of federal troops and police in a militarized campaign against the cartels initially targeted in Michoacán, Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, and Tamaulipas. However, arrests and killings of cartel leaders caused cartels to splinter into smaller, more violent factions, escalating turf wars and contributing to rising homicide rates nationwide. [43][44][45]
Successive administrations have promised changes in strategy but have upheld the use of militarized tactics. Under President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), the government pledged to shift focus from high-profile arrests to de-escalation and reducing violence, but setbacks such as the prison escape of cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping drew international condemnation. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) pledged to address the social roots of crime through poverty reduction and youth programs, and declared that the war was over; however the statement was criticized, as security policy continued to rely on the newly created National Guard, that has gradually replaced the Mexican Army in policing roles. This strategy has continued under President Claudia Sheinbaum (2024-present).
Since the beginning of the conflict, law enforcement in Mexico has been criticized for corruption, collusion with cartels, and impunity. Federal law enforcement has been reorganized at least five times since 1982. During this period, there have been at least four elite special forces created as new, corruption-free soldiers who could fight Mexico's endemic bribery system.[46] The militarization of Mexican society has drawn criticism for human rights abuses, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, targeting of journalists, and torture. Analysts estimate wholesale earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6 to $49.4 billion annually.[47][48][49] By the end of Calderón's administration in 2012, the official death toll of the Mexican drug war was at least 60,000.[50] Estimates set the death toll above 120,000 killed by 2013, not counting 27,000 missing.[51][52]
Due to its location, Mexico has long been used as a staging and transshipment point for narcotics and contraband between Latin America and U.S. markets. Mexican bootleggers supplied alcohol to American gangsters throughout Prohibition in the United States, and the onset of the illegal drug trade with the U.S. began when Prohibition came to an end in 1933. Near the end of the 1960s, Mexicans started to smuggle drugs on a major scale.[53]
In 1940, under president Lázaro Cárdenas and the impulsion of Mexican psychiatrist Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, Mexico legalized all drugs, in an early attempt to prevent the development of illegal drug trafficking organizations.[54] The law was in effect for about 5 months when the Mexican government repealed it, allegedly under the increasing economic and political pressure from the U.S.[55]
During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico participated in a series of United States–backed anti-narcotics initiatives, including Operation Intercept and Operation Condor. These operations were formally justified on the grounds of combating the cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana in Mexico’s so-called "Golden Triangle" region, an area encompassing parts of the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua.[56][57][58][59]
As part of the campaign, the Mexican government deployed about 10,000 soldiers and police. The operation resulted in mass arrests, torture, and imprisonment of peasants who were often accused of aiding leftist insurgency groups, but no major traffickers were captured. Contemporary assessments deemed the initiatives a failure, citing their inability to curb narcotics production, enabling military corruption, and their record of human rights abuses in rural areas.[60][61][62]
As U.S. efforts in the War on drugs intensified, crackdowns in Florida and the Caribbean during the Miami drug war forced Colombian traffickers to develop new routes for smuggling cocaine into the United States. By the early 1980s, the Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel oversaw production, while distribution increasingly relied on Mexican traffickers. Drawing on existing heroin and cannabis smuggling networks, the Guadalajara Cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, emerged as intermediaries, transporting Colombian cocaine across the Mexico–United States border.[63]
By the mid-1980s, the Guadalajara Cartel had firmly established itself as a reliable transporter, initially paid in cash but shifting by the late 1980s to a payment-in-kind arrangement.[64] While many factors contributed to the escalation of drug trafficking violence, security analysts trace the origins of cartel power to the unraveling of an implicit arrangement between traffickers and then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which began to lose its grip on power in the 1980s.[65] The fighting between rival drug cartels began in earnest after the 1989 arrest of Félix Gallardo, with cartel infighting escalating in the 1990s.[66]
The PRI ruled Mexico for over 70 years, during which cartels grew in power and anti-drug efforts targeted the seizure of marijuana and opium crops in remote regions. In 2000, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) became the first non-PRI president since 1929; his term saw declining homicide rates through 2007, and initially, broad public optimism about regime change.[67]
Los Zetas, then the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, escalated violence to unprecedented levels in the summer of 2003 through gruesome violence and military-like tactics against the Sinaloa Cartel.[68] Los Zetas turf conflict also instilled terror against journalists and civilians of Nuevo Laredo. This set a new precedent, which cartels later mimicked.[69] These activities were not widely reported by the Mexican media at the time. However, key conflicts occurred, including the Sinaloa Cartel counterattacks and the advance on the Gulf Cartel's main regions in Tamaulipas.
It is estimated that in the first eight months of 2005, about 110 people died in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, as a result of the fighting between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.[70] The same year, there was another surge in violence in the state of Michoacán as La Familia Michoacana drug cartel established itself after splintering from its former allies, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.
Felipe CalderónMexican soldiers training in August 2010
Following the contested 2006 presidential election, Felipe Calderón initiated Operation Michoacán, a militarized campaign against drug cartels as an effort to consolidate political authority, strengthen the legitimacy of his administration, and rally public support.[71][72] Often described as the first major campaign of the conflict, Operation Michoacán marked the beginning of large-scale confrontations between government forces and drug cartels, eventually involving about 45,000 troops together with state and federal police.[73]
Cooperation of the Mexican Navy in the Mexican Army transfer as well as the recognition of cultivation areas
Although Calderón’s strategy intended to end violence between rival cartels, critics argue that it worsened the conflict. By removing cartel leaders through arrests or killings, his administration created leadership vacuums that sparked internal power struggles and greater competition between cartels.[77] Balance of power shifts meant that new cartels emerged as other groups weakened, for example, the fragmentation of La Familia Michoacana, which gave rise to the Knights Templar Cartel. Splintered cartels fought to exploit overlapping patches of smuggling routes and territories, and also sought to manipulate the system by leaking intelligence to Mexican authorities or the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to turn law enforcement against their rivals, using knowledge from the groups they had broken away from.[78]
During Calderón's presidential term, the murder rate of Mexico increased dramatically.[79] Annual homicides rose from more than 5,000 in 2008[80] to 9,600 in 2009 and over 15,000 in 2010.[81] By the end of Calderón's presidency, his administration's statistics claimed that, during his 6-year term, 50,000 drug-related homicides occurred.[82] Outside sources claimed more than 120,000 murders happened in the same period as a result of Calderón's strategy.[83] Some analysts, including U.S. Ambassador in Mexico Carlos Pascual, argued that this increase was a direct result of Calderón's military measures.[84] Between 2007 and 2012, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission received nearly 5,800 complaints of military abuse and issued around 90 detailed reports documenting violations against civilians committed while the armed forces carried out policing duties. The Mexican military operated with minimal accountability for abuses committed in its campaigns.[85]
Escalation (2008–12)
Mexican soldiers during a confrontation in Michoacán in August 2007
In April 2008, General Sergio Aponte Polito, the man in charge of the anti-drug campaign in the state of Baja California, made a number of allegations of corruption against the police forces in the region. Among his claims, Aponte stated that he believed Baja California's anti-kidnapping squad was actually a kidnapping team working in conjunction with organized crime, and that bribed police units were used as bodyguards for drug traffickers.[86] These accusations sent shock waves through the state government. Many of the more than 50 accused officials quit or fled. Four months later, Aponte was relieved of his command.[87]
Between 2009 and 2011, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua recorded the highest homicide rate in the world, with more than 200 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Much of the violence was driven by clashes between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel, and the resulting breakdown of public security produced a climate of pervasive lawlessness.[88] In March 2009, President Calderón called in an additional 5,000 Mexican Army troops to Ciudad Juárez. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also said that it was considering using state National Guard troops to help the U.S. Border Patrol counter the threat of drug violence in Mexico from spilling over the border into the U.S. The governors of Arizona and Texas encouraged the federal government to use additional National Guard troops from their states to help those already there supporting state law enforcement efforts against drug trafficking.[89] In 2008, Calderón signed the Mérida Initiative with the United States, which provided funding, training, and intelligence, and allowed U.S. personnel to operate in Mexico in advisory and intelligence-sharing capacities.[90]
By 2011, the Mexican Armed Forces had captured 11,544 people who were believed to have been involved with the cartels and organized crime.[91] In the year prior, 28,000 individuals were arrested on drug-related charges. In October 2012, Mexican Navy forces killed Heriberto Lazcano, leader of Los Zetas, in a shootout in Sabinas, Coahuila, after gunmen attacked their patrol. The operation came just hours after the capture of another senior Zeta, Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo.[92][93][94][95] Lazcano's death is viewed as the most significant cartel leader killing in Calderón's administration. It strengthened the Navy’s standing, allowed Miguel Treviño Morales to take control of Los Zetas, and ultimately benefited Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, whose Sinaloa Cartel sought to dominate the Nuevo Laredo smuggling routes.[96][97]
President Enrique Peña Nieto, accompanied by Cabinet members, holds a press conference in the Palacio Nacional announcing the capture of Joaquín GuzmánProtest camp on Paseo de la Reforma with portraits of the 43 missing students from the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping
In 2012, newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto, from the PRI, emphasized that he did not support the involvement of armed American agents in Mexico and was only interested in training Mexican forces in counter-insurgency tactics.[98] At the start of his term, Peña Nieto promised to de-escalate the conflict, focusing on lowering criminal violence rates, as opposed to the previous policy of attacking drug-trafficking organizations by arresting or killing the cartel leaders and intercepting their shipments.[99] His administration's security policy was shaped by Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong (Secretary of the Interior), Jesús Murillo Karam (Attorney General), and Salvador Cienfuegos (National Defense).[100] In the first 14 months of his administration, between December 2012 and January 2014, 23,640 people died in the conflict.[101]
During 2012 and 2013, Mexico saw the rise of grupos de autodefensa comunitaria, vigilante self-defense groups in rural communities that took up arms against criminal groups that wanted to impose dominance in their towns, entering a new phase in the Mexican war on drugs.[102] This strategy, encouraged by Óscar Naranjo, one of Peña Nieto's security advisors,[103] crumbled when autodefensas began having internal struggles and disagreements with the government, as well as infiltration and co-optation by organized crime, causing Peña Nieto's administration to distance from them.[104]
The 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping, in which 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College disappeared after being detained by local police and allegedly handed over to a criminal group, became a flashpoint in Peña Nieto's administration. The government’s investigation, which international forensic experts later discredited, provoked national and international condemnation and stressed the entanglement between authorities and organized crime.[105]
A centerpiece of Peña Nieto's strategy consisted of making the Mexican Interior Ministry solely responsible for public security and the creation of a national military-level police force called the National Gendarmederie. In 2017, the Law of Internal Security, which sought to formalize the military’s presence in civilian law enforcement, was passed by the legislature but faced significant criticism for undermining civil liberties and was ultimately derogated by the Supreme Court a year later.[108][109][110][111]
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of the center-left Morena party, took office on December 1, 2018. One of his campaign promises was to give amnesty to Mexicans coerced into drug production and trafficking.[112] His aides explained that the plan was not to pardon cartel members, but to prevent the criminalization of the poor; farmers forced into drug cultivation by cartels, and young people who may end up in jail for drug possession.[113] López Obrador argued that past approaches failed by ignoring social disparities, left unaddressed by previous administrations. His administration's expansion of welfare spending in scholarships and youth employment programs was framed as part of its security policy.
Despite the new government's planned strategy changes,[117] during the first two months of the new presidency, the violence between drug trafficking organizations sustained the same levels as in previous years.[118] On January 30, 2019, López Obrador declared "the end of the Mexican war on drugs",[119] stating that he would now focus on reducing spending[120] and direct its military and police efforts primarily on stopping gasoline theft rings—locally called huachicoleros—[121][122][123] that costed the Mexican state-owned company Pemex around 3 billion dollars every year.[124]
On October 17, 2019, based on an extradition request sent to Mexico by a Washington, D.C. judge,[125] a failed operation to capture alleged kingpin Ovidio Guzmán López was carried out by the Mexican National Guard.[126] Guzmán was released[127] after approximately 700 cartel enforcers,[90] took multiple hostages, including the housing unit where military families live in Culiacán.[128][129] López Obrador defended the decision to release Ovidio Guzmán, arguing it prevented further loss of life,[130] and insisted that he wanted to avoid more massacres,[131][132] and that even though they underestimated the cartel's forces and ability to respond,[133] the criminal process against Ovidio is still ongoing.[134][90] Ovidio Guzmán was captured in 2023 and extradited to the U.S.
This strategy of avoiding armed confrontations while drug organizations have continued violent altercations has been controversial.[135][118][136][119] Despite his campaign promises, deployments and military expenditures have continued to increase. The current number of soldiers deployed for security duties is 76% higher than during Felipe Calderón's presidency. Consequently, defense spending has surged 87% between 2012, Calderón's last year in office, and 2022.[137] On July 15, 2022, authorities captured Rafael Caro-Quintero, a former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel. However, they lost fourteen soldiers in an aircraft crash in the remote mountains near Sinaloa's border with Chihuahua.[138]
Although the number of deployed soldiers is higher, available data indicate that they assume a more restrained role. They engage in fewer confrontations, seize fewer firearms, and prioritize deterrence.[139] This has resulted in lower weapon seizures and fewer arrests of alleged criminals.[137] Additionally, President López Obrador has broadened their duties, such as overseeing infrastructure projects, vaccine distribution and addressing irregular migration flows.
Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged continuity with López Obrador’s security strategy. She appointed Omar García Harfuch to the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection (SSPC). Under her administration, the SSPC's powers were expanded through legislation that facilitated closer collaboration with the Attorney General's Office, and greater intelligence gathering and sharing across government agencies.[140][141][142][143] Her government also led targeted operations against cartel infighting, and a greater use of surveillance technology.
The birth of most Mexican drug cartels is traced to former Mexican Judicial Federal Police agent Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (Spanish: El Padrino, lit.'The Godfather'), who founded the Guadalajara Cartel in 1980 and controlled most of the illegal drug trade in Mexico and the trafficking corridors across the Mexico–U.S. border along with Juan García Ábrego throughout the 1980s.[144] He started by smuggling marijuana and opium into the U.S., and was the first Mexican drug chief to link up with Colombia's cocaine cartels in the 1980s. Through his connections, Félix Gallardo became the person at the forefront of the Medellín Cartel, which was run by Pablo Escobar.[145] This was accomplished because Félix Gallardo had already established a marijuana trafficking infrastructure that stood ready to serve the Colombia-based cocaine traffickers.
There were no other cartels at that time in Mexico.[145]:41[145] He oversaw operations with his cronies and the politicians who sold him protection.[145] The Guadalajara Cartel suffered a major blow in 1985 when the group's co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero was captured, and later convicted, for the murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.[146][147] Félix Gallardo then kept a low profile and in 1987 he moved with his family to Guadalajara. According to Peter Dale Scott, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), under its chief Miguel Nazar Haro.[148]
Félix Gallardo was arrested on April 8, 1989.[149] He then divested the trade he controlled, as it would be more efficient and less likely to be brought down in one law enforcement swoop.[145]:47 He sent his lawyer to convene the nation's top drug traffickers at a house in Acapulco where he designated plazas or territories.[145][150]
Félix Gallardo still planned to oversee national operations, as he maintained important connections, but he would no longer control all details of the business.[145] When he was transferred to a high-security prison in 1993, he lost any remaining control over the other cartel leaders.[152]
The Sinaloa Cartel began to contest the Gulf Cartel's domination of the coveted southwest Texas corridor following the arrest of Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas in March 2003. The "Federation" was the result of a 2006 accord between several groups located in the Pacific state of Sinaloa. The cartel was led by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who was Mexico's most-wanted drug trafficker with an estimated net worth of U.S. $1 billion. This made him the 1140th richest man in the world and the 55th most powerful, according to his Forbes magazine profile.[153] He was arrested and escaped in July 2015,[154][155] and re-arrested in January 2016.[156] In February 2010, new alliances were formed against Los Zetas and Beltrán-Leyva Cartel.[157]
The Sinaloa Cartel fought the Juárez Cartel in a long and bloody battle for control over drug trafficking routes in and around the northern city of Ciudad Juárez. The battle eventually resulted in defeat for the Juárez Cartel, resulting in the deaths of between 5,000 and 12,000 people.[158] During the war for the turf in Ciudad Juárez the Sinaloa Cartel used several gangs (e.g. Los Mexicles, the Artistas Asesinos and Gente Nueva) to attack the Juárez Cartel.[158] The Juárez Cartel similarly used gangs such as La Línea and the Barrio Azteca to fight the Sinaloa Cartel.[158]
As of May 2010, numerous reports by Mexican and U.S. media stated that Sinaloa had infiltrated the Mexican federal government and military, and colluded with it to destroy the other cartels.[159][160] The Colima, Sonora and Milenio Cartels are now branches of the Sinaloa Cartel.[161]
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was arrested on January 8, 2016, and extradited to the United States a year later. On February 4, 2019, in Brooklyn, NY, he was found guilty of ten counts of drug trafficking and sentenced to life imprisonment. Guzman unsuccessfully attempted to convince prosecutors that he has assumed charges on behalf of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada[162] "El Chapo" alleged that he had paid former presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón bribes, which was quickly denied by both men.[163] In March 2019, El Chapo's successor, Ismael Zambada García, alias "El Mayo," was reported to be Mexico's "last Capo" and even more feared than his closest rival Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," who serves as leader of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation.[164]
The Beltrán-Leyva Cartel was a Mexican drug cartel and organized crime syndicate founded by the four Beltrán Leyva brothers: Marcos Arturo, Carlos, Alfredo and Héctor.[166][167][168][169] In 2004 and 2005, Arturo Beltrán Leyva led powerful groups of assassins to fight for trade routes in northeastern Mexico for the Sinaloa Cartel. Through corruption or intimidation, the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel infiltrated Mexico's political,[170] judicial[171] and police institutions to feed classified information about anti-drug operations,[172][173] and even infiltrated the Interpol office in Mexico.[174]
Following the December 2009 death of the cartel's leader Arturo Beltrán Leyva by Mexican Marines the cartel entered into an internal power struggle between Arturo's brother, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, and Arturo's top enforcer Edgar Valdez Villarreal.[9] Meanwhile, the cartel continued to dissolve with factions such as the South Pacific Cartel, La Mano Con Ojos, Independent Cartel of Acapulco, and La Barredora forming and the latter two cartels starting yet another intra-Beltrán Leyva Cartel conflict.[9]
The Mexican Federal Police considers the cartel to have been disbanded,[175][176] and the last cartel leader, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, was captured in October 2014.[177]
The Juárez Cartel controls one of the primary transportation routes for billions of dollars' worth of illegal drug shipments annually entering the United States from Mexico.[178] Since 2007, the Juárez Cartel has been locked in a vicious battle with its former partner, the Sinaloa Cartel, for control of Ciudad Juárez. La Línea is a group of Mexican drug traffickers and corrupt Juárez and Chihuahua state police officers who work as the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel.[179]Vicente Carrillo Fuentes headed the Juárez Cartel until his arrest in 2014.
Since 2011, the Juárez Cartel has continued to weaken.[180][181] It is present in the three main points of entry into El Paso, Texas. The Juárez Cartel is only a shadow of the organization it was a decade ago, and its weakness and inability to effectively fight against Sinaloa's advances in Juárez contributed to the lower death toll in Juárez in 2011.[182]
The Tijuana Cartel, also known as the Arellano Félix Organization, was once among Mexico's most powerful.[183] It is based in Tijuana, one of the most strategically important border towns in Mexico,[184] and continues to export drugs even after being weakened by an internal war in 2009. Due to infighting, arrests, and the deaths of some of its top members, the Tijuana Cartel is a fraction 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 by the police. After the arrest or assassination of various members of the Arellano Félix family, the cartel is currently allegedly headed by Edwin Huerta Nuño, alias "El Flako".
The Gulf Cartel (CDG), based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, has been one of Mexico's two dominant cartels in recent years. In the late 1990s, it hired a private mercenary army (an enforcer group now called Los Zetas), which in 2006 stepped up as a partner but, in February 2010, their partnership was dissolved, and both groups engaged in widespread violence across several border cities of Tamaulipas state,[157][185] turning several border towns into "ghost towns".[186]
The CDG was strong at the beginning of 2011, holding off several Zetas incursions into its territory. As the year progressed, internal divisions led to intra-cartel battles in Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas state. The infighting resulted in several arrests and deaths in Mexico and in the United States. The CDG has since broken apart, and it appears that one faction, known as Los Metros, has overpowered its rival, the Los Rojos faction, and is now asserting its control over CDG operations.[182]
The infighting has weakened the CDG, but the group seems to have maintained control of its primary plazas, or smuggling corridors, into the United States.[182] The Mexican federal government has made notable successes in capturing the leadership of the Gulf Cartel. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, his brothers Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, Mario Cárdenas Guillén, and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez have all been captured and incarcerated during Felipe Calderón's administration.
Leadership chart of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, March 2010
In 1999, the Gulf Cartel's leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, hired a group of 37 corrupt former elite military soldiers to work for him. These former Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE) and Amphibious Group of Special Forces (GANFE) soldiers became known as Los Zetas. They began operating as a private army for the Gulf Cartel. During the early 2000s, the Zetas were instrumental in the Gulf Cartel's domination of the drug trade in much of Mexico.
After the 2007 arrest and extradition of Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the Zetas seized the opportunity to strike out on their own. Under the leadership of Heriberto Lazcano, the Zetas, numbering about 300, gradually set up their own independent drug, arms, and human-trafficking networks.[187] In 2008, Los Zetas made a deal with ex-Sinaloa cartel commanders, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, and since then, became rivals of their former employer/partner, the Gulf Cartel.[157][188]
In early 2010, the Zetas made public their split from the Gulf Cartel and began a bloody war with the Gulf Cartel over control of northeast Mexico's drug trade routes.[9] This war has resulted in the deaths of thousands of cartel members and suspected members. Furthermore, due to alliance structures, the Gulf Cartel-Los Zetas conflict drew in other cartels, notably the Sinaloa Cartel, which clashed with the Zetas in 2010 and 2011.[9]
The Zetas are notorious for targeting civilians, including the mass murder of 72 migrants in the San Fernando massacre.[9] The Zetas involved themselves in more than drug trafficking and have also been connected to human trafficking, pipeline trafficked oil theft, extortion, and trading unlicensed CDs.[9] Their criminal network is said to reach far from Mexico including into Central America, the U.S. and Europe.[9] On July 15, 2013, the Mexican Navy arrested the top Zeta boss Miguel Treviño Morales.[189]
In recent times, Los Zetas have undergone severe fragmentation and seen a decline in their influence.[190] As of December 2016, two subgroups calling themselves Los Zetas Grupo Bravo (Group Bravo) and Zetas Vieja Escuela (Old School Zetas) formed an alliance with the Gulf Cartel against a group known as El Cartel del Noreste (The Cartel of the Northeast).[191]
La Familia Michoacana was a major Mexican drug cartel based in Michoacán between at least 2006 and 2011. It was formerly allied with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, but split off to become an independent organization.[192]
Map of Mexican drug cartels presence in Mexico based on a May 2010 Stratfor report
In 2009–10, a counter-narcotics offensive by Mexican and U.S. government agencies produced the arrest of at least 345 suspected La Familia members in the U.S., and the incorrectly presumed death[195] of one of the cartel's founders, Nazario Moreno González, on December 9, 2010.[9] The cartel then divided into the Knights Templar Cartel and a José de Jesús Méndez Vargas-led faction, which kept the name La Familia. Following the cartel's fragmentation in late 2010 and early 2011, the La Familia Cartel under Méndez Vargas fought the Knights Templar Cartel but on June 21, 2011, Méndez Vargas was arrested by Mexican authorities[9] and in mid-2011 the attorney general in Mexico (PGR) stated that La Familia Cartel had been "exterminated",[196] leaving only the splinter group, the Knights Templar Cartel.[197][198]
In February 2010, La Familia allied with the Gulf Cartel against Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel.[157]
The Knights Templar drug cartel (Spanish: Caballeros Templarios) was created in Michoacán in March 2011 after the death of the leader of La Familia Michoacana cartel, Nazario Moreno González.[199] The Cartel is headed by Enrique Plancarte Solís and Servando Gómez Martínez, who formed the Knights Templar due to differences with José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, who had assumed leadership of La Familia Michoacana.[200]
After the emergence of the Knights Templar, sizable battles flared up during the spring and summer months between the Knights Templar and La Familia.[9] The organization has grown from a splinter group to a dominant force over La Familia, and at the end of 2011, following the arrest of José de Jesús "El Chango" Méndez Vargas, leader of La Familia, the cartel appeared to have taken over the bulk of La Familia's operations in Mexico and the U.S.[9] In 2011 the Knights Templar appeared to have aligned with the Sinaloa Federation in an effort to root out the remnants of La Familia and to prevent Los Zetas from gaining a more substantial foothold in the Michoacán region of central Mexico.[201][202] On March 31, 2014, Enrique Plancarte Solís, a high-ranking leader in the cartel, was killed by the Mexican Navy.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, CJNG, Los Mata Zetas and Los Torcidos)[203][204][205][206] is a Mexican criminal group based in Jalisco and headed by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes ("El Mencho"), one of Mexico's most-wanted cartel leaders.[207] Jalisco New Generation Cartel started as one of the splits of Milenio Cartel, beside La Resistencia. La Resistencia accused CJNG of giving up Oscar Valencia (El Lobo) to the authorities and called them Los Torcidos (The Twisted Ones). Jalisco Cartel defeated La Resistencia and took control of Millenio Cartel's smuggling networks. Jalisco New Generation Cartel expanded its operation network from coast to coast in only six months, making it one of the criminal groups with the greatest operating capacity in Mexico as of 2012.[208] Through online videos, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has tried to seek society's approval and tacit consent from the Mexican government to confront Los Zetas by posing as a "righteous" and "nationalistic" group.[209][210] Such claims have stoked fears that Mexico, just like Colombia a generation before, may be witnessing the rise of paramilitary drug gangs.[209] By 2018 the CJNG was hyped as the most powerful cartel in Mexico.[211][212][213] though Insight Crime has said the Sinaloa Cartel is still the most powerful cartel and called the CJNG its closest rival.[214][164] In 2019, the group was greatly weakened by infighting, arrests of senior operatives, and a war with the Sinaloa Cartel and its allies.[215]
CJNG co-founder Érick Valencia Salazar (alias "El 85") and former high-ranking CJNG leader Enrique Sánchez Martínez (alias "El Cholo") had also departed from the CJNG and formed a rival cartel known as the Nueva Plaza Cartel.[216][217][218] Since 2017, the cartel has been engaged in a war with the CJNG.[219] The Nueva Plaza Cartel has also become aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel to fight the CJNG.[216][217]
Drug cartels in Mexico are heavily involved in public relations and information warfare, employing tools such as food handouts, social media accounts, press release-style videos, narco corridos, and group chats through private messaging platforms primarily WhatsApp and Telegram. Cartel propaganda seeks to influence public opinion, threaten or discredit rivals, and coordinate between organizations.[220] Physical "narco messages", ranging from printed banners to handwritten notes, are often displayed in public spaces or left at crime scenes. Some groups, notably the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), maintain dedicated propaganda arms producing coordinated messages with logos, slogans, and professional formatting.[221] In 2011, President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) met with major media outlets, urging them to reduce sensationalist coverage and limit the dissemination of cartel messaging.[222] Many cartels tacitly control local information environments by threatening journalists, bloggers, and others who speak out against them.
In recent years, cartel messaging has moved into social mediashort-form videos and imagery that glamorize cartel life, weapons, and loyalty.[223][224] Cartel slang is increasingly echoed in popular culture, blurring between criminal identity signifiers and everyday Mexican Spanish. Some journalists and researchers have used the term narcoculture to describe this blend of subcultural references, while others have criticized the label as sensationalistic, noting that cartel recruitment also relies heavily on coercion, patronage networks, and legal businesses. The concept nonetheless points to how cultural symbols and narratives can help cartels normalize their presence and project power.[225][226]
Paramilitary groups work alongside cartels to enforce these activities. 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. 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 suggests that paramilitaries have emerged from the deregulation of the Mexican army, which private security firms have gradually replaced.[229] 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.[230]
Former Secretary of Public SecurityGenaro García Luna was found guilty on multiple charges related to corruption and drug trafficking. He is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be convicted in the United States.
Mexican cartels advance their operations, in part, by corrupting or intimidating law enforcement officials.[86][47] Mexican municipal, state, and federal government officials, along with the police forces, often work together with the cartels in an organized network of corruption.[53] A Pax Mafioso is a specific example of corruption that guarantees a politician votes and a following in exchange for not impeding a particular cartel.[53]
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) reports that although the central government of Mexico has made concerted efforts to reduce corruption in recent years, it remains a serious problem.[174][232] Some agents of the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) are believed to work as enforcers for various cartels, and the Attorney General (PGR) reported in December 2005 that nearly 1,500 of AFI's 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity and 457 were facing charges.[47]
In recent years, the federal government conducted purges and prosecutions of police forces in Nuevo Laredo, Michoacán, Baja California, and Mexico City.[47] The anti-cartel operations begun by President Calderón in December 2006 include ballistic checks of police weapons in places where there is concern that police are also working for the cartels. In June 2007, President Calderón purged 284 federal police commanders from all 31 states and the Federal District.[47]
Under the 'Cleanup Operation' performed in 2008, several agents and high-ranking officials have been arrested and charged with selling information or protection to drug cartels;[233][234] some high-profile arrests were: Victor Gerardo Garay Cadena,[235] (chief of the Federal Police), Noé Ramírez Mandujano (ex-chief of the Organized Crime Division (SEIDO)), José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos (ex-chief of the Organized Crime Division (SEIDO)), and Ricardo Gutiérrez Vargas who is the ex-director of Mexico's Interpol office. In January 2009, Rodolfo de la Guardia García, ex-director of Mexico's Interpol office, was arrested.[236]Julio César Godoy Toscano, who was just elected July 6, 2009, to the lower house of Congress, is charged with being a top-ranking member of La Familia Michoacana drug cartel and of protecting this cartel.[237] He is now a fugitive.
In May 2010, an NPR report collected allegations from dozens of sources, including U.S. and Mexican media, Mexican police officials, politicians, academics, and others, that Sinaloa Cartel had infiltrated and corrupted the Mexican federal government and the Mexican military by bribery and other means.[238] The 2010 NPR report also stated that the Sinaloa Cartel was colluding with the government to destroy other cartels and protect itself and its leader, 'Chapo'. Mexican officials denied any corruption in the government's treatment of drug cartels.[159][160]
The Mexican Federal Police was formed in 1999 and disbanded in 2019.
Mexico has thousands of municipal police forces, with uneven training, resources, and oversight. Smaller local forces can be easily co-opted by cartels, while state and federal bodies often duplicate or conflict with them. Police departments often depend on mayors or governors for salaries and resources, while governments periodically “purge” police departments by mass firings, then rehiring with little institutional continuity.[47][239] Federal law enforcement has been reorganized at least five times since 1982, and at least four special forces units have been created.[46]
Internal affairs and civilian oversight of police and military are limited, and whistleblowers risk retaliation. Mexico’s public ministry has been criticized for poor case handling, with little forensic work, reliance on forced confessions, and a lack of chain of custody protections, which allow many suspects to be released on technicalities.[240][241] Cartels have been reported as difficult to prosecute "because members of the cartels have infiltrated and corrupted the law enforcement organizations that are supposed to prosecute them, such as the Office of the Attorney General."[242]Impunity rates for violent crime in Mexico are estimated at between 90 and 95%.[243][244]
Grenades and rocket launchers are often smuggled through the Guatemalan borders, as leftovers from past conflicts in Central America, notably the Salvadoran Civil War and the Nicaraguan Revolution.[259] Some explosive weapons are also smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico[260] or stolen from the Mexican military.[261]
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports that the Mexican drug cartels operating today along the border are far more sophisticated and dangerous than any other organized criminal group in U.S. law enforcement history.[262]Project Gunrunner was a United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation aimed at curbing firearms trafficking into Mexico.[263] The project intended to stop the flow of firearms from the United States into Mexico and deny cartels weapons considered ‘tools of the trade.’
In 2011, a gunwalking scandal, later known as "Operation Fast and Furious," occurred when the ATF was accused of permitting and facilitating "straw purchase" firearm sales to traffickers, and allowing the guns to "walk" and be transported to Mexico. Allegedly, the ATF allowed to complete the transactions to expose the supply chain and gather intelligence.[264][265] It has been established that this operation violated long-established ATF policies and practices and that it is not a recognized investigative technique.[266] Several of the guns sold under the Project Gunrunner were recovered from crime scenes in Arizona,[267] and at crime scenes throughout Mexico,[268] resulting in considerable controversy.[264][269][270] One notable incident was the "Black Swan operation" where Joaquín Guzmán Loera was finally captured. The ATF confirmed that one of the weapons the Mexican Navy seized from Guzmán's gunmen was one of the many weapons that were "lost" during the Project Gunrunner.[271][272]
Researchers and Mexican officials have argued that most weapons trafficked into Mexico originate from the United States.[273] The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have stated that the statistic is misleading: out of approximately 30,000 weapons seized in drug cases in Mexico in 2004–2008, 7,200 appeared to be of U.S. origin, approximately 4,000 were found in ATF manufacturer and importer records, and 87 percent of those—3,480—originated in the United States.[274][275] The U.S. has continued to assist the Mexican government with technology, equipment, training and intelligence.[276][277] However, critics argue that gun politics in the United States have exacerbated the conflict by enabling the flow of weapons south of the border.
Supply chains
Map of Mexican cartels' drug traffic routes in Mexico based on a 2012 Stratfor reportThe states where most of the conflict took place in 2010, marked in red
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican cartels are the predominant smugglers and wholesale distributors of South American cocaine and Mexico-produced cannabis, methamphetamine, and heroin. The Mexican cartels are believed to control most of the illegal drugs coming into the U.S.[262] Mexican cartels control large swaths of Mexican territory and dozens of municipalities, and they exercise increasing influence in Mexican electoral politics.[278] Cartels have waged violent turf battles over control of key smuggling corridors from Matamoros to San Diego.
The U.S. State Department estimates that 90 percent of cocaine entering the United States is produced in Colombia[279] (followed by Bolivia and Peru)[280] and that the main transit route is through Mexico.[47] Drug cartels in Mexico control approximately 70% of the foreign narcotics flow into the United States.[281]
Mexican cartels distribute Asian[282]methamphetamine to the United States.[47] It is believed that almost half the cartels' revenues come from cannabis.[283] Cocaine, heroin, and, increasingly, methamphetamine are also traded.[284] Although Mexico accounts for only a small share of worldwide heroin production, it supplies a large share of the heroin distributed in the United States.[47] Since the 2000s, Mexican cartels have profited from marijuana cultivation in remote U.S. forests.[285]
A 2018 study found that the reduction in drugs from Colombia contributed to Mexican drug violence. The study estimated that "between 2006 and 2009, the decline in cocaine supply from Colombia could account for 10%–14% of the increase in violence in Mexico."[286]
One of the main factors driving the Mexican drug war is widespread poverty. From 2004 to 2008, the portion of the population who received less than half of the median income rose from 17% to 21%, and the proportion of the population living in extreme or moderate poverty rose from 35 to 46% (52 million persons) between 2006 and 2010.[287][288][289]
Among the OECD countries, Mexico has the second-highest economic disparity between the extremely poor and the rich.[290] The bottom ten percent in the income hierarchy has 1.36% of the country's resources, whereas the upper ten percent has almost 36%. The OECD also notes that Mexico's budgeted poverty alleviation and social development expenses are only about a third of the OECD average.[288]
In 2012, it was estimated that Mexican cartels employed over 450,000 people directly, and a further 3.2 million people's livelihoods depended on various parts of the drug trade.[291] In cities such as Ciudad Juárez, up to 60% of the economy depended on illegal sources of income.[292] As of 2023, an estimated 175,000 people are working for the drug cartels.[293] The head of the U.S. drug enforcement reported that there are an estimated 45,000 members, associates, and brokers spread over more than 100 countries working under the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel.[293]
A problem that goes hand in hand with poverty in Mexico is the level of schooling.[294][295] In the 1960s, when Mexican narcotic smugglers started to smuggle drugs on a major scale,[53] only 5.6% of the Mexican population had more than six years of schooling.[296]
More recently, researchers from the World Economic Forum have noted that despite the Mexican economy ranking 31st out of 134 economies for investment in education (5.3% of its GDP), as of 2009, the nation's primary education system is ranked only 116th, thereby suggesting "that the problem is not how much but rather how resources are invested".[297] The WEF further explained: "The powerful teachers union, the SNTE, the largest labor union in Latin America, has been largely responsible for blocking reforms that would increase the quality of spending and help ensure equal access to education."[how?].
Teachers in the Acapulco region were "extorted, kidnapped and intimidated" by cartels, including death threats demanding money. They went on strike in 2011.[298]
Casualty numbers have escalated significantly over time. According to a Stratfor report, the number of drug-related deaths in 2006 and 2007 (2,119 and 2,275) more than doubled to 5,207 in 2008. The number further increased substantially over the next two years, from 6,598 in 2009 to over 11,000 in 2010. According to data from the Mexican government, the death numbers are even higher: 9,616 in 2009, 15,273 in 2010, coming to a total of 47,515 killings between 2006 and January 2012.[252][311][312]
It is often not clear what deaths are part of the Mexican drug war versus general criminal homicides, and different sources give different estimates.[313] Casualties are often measured indirectly by estimated total deaths from organized crime in Mexico.[313] This amounts to about 115,000 people in the years 2007–2018.[299] From 2018 to 2020, it was estimated that there were 11,400 reports of gang violence, and over 80% of the attacks targeted civilians, resulting in 13,000 related deaths during the period.[314]
Violence
Count of murders in Mexico's drug conflicts (December 2006 to December 2010)
The Mexican attorney general's office has claimed that 9 of 10 victims of the Mexican drug war are members of organized crime groups,[315] although other sources have questioned this figure.[316] Deaths among military and police personnel are an estimated 7% of the total.[317] The states that suffer from the conflict the most are Baja California, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Sinaloa.
On July 10, 2008, the Mexican government announced plans to nearly double the size of its Federal Police force to reduce the role of the military in combating drug trafficking.
Total homicides in Mexico (1990-2023)
One escalation in this conflict is the traffickers' use of new means to claim their territory and spread fear. Cartel members have broadcast executions on YouTube[318] and on other video-sharing platforms or shock sites. Cartels have also hung banners on streets stating demands and warnings.[319]
The 2008 Morelia grenade attacks took place on September 15, 2008, when two hand grenades were thrown onto a crowded plaza, killing ten people and injuring more than 100.[320] Some see these efforts as intended to sap the morale of government agents assigned to crack down on the cartels; others see them as an effort to let citizens know who is winning the war. At least one dozen Mexican norteño musicians have been murdered. Most of the victims performed narcocorridos, folk songs that tell the stories of the Mexican drug trade.[321]
Increasing violence has jeopardized foreign investment in Mexico. Finance Minister Agustín Carstens said that the deteriorating security alone is reducing gross domestic product annually by 1% in Mexico, Latin America's second-largest economy.[322]
The drug control policies Mexico has adopted to prevent drug trafficking and to eliminate the power of the drug cartels have adversely affected the human rights situation in the country. These policies have given the responsibilities for civilian drug control to the military, which has the power to not only carry out anti-drug and public security operations but also enact policy. According to the U.S. State Department, the police and the military in Mexico were accused of committing serious human rights violations as they carried out government efforts to combat drug cartels.[323]
Some groups are especially vulnerable to human rights abuses collateral to drug law enforcement. Specifically in northern border states that have seen elevated levels of drug-related violence, human rights violations of injection drug users (IDUs) and sex workers by law enforcement personnel include physical and sexual violence, extortion, and targeting for accessing or possession of injection equipment or practicing sex work, although these activities are legal.[324][325][326] Such targeting is especially deleterious because members of these marginalized communities often lack the resources and social or political capital to enforce their rights.[324][325][326]
Immense power in the executive branch and corruption in the legislative and judiciary branches also contribute to the worsening of Mexico's human rights situation, leading to such problems as police forces violating basic human rights through torture and threats, the autonomy of the military and its consequences, and the ineffectiveness of the judiciary in upholding and preserving basic human rights. Some of the forms of human rights violations in recent years presented by human rights organizations include illegal arrests, secret and prolonged detention, torture, rape, extrajudicial execution, and fabrication of evidence.[327][328][329]
The emergence of internal federal agencies that are often unregulated and unaccountable also contributes to the occurrence of human rights violations.[according to whom?] The AFI of Mexico had been involved with numerous human rights violation cases involving torture and corruption. In one case, detainee Guillermo Velez Mendoza died while in the custody of AFI agents. The AFI agent implicated in his death was arrested and escaped on bail.[330][47][331] The AFI was finally declared a failure and was disbanded in 2009.[332]
Ethnic prejudices have also emerged in the drug war, and indigenous communities have been targeted by the police, military, drug traffickers, and the justice system. According to the National Human Rights Commission (Mexico) (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos-CNDH), nearly one-third of the indigenous prisoners in Mexico in 2001 were in prison for federal crimes, which are mostly drug-related.[333]
Another major concern is the lack of implementation of the Leahy Law in the U.S. and the consequences of that in worsening the human rights situation in Mexico. Under this U.S. law, no member or unit of a foreign security force that is credibly alleged to have committed a human rights violation may receive U.S. security training. It is alleged[by whom?] that the U.S., by training the military and police force in Mexico, violates the Leahy Law. In this case, the U.S. embassy officials in Mexico, in charge of human rights and drug control programs, are blamed for aiding and abetting these violations. In December 1997, a group of heavily armed Mexican special forces soldiers kidnapped twenty young men in Ocotlan, Jalisco, brutally torturing them and killing one. Six of the implicated officers had received U.S. training as part of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) training program.[334]
Effects on public health
"The social fabric is so destroyed that it cannot be healed in one generation or two because wounds become deeply embedded...Mexico has a humanitarian tragedy and we have not grasped how big it is."—Elena Azaola, Centre for Social Anthropology High Studies and Research[335]
As a result of "spillover" along the U.S.-bound drug trafficking routes and more stringent border enforcement, Mexico's northern border states have seen increased levels of drug consumption and abuse, including elevated rates of drug injection, 10 to 15 times the national average.[324][336][337] These rates are accompanied by mounting rates of HIV and STIs among injection drug users (IDUs) and sex workers, reaching a 5.5% prevalence in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, which also report STI rates of 64% and 83%, respectively.[324] Violence and extortion of IDUs and sex workers directly and indirectly elevate the levels of risk behavior and poor health outcomes among members of these groups.[324][338] Marginalization of these vulnerable groups by way of physical and sexual violence and extortion by police threatens the cross-over of infection from high-prevalence groups to the general population.[324][339][340] In particular, decreased access to public health services such as syringe exchange programs and confiscation of syringes can precipitate a cascade of health harms.[341][342][343] Geographic diffusion of epidemics from the northern border states elsewhere is also possible with the rotation of police and military personnel stationed in drug conflict areas with high infection prevalence.[324][339][340]
Drug use
Illicit drug use in Mexico is low compared to the United States, but it is on the rise, with the availability of narcotics gradually increasing since the 1980s.[344][345] The export rate of cocaine to the US decreased following stricter border control measures in response to the September 11 attacks.[345][346][347].
Drug shipments are often delayed in Mexican border towns before delivery to the U.S., which has forced drug traffickers to increase prices to account for transportation costs. These delays have contributed to the increased rates of local drug consumption.[345] With increased cocaine use, there has been a parallel rise in demand for drug user treatment in Mexico.[345]
Women in the Mexican drug war have been participants and civilians. They have served for and/or been harmed by all belligerents. There have been female combatants in the military, police, cartels, and gangs.[348][349] Women officials, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, paralegals,[350] reporters, business owners, social media influencers, teachers, and non-governmental organizations directors and workers have also been involved in different capacities.[351] Women citizens and foreigners, including migrants,[352] have been raped,[353][354] tortured,[355][356] and murdered in the conflict.[357][358][359][360][361]
Demonstration against the murder of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas in May 2017
The increase in violence related with organized crime has significantly deteriorated the conditions in which local journalism is practiced.[367] In the first years of the 21st century, Mexico was considered the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism, according to groups like the National Human Rights Commission, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Between 2000 and 2012, several dozen journalists, including Miguel Ángel López Velasco, Luis Carlos Santiago, and Valentín Valdés Espinosa, were murdered there for covering narco-related news.[368][369]
The offices of Televisa and local newspapers have been bombed.[370] The cartels have also threatened to kill news reporters in the U.S. who have done coverage on the drug violence.[371] Some media networks stopped reporting on drug crimes, while others have been infiltrated and corrupted by drug cartels.[372][373] In 2011, Notiver journalist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, his wife, and his son were murdered in their home.[374]
About 74 percent of the journalists killed since 1992 in Mexico have been reporters for print newspapers, followed in number by Internet media and radio at about 11 percent each. Television journalism only includes 4 percent of the deaths.[375][376][377]
Since harassment neutralized many traditional media outlets, anonymous, sensationalized blogs like Blog del Narco took on the role of reporting on events related to the drug war.[378] The drug cartels responded by murdering bloggers and social media users. Twitter users have been tortured and killed for posting and denouncing information about the drug cartels' activities.[379] In September 2011, user NenaDLaredo of the website Nuevo Laredo Envivo was allegedly murdered by Los Zetas.[380]
In May 2012, several journalist murders occurred in Veracruz. Regina Martinez of Proceso was murdered in Xalapa. A few days later, three Veracruz photojournalists were tortured and killed, and their dismembered bodies were dumped in a canal. They had worked for various news outlets, including Notiver, Diario AZ, and TV Azteca. Human rights groups condemned the murders and demanded that the authorities investigate the crimes.[369][381][382]
Since the start of the Mexican drug war in 2006, the drug trafficking organizations have slaughtered their rivals, killed policemen, and have increasingly targeted politicians – especially local leaders.[383] Most of the places where these politicians have been killed are areas plagued by drug-related violence.[383] Part of the strategy used by criminal groups behind the killings of local figures is the weakening of the local governments.[383] For example, María Santos Gorrostieta Salazar, former mayor of Tiquicheo, Michoacán, who had survived three earlier assassination attempts and the murder of her husband, was abducted and beaten to death in November 2012.[384] Extreme violence puts politicians at the mercy of the cartels, allowing them to increase their control of government structures and expand their influence.[383]
In addition, because mayors usually appoint local police chiefs, they are seen by the cartels as key assets in their criminal activities to control the police forces in their areas of influence.[385] The cartels also seek to control the local governments to win government contracts and concessions; these "public works" help them ingrain themselves in the community and gain the loyalty and respect of the communities in which they operate.[385] Politicians are usually targeted for three reasons: (1) Political figures who are honest pose a direct threat to organized crime, and are consequently killed by the cartels; (2) Politicians make arrangements to protect a certain cartel and are killed by a rival cartel; and (3) A cartel kills politicians to heat the turf of the rival cartel that operates in the area.[386]
Cartels have engaged in kidnapping, ransom, murder, robbery, and extortion of migrants traveling from Central America through Mexico on their way to the United States and Canada. Cartels have also forced migrants to join their organization and work for them, a situation that has been described as slavery.[387][388]Mass graves have been also discovered in Mexico containing bodies of migrants.[389] In 2011, 177 bodies were found in a mass grave in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, the same area where the bodies of 72 migrants were found in 2010,[390] where most victims "died of blunt force trauma to the head."[360]
Cartels have also infiltrated the Mexican government's immigration agencies and attacked and threatened immigration officers.[391] The National Human Rights Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) said that 11,000 migrants had been kidnapped in 6 months in 2010 by drug cartels.[392]
There are documented links between the drug cartels and human trafficking for forced labor, forced prostitution, and rape. The wife of a cartel leader described a system in which young girls became prostitutes and then were forced to work in drug factories.[393] In the early 2010s, Los Zetas reportedly began to move into the prostitution business (including the prostitution of children) after previously only supplying women to already existing networks.[394]
The U.S. State Department says that the practice of forced labor in Mexico is larger in extent than forced prostitution.[395] Mexican journalists like Lydia Cacho have been threatened and forced into exile for reporting on these events.[396]
Effects internationally
Europe
The U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S. rate.[43] 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.[64]
Concerns about European security and the trafficking of drugs through the European continent have grown in recent years, and, in December 2022, Europol and the DEA released a joint report on the situation involving Mexican drug trafficking through the EU.[397]
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.[398] 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.[399]
In 2016, investigations into transatlantic drug trafficking revealed that the Kinahan Clan, Ireland’s largest drug traffickers, had joined with prominent figures in Mexico, South America, West Africa, and Europe to form an informal “Super Cartel.” However, the extent of its coordination remains unclear.[400] The 2017 wedding of Daniel Kinahan in Dubai helped investigators identify key members such as Ridouan Taghi, Ricardo Riquelme Vega, Naoufal Fassih, and Camorra boss Raffaele Imperiale.[401] In 2022–23, a major international operation led to 49 arrests, including traffickers Edin “Tito” Gacanin and Zuhair Belkhair, accused of moving large amounts of cocaine through Rotterdam; though many members of the "Super Cartel" remain in custody, both were released shortly after their arrests.
Involvement of Mexican cartels in the Russo-Ukrainian War
On July 2025, the Mexican Intelligence in collaboration with Ukrainian security forces, revealed that in the Russian invasion of Ukraine Colombian and Mexican mercenaries were sent in the war-zone in the International Legion by the drug cartels to gain war tactics and especially knowledge on the use of drones FPV for battles with the security forces and rival cartels in Mexico.[402][403][404][405] On August 2025, it was revealed that the CJNG created a specific paramilitary unit, of at least 10 members, for the use of drones FPV using the tactics learned in the War in Ukraine.[406][407]
Guatemala
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.[408][409] 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.[410]
In February 2009, Los Zetas threatened to kill the president of Guatemala, Álvaro Colom.[411] 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.[409] A report from the Brookings Institution[412] warns that, without proactive, timely efforts, the violence will spread throughout the Central American region.[413]
According to the United States government, Los Zetas control 75% of Guatemala through violence, political corruption, and infiltration in the country's institutions.[414] 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.[415]
In August 2025, Guatemala granted temporary humanitarian status to 161 Mexicans fleeing cartel violence in Chiapas[416]
West Africa
At least nine Mexican and Colombian drug cartels have established bases in several West African nations, with notable activity in Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, among other places.[417] 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.[417] 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.[418]
Canada
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.[43] 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.[43] Since 2009, Vancouver has become the Mexican drug cartels' main center of operations in Canada.[419]
South America
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.[420]
On September 8, 2021, National Prosecutor Jorge Abbott declared that Mexican cartels were attempting to establish themselves in Chile.[421] 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.[421] 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.[421]
The U.S. Justice Department considers the Mexican drug cartels to be the "greatest organized crime threat to the United States."[422] In seeking partnership from the United States, Mexican officials point out that the illicit drug trade is a shared problem in need of a shared solution, and remark that most of the financing for the Mexican traffickers comes from American drug consumers.[423] On March 25, 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that "[America's] insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade", and that "the United States bears shared responsibility for the drug-fueled violence sweeping Mexico."[424]
U.S. State Department officials knew that Mexican ex-president Felipe Calderón's willingness to work with the United States was unprecedented on issues of security, crime and drugs, so the U.S. Congress passed legislation in late June 2008 to provide Mexico and Central American countries with US$1.6 billion for the Mérida Initiative, a three-year international assistance plan. The Mérida Initiative provides Mexico and Central American countries with law enforcement training and equipment, as well as technical advice to strengthen the national justice systems. The Mérida Initiative does not include cash or weapons.
Currently, the Mexican drug cartels already have a presence in most major U.S. cities.[425] In 2009, the Justice Department reported that Mexican drug cartels distribute drugs in nearly 200 cities across the United States,[426] including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta.[427] Gang-related activity and violence has increased along the U.S. Southwest border region, as U.S.-based gangs act as enforcers for Mexican drug cartels.[428]
U.S. death toll and national security
This ICE photo shows people under arrest. Officials announced the discovery of a large drug trafficking operation from Mexico into Arizona.
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(November 2020)
U.S. authorities reported a spike in killings, kidnappings, and home invasions connected to Mexican cartels, and at least 19 Americans were killed in 2008.[429][430] Another 92 Americans were killed between June 2009 and June 2010.[431]
The U.S. Joint Forces Command noted in a December 2008 report that the conflict will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state over the next several years, and therefore would demand an American response based on the implications for homeland security alone.[432] After the JFC broached this issue in its 2008 report, several journalists and academics have discussed the possibility that Mexico could become a failed state.[433][434][435][436] The Mexican government responded negatively to the U.S. government raising the prospect of Mexico becoming a failed state.[437][438] To smooth over relations with Mexico over this issue, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally visited Mexico City in March 2009, followed by a visit by President Barack Obama a month later.[437]
Number of yearly U.S. opioid overdose deaths from all opioid drugs.
In March 2009, the U.S. DHS said that it was considering using the National Guard to counter the threat of drug violence in Mexico from spreading to the U.S. The governors of Arizona and Texas have asked the federal government to send additional National Guard troops to help those already there supporting local law enforcement efforts against drug trafficking.[89] Calls for National Guard deployment on the border greatly increased after the 2010 murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, possibly at the hands of Mexican drug smugglers.[440][441]
In March 2009, the Obama administration outlined plans to redeploy more than 500 federal agents to border posts and redirect $200 million to combat smuggling of illegal drugs, money, and weapons.[442] On May 25, 2010, President Obama authorized deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico to assist with border protection and enforcement activities, as well as help train additional Customs and Border Protection agents.[443] The Washington Office on Latin America said the U.S. southwest border region remained calm, with a homicide rate lower than the national average.[444][445]
In 2021, around 80,411 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States.[446] Many of the deaths are from an extremely potent opioid, fentanyl, which is trafficked from Mexico.[447] The drug's precursor chemicals, which have a variety of legitimate uses, are manufactured in China, then shipped to Mexico, where it is processed and packaged, which is then smuggled into the US by drug cartels.[448] The opioid crisis in the United States is largely fueled by drugs smuggled from Mexico; approximately 98% of fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Mexico.[449] In 2023, the Biden administration announced a crackdown on members of the Sinaloa Cartel smuggling fentanyl into the United States.[450] In 2025, President Donald Trump launched a process to designate Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations.[451] The Trump administration has considered drone strikes against cartels in Mexico.[452]
Vicente Zambada Niebla, a member of the Sinaloa Cartel and son of Ismael Zambada García, one of the top drug lords in Mexico, claimed after his arrest to his attorneys that he and other top Sinaloa cartel members had received immunity by U.S. agents and a virtual licence to smuggle cocaine over the United States border, in exchange for intelligence about rival cartels engaged in the Mexican drug war.[453][454]
In October 2013, two former federal agents and an ex-CIA contractor told an American television network that CIA operatives, including Félix Rodríguez, were involved in the kidnapping and murder of DEA covert agent Enrique Camarena, because he was a threat to the agency's drug operations in Mexico. According to the three men, the CIA was collaborating with drug traffickers moving cocaine and marijuana to the United States, and using its share of the profits to finance Nicaraguan Contra rebels attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. A CIA spokesman responded, calling it "ridiculous" to suggest that the Agency had anything to do with the murder of a U.S. federal agent or the escape of his alleged killer.[455]
According to former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, the United States-led drug war is pushing Latin America into a downward spiral; Mr. Cardoso said in a conference that "the available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war".[456] The panel of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy commission, headed by Cardoso, stated that the countries involved in this war should remove the "taboos" and re-examine the anti-drug programs. Latin American governments have followed the advice of the U.S. to combat the drug war, but the policies have had little effect. The commission made some recommendations to United States President Barack Obama to consider new policies, such as decriminalization of marijuana and to treat drug use as a public health problem and not as a security problem.[457] The Council on Hemispheric Affairs states it is time to seriously consider drug decriminalization and legalization,[458] a policy initiative that would be in direct opposition to the interests of criminal gangs.
Money laundering
Although Mexican drug cartels and their Colombian suppliers generate, launder and remove $18 billion to $39 billion from the United States each year,[459] the U.S. and Mexican governments have been criticized for their unwillingness or slow response to confront the various cartels' financial operations, including money laundering.[459][460][461]
The U.S. DEA has identified the need to increase financial investigations relating to the movement of illegal drug funds to Mexico.[462] The DEA states that attacking the financial infrastructure of drug cartels has to play a key role in any viable drug enforcement strategy.[462][463] The U.S. DEA has noted that the U.S. and Mexican financial services industry continues to be a facilitator for drug money movement.[462][464]
Following suit, in August 2010, President Felipe Calderón proposed sweeping new measures to combat cash smuggling and money laundering. Calderón proposes a ban on cash purchases of real estate and of certain luxury goods that cost more than 100,000 pesos (about US$8,104.) His package would also require more businesses to report large transactions, such as real estate, jewelry and purchases of armor plating.[461] In June 2010, Calderón "announced strict limits on the amount in U.S. dollars that can be deposited or exchanged in banks",[461] but the proposed restrictions to financial institutions are facing tough opposition in the Mexican legislature.[459][461]
In 2011, Wachovia, at one time a major U.S. bank, was implicated in laundering money for Mexican drug traffickers. In a settlement, Wachovia paid federal authorities $110 million in forfeiture.[465] A U.S. Senate report[466][467] from the permanent subcommittee for investigations revealed in July 2012 that HSBC – one of Europe's biggest banks- moved $7 billion in bulk cash from Mexico to the U.S., most of it suspected to assist Mexican cartels and U.S. drug cartels in moving money to the U.S.[468][469] While regulators have flagged money laundering problems at HSBC for nearly a decade, the bank continued to avoid compliance. On December 12, 2012, HSBC settled for a $1.93 billion fine.[470]
Drug demand
RAND studies released in the mid-1990s found that using drug user treatment to reduce drug consumption in the United States is seven times more cost-effective than law enforcement efforts alone, and it could potentially cut consumption by a third.[471]
In FY2011, the Obama administration requested approximately $5.6 billion to support demand reduction. This includes a 13% increase for prevention and almost a 4% increase for treatment. The overall FY2011 counter-drug request for supply reduction and domestic law enforcement is $15.5 billion, with $521.1 million in new funding.[472]
↑ Luis Astorga, Drug Trafficking in Mexico: A First General Assessment, Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Discussion Paper 36 (Paris: UNESCO, 1999).
↑ E. Eduardo Castillo, Mark Stevenson, María Verza and Christopher Sherman. AP staff. (15 July 2022). "Mexico captures infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero". SFGate websiteArchived 2022-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
↑ "Police Reform in Mexico: Informal Politics and the Challenge of Institutional Change". By Daniel Sabet. Stanford University Press, May 2, 2012 – Political Science – 296 pages. ISBN0804782067.
↑ "The Politics of Drug Violence: Criminals, Cops and Politicians in Colombia and Mexico". By Angelica Duran-Martinez. Oxford University Press, December 13, 2017 – Political Science – 320 pages.
1 2 Mexico's Drug War: A Rigged Fight?, John Burnett and Marisa Peñaloza, npr.org, 2010-05-18, with Bruce Livesey. Also with Robert Benincasa and Stephanie d'Otreppe. accessed May 18, 2010
↑ Grayson, George W. (August 2007). "Mexico and the Drug Cartels". Foreign Policy Research Institute. Archived from the original on July 10, 2010. Retrieved September 19, 2010.
↑ Chew Sánchez, M. I. (2014). "Paramilitarism and State-Terrorism in Mexico as a Case Study of Shrinking Functions of the Neoliberal State". Perspectives on Global Development & Technology.
↑ Chew Sánchez, Martha (2011). "Paramilitarism and State – Terrorism in Mexico as a Case Study of Shrinking Functions of the Neoliberal State". Perspectives on Global Development & Technology.
↑ Thompson, Barnard (May 21, 2010). "An Inside Look at Mexican Guns and Arms Trafficking". Mexidata.info. Archived from the original on November 25, 2010. Retrieved December 11, 2010. The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right to have arms in their domicile for their protection and legitimate defense
↑ "Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security"(PDF). Report to Congressional Requesters: Firearms Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges. United States Government Accountability Office. June 2009. p.77. GAO-09-709. Retrieved July 10, 2012.
↑ Creechan, James. "An overview of drug cartels in Mexico" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, November 1, 2006. May 24, 2009 Archived November 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
↑ Longmire, Sylvia. Cartel: The Coming Invasion Of Mexico's Drug Wars. 2011. ‘Mexican Cartels Infiltrating US Parks And Forests’ p. 162. Palgrave Macmillan ISBN978-0-230-11137-0
↑ Chew Sanchez, Martha (2014). "Paramilitarism and State -Terrorism in Mexico as a Case Study of Shrinking Functions of the Neoliberal State". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology.
↑ Bowden, C (2011). Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields. First Nation Books.
↑ Larie Freeman, Troubling Patterns: The Mexican Military and the War on Drugs (Washington, D.C.: Latin America Working Group, September 2002).
↑ Human Rights Watch, Military Injustice: Mexico's Failure to Punish Army Abuses (New York: Human Rights Watch, December 2001).
↑ Reuters, "Peasants in Rural Mexico Claim Army Brutality," November 17, 2003.
↑ Government of Mexico, Recomendación 12/2002 a la Procuraduria General de la Republica sobre el caso del homicidio del señor Guillermo Velez Mendoza (Mexico City: National Human Rights Commission, May 14, 2002).
↑ "Crime-torn Mexican 'FBI' Investigates 1,500 Agents," Reuters, December 4, 2005; Tim Gaynor and Monica Medel, "Drug Gangs Corrupt Mexico's Elite 'FBI,'" Reuters, December 6, 2005; and, Laurie Freeman, State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico, Washington Office on Latin America, June 2006.
↑ Government of Mexico, Estadisticas judiciales en Materia Penal, Cuaderno No. 10 (Mexico City: Instituto nacional de Estadistica, Geografia, e Informatica, 2003), Chart 2.6.2, p. 478.
↑ La Jornada, "Admite el Pentagono que Adiestro a 6 Militares Mexicanos Violadores de Derechos Humanos," June 28, 1998.
↑ Hayashi, Kanna; Ti, Lianping; Buxton, Jane A.; Kaplan, Karyn; Suwannawong, Paisan; Kerr, Thomas (June 25, 2013). "The Effect of Exposures to Policing on Syringe Sharing Among People Who Inject Drugs in Bangkok, Thailand". AIDS and Behavior. 17 (8): 2615–2623. doi:10.1007/s10461-013-0543-8. ISSN1090-7165. PMID23797832. S2CID42197259.
↑ Leggiere, Phil (May 25, 2009). "Guatemala on the brink?". Homeland Security Insight nd Analysis. Archived from the original on May 30, 2009. Retrieved May 26, 2009.
↑ United States Joint Forces Command, ed. (December 2008). "The Joint Operating Environment"(PDF). Challenges and implications for the future Joint Force. Norfolk, VA: The Joint Operating Environment. pp.38, 40. Archived from the original(PDF) on March 4, 2009. Retrieved March 3, 2009.
↑ White, Jonathan R. (2011). Terrorism & Homeland Security (7thed.). Cengage Learning. pp.98–100.
↑ Walker, Samuel (2010). Sense and Nonsense about Crime, Drugs, and Communities (7thed.). Cengage Learning. pp.313–314.
↑ Grayson, George W. (2010). Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?. Transaction Publishers. p.4.
↑ Gibler, John (2011). To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War. City Lights Books. p.190.
Borderland Beat Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels on the border between the US and Mexico
Bowers, Charles (2009). "The Mexican Kidnapping Industry". Archived from the original on February 23, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2009. An academic paper examining both the emergence of kidnapping as a drug war spillover, and statewide variance in Mexico's kidnapping statutes.
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Mexicoportal 
