The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally, and it remains very difficult for local authorities to reduce the rates of drug consumption.
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.
Los Zetas is a Mexican criminal syndicate, known as one of the most dangerous of Mexico's drug cartels. They are known for engaging in brutally violent "shock and awe" tactics such as beheadings, torture, and indiscriminate murder. While primarily concerned with drug trafficking, the organization also ran profitable sex and gun rackets. Los Zetas also operated through protection rackets, assassinations, extortion, kidnappings and other illegal activities. The organization was based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Laredo, Texas. The origins of Los Zetas date back to the late 1990s, when commandos of the Mexican Army deserted their ranks and began working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. In February 2010, Los Zetas broke away and formed their own criminal organization, rivalling the Gulf Cartel.
The Gulf Cartel is a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in Mexico, and perhaps one of the oldest organized crime groups in the country. It is currently based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, directly across the U.S. border from Brownsville, Texas.
The Juárez Cartel, also known as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization, is a Mexican drug cartel based in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, across the Mexico—U.S. border from El Paso, Texas. The cartel is one of several drug trafficking organizations that have been known to decapitate their rivals, mutilate their corpses and dump them in public places to instill fear not only in the general public but also in local law enforcement and their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel. Its current known leader is Juan Pablo Ledezma. The Juárez Cartel has an armed wing known as La Línea, a Juárez street gang that usually performs the executions and is now the cartel’s most powerful and leading faction. It also uses the Barrio Azteca gang to attack its enemies.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, commonly referred to by his aliases El Jefe de Jefes and El Padrino, is a convicted Mexican drug kingpin who was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in the 1980s.
The Guadalajara Cartel, also known as The Federation, was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in the late 1970s 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.
Scarface: Money. Power. Respect. is a video game for the PlayStation Portable and Windows Mobile released in October 2006, based on the 1983 film starring Al Pacino.
J. Jesús Blancornelas was a Mexican journalist who co-founded the Tijuana-based Zeta magazine, known for its reporting on corruption and drug trafficking. His work encompassed an extensive research on how the drug industry influences local leaders and the police in the Mexican state of Baja California – topics frequently avoided by the rest of the Mexican media.
The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
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.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the Guzmán-Loera Organization, the Federation, the Blood Alliance, or the Pacific Cartel, is a large, transnational organized crime syndicate based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering.
Los Negros was a criminal organization that was once the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel and after a switch of alliances, became the armed wing of the Sinaloa splinter gang, the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. In 2010 it went independent and had been contesting the control of the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. It was then the criminal paramilitary unit of Édgar Valdez Villarreal in Mexico. Valdez was arrested on August 30, 2010, near Mexico City. Los Negros was led by Valdez at the time they merged with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Operation Michoacán is a joint operation by Federal Police and the Mexican military to eliminate drug plantations and to combat drug trafficking. Initiated on December 11, 2006, the operation was supervised by The Secretary of Public Safety, Attorney General of Mexico, Secretary of the Interior, Mexican Navy and Mexican Army.
Juan Nepomuceno Guerra Cárdenas was a Mexican drug lord who founded and led the Gulf Cartel for over 50 years. He is often considered the "godfather" of U.S–Mexico border cartels.
The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
Newsgames are a genre of video games that attempt to apply journalistic principles to their gameplay. Newsgames can provide context to complex situations which might be hard to explain without experiencing the situation firsthand. According to newsgame developers Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer, newsgames are a "body of work produced at the intersection of video games and journalism." Journalists use newsgames to expand on stories so the audience can learn more about the information in an immersive way.
A narco tank, also called rhino trucks or monstruos, is a type of improvised fighting vehicle used by drug cartels. The vehicles are primarily civilian trucks with improvised vehicle armour, which adds operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities when fighting law enforcement or rivals during drug trafficking activities.
El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency is a non-fiction book of the Mexican drug war written by Ioan Grillo. In El Narco, Grillo takes a close look at the Mexican drug trade, starting with the term "El Narco", which has come to represent the vast, faceless criminal network of drug traffickers who cast a murderous shadow over Mexico. The book covers the frontline of the Mexican drug war. It seeks to trace the origins of the illegal drug trade in Mexico, the recent escalation of violence, the human cost of the drug trade and organized crime in the country. The book takes a critical stance on the unsuccessful efforts made by the Mexican government and the United States to confront the violence and its causes.
Narcos: Mexico is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro that premiered on Netflix on November 16, 2018. It was originally intended to be the fourth season of the Netflix series Narcos, but it was ultimately developed as a companion series. It focuses on the development of Mexico's illegal drug trade, whereas the parent series centered on the establishment of Colombia's illegal drug trade. The series' second season premiered on February 13, 2020. On October 28, 2020, Netflix renewed the series for a third and final season but announced that actor Diego Luna would not be returning to reprise his role as Félix Gallardo. The third and final season premiered on November 5, 2021.
