The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking 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 thwart its popularity.
The Tijuana Cartel or Arellano-Félix-Cartel is a Mexican drug cartel based in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Founded by the Arellano-Félix family, the cartel once was described as "one of the biggest and most violent criminal groups in Mexico". However, since the 2006 Sinaloa Cartel incursion in Baja California and the fall of the Arellano-Félix brothers, the Tijuana Cartel has been reduced to a few cells. In 2016, the organization became known as Cartel Tijuana Nueva Generación and began to align itself under the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, along with Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) to create an anti-Sinaloa alliance, in which the Jalisco New Generation Cartel heads. This alliance has since dwindled as the Tijuana, Jalisco New Generation, and Sinaloa cartels all now battle each other for trafficking influence in the city of Tijuana and the region of Baja California.
The Medellín Cartel was a powerful and highly organized Colombian drug cartel and terrorist organization originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. It is often considered the first major "drug cartel" and was referred to as such due to the organization's upper echelons being built on a partnership between multiple Colombian traffickers operating alongside Escobar. Included were Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, Juan David Ochoa Vásquez, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Carlos Lehder. The cartel operated from 1967 to 1993 in Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Although the organization started out as a smuggling network in the late 1960s, it wasn't until 1975 that the organization turned to trafficking cocaine. At the height of its operations, the Medellín Cartel smuggled multiple tons of cocaine each week into countries around the world and brought in up to US$60 million daily in drug profits.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes was a Mexican drug lord who seized control of the Juárez Cartel after assassinating his boss Rafael Aguilar Guajardo. Amado Carrillo became known as "El Señor de Los Cielos", because of the large fleet of jets he used to transport drugs. He was also known for laundering money via Colombia, to finance this fleet.
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
Crime is one of the most urgent concerns facing Mexico, as Mexican drug trafficking rings play a major role in the flow of cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, and marijuana transiting between Latin America and the United States. Drug trafficking has led to corruption, which has had a deleterious effect on Mexico's Federal Representative Republic. Drug trafficking and organized crime have been a major source of violent crime in Mexico. Drug cartels and gangs have also branched out to conduct alternative illegal activities for profit, including sex trafficking in Mexico. Some of the most increasingly violent states in Mexico in 2020 included Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Michoacán, Jalisco, and Querétaro. Some of the world's most violent cities are reportedly within the state of Guanajuato with extortion from criminal groups now being commonplace. The state of Zacatecas is said to be valuable to multiple organized crime groups for drug trafficking, specifically methamphetamine to the United States. As of 2021, Michoacán is experiencing increased instances of extortion and kidnapping due to a growing presence and escalation in the armed conflicts between CJNG and Cárteles Unidos on regions bordering the neighboring state of Jalisco. CJNG is also currently battling the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel in the North Mexican region of Sonora.
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.
The Mexican drug war is the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the U.S. federal government, an ongoing asymmetric low-intensity conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military began to intervene 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 demand along with U.S. functionaries.
Marc David Gonsalves is an American Northrop Grumman employee who was abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and was held hostage from February 13, 2003, to July 2, 2008. He was rescued in Operation Jaque, along with the two other American contractors, Ingrid Betancourt, and eleven members of the Colombian security forces. On March 12, 2009, Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes were each awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom.
The Mérida Initiative is a security cooperation agreement among the United States, the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the declared aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational organized crime and money laundering. The assistance includes training, equipment and intelligence.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Zambada Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. It was established in Mexico during the late 1980s as one of a various number of subordinate “plazas" operating under a predecessor organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel. It is currently headed by Ismael Zambada García and is based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in many world regions but primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. It also has a notable presence in a number of other regions in Latin America, such as Colombia; as well as in cities across the U.S. The United States Intelligence Community generally considers the Sinaloa Cartel to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world, making it perhaps even more influential and capable than Pablo Escobar’s infamous Medellín Cartel of Colombia was during its prime. It is also frequently referred to by other non-government based media sources as one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in the world and indisputably the most powerful in Mexico. During the leadership of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García, the multi-billion dollar international drug trafficking empire supposedly controlled at least 91% of the world's heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana trade, regularly exporting multi-ton shipments of narcotics to the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The organization has also been known to utilize narcosubmarines, boats, ships, trains, helicopters, and cargo planes for their smuggling operations. The Drug Enforcement Administration considers them to be "the biggest, most powerful drug cartel of all time".
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.
Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, commonly referred to by his alias Z-40, is a Mexican former drug lord and leader of the criminal organization known as Los Zetas. Considered a violent, resentful and dangerous criminal, he was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords until his arrest in July 2013.
Joint Operation Nuevo León-Tamaulipas is an anti-drug joint operation in two Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León by Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. The objective of the joint operation is to eliminate Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel operations in the area. So far, many cartel members have been either killed or arrested. Recently Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel have broken relations and started fighting each other.
The illegal drug trade in Latin America concerns primarily the production and sale of cocaine and cannabis, including the export of these banned substances to the United States and Europe. The coca cultivation is concentrated in the Andes of South America, particularly in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; this is the world's only source region for coca.
Gunwalking, or "letting guns walk", was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office and the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them". These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as Operation Fast and Furious after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club.
Jaime Jorge Zapata was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent who was ambushed and murdered by the Mexican criminal group Los Zetas in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He was one of two agents who were ambushed in a part of the country that was increasingly under the influence of drug violence. Zapata's death was the second highest-profile killing of a U.S. agent in Mexico—the first one was Enrique Camarena, an undercover DEA agent who was tortured and murdered by the former Guadalajara Cartel.
During the ongoing Mexican drug war, drug cartels use propaganda through media and scare tactics to gain more control of its people and in many cases corrupting the government. The main goals are to glorify actions of the drug cartels and their lifestyle, gain control of the Mexican society to the highest extent possible, and to recruit new, educated, high-class members to increase their power even further. These drug cartels' use of propaganda and scare tactics are used in precise, complex, and clever ways to get the most out of every action, resulting in their enormous power.
A dirtbox is a cell site simulator, a phone device mimicking a cell phone tower, that creates a signal strong enough to cause nearby dormant mobile phones to switch to it. Mounted on aircraft, it is used by the United States Marshals Service to locate and collect information from cell phones believed to be connected with criminal activity. It can also be used to jam phones. The device's name comes from the company that developed it, Digital Receiver Technology, Inc. (DRT), owned by the Boeing company. Boeing describes the device as a hybrid of "jamming, managed access and detection". A similar device with a smaller range, the controversial StingRay phone tracker, has been widely used by U.S. federal entities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Operation Coyote was a United States Department of Homeland Security 90-day effort to track and seize revenue generated by Mexican cartels in the human smuggling trade along the Mexico–United States border.
