11/8/2018
MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS:
The Evolution of Violence
Executive Summary
Stratfor's 2006 report on Mexican drug cartels offered a grim assessment, with an even grimmer outlook for the future -- and in 2007, the deterioration of the security situation in Mexico has continued apace.
The primary reason for the increasing violence is an ongoing turf war between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels, Sinaloa and Gulf. This brutal battle has brought operatives from rival cartels into each other's territory in efforts to take over lucrative "plazas" --cities or areas used as drug transshipment points, run by cartel "gatekeepers." This cartel war has included the daily kidnapping and murder of cartel members and of police and government officials who have been paid off by rival cartels, or who have refused to accept bribes. Rumors of a cease-fire, coupled with a momentary lull in the violence this summer, suggested that Sinaloa and Gulf had agreed to a truce, but the violence soon flared again.
The Gulf cartel has proven to be one of the most powerful in Mexico during 2007. It controls much of the import and distribution of cocaine, heroin and other drugs to the eastern United States from its plazas on the Texas/Mexico border. However, it faces significant challenges following the extradition of its leader and the loss of other high-ranking personnel. Some U.S. law enforcement officials estimate that the Gulf cartel has less than two years left.
Gulf's rival, the Sinaloa Federation, controls a vast swath of territory in western and central Mexico; however, several central areas that it formerly controlled are now under dispute with Gulf. The Federation includes a number of smaller organizations that work together. Two other cartels, Tijuana and Juarez, are independent of Sinaloa and Gulf, but neither commands the vast territory and resources of the two majors.
Cartel tactics are brutal, and have included beheading, dismemberment, torture, burning of victims and killing of family members. Widespread police corruption and the deteriorating security situation have led to a further breakdown of law and order in many parts of Mexico, so that other criminal groups have been able to operate almost freely. Human trafficking and weapons smuggling networks are examples of this problem. Investigations of these criminal enterprises inevitably lead back to the powerful drug trafficking organizations.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon surprised many when he deployed nearly 30,000 troops in the country after taking office on Dec. 1, 2006. The heightened security presence and the unpredictability of police raids resulted in high-speed chases and gunfights in urban areas. Uninvolved civilians were accidentally shot and killed by stray bullets in some of these incidents. However, despite the government's efforts, it remains clear that the cartels, not the authorities, control the level of violence in the country.
The deteriorating security situation has profound implications not only for Mexico, but for the United States as well, as drug violence increasingly crosses the border. Calderon has committed Mexico City to greater cooperation with the United States, but there are very few arrestors in place to keep cartel violence from spreading across the border. For the time being, U.S. law enforcement efforts must deal with poor coordination, corruption and lack of resources to combat the cartels -- which are organized, wealthy, and not afraid of the authorities.
Introduction
Stratfor's 2006 report on Mexican drug cartels offered a grim assessment, with an even grimmer outlook for the future. The more than 2,100 drug-related killings in Mexico in 2006 far surpassed the 2005 total of 1,543, while fundamental problems with Mexico's security situation appeared to limit the government's capacity to respond to the growing violence.
In 2007, the deterioration of the security situation in Mexico has continued apace, despite the best efforts of President Felipe Calderon's new government. The deaths from drug violence across Mexico -- already estimated at more than 2,100 since Jan 1, 2007 -- will certainly make this year the deadliest yet.
The primary reason for the increasing violence in Mexico is an ongoing turf war between the country's two most powerful drug cartels, Sinaloa and Gulf. This brutal battle has brought operatives from rival cartels into each other's territory in efforts to take over lucrative "plazas" --cities or areas used as drug transshipment points, run by a cartel "gatekeeper." This cartel war has included the daily kidnapping and murder of cartel members and of police and government officials who have been paid off by rival cartels, or who have refused to accept bribes.
In order to understand the violence that increasingly is overtaking Mexico (and spreading northward into the United States), it is essential to take an in-depth look at the cartels' battle for control of key drug-trafficking territories, the major players who are fighting for supremacy, and the challenges facing authorities trying to impose order on the chaos.
Tracking the Traffic: Drug Routes
Several things are critical for the cartels’ drug-trafficking operations. Control of points along the U.S. border on or near major road networks are essential for a cartel. Known as "plazas," these are points through which drugs flow north into the United States, and cash and weapons flow south into Mexico. The cartels entrust each of these plazas to a "gatekeeper": a high-level cartel member who oversees the cartel’s operations in the plaza, ensuring that the contraband gets through and that proceeds from drug sales, extortion, weapons, and other contraband get to the cartel.
Also of critical importance to the cartels are the entry points where the drugs (usually cocaine) are brought into Mexico. Control of these entry points -- ports along Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts, and the country’s border with Guatemala -- is necessary to ensure that contraband acquired by the cartel from abroad gets to market. Gatekeepers are also responsible for protecting a cartel’s interests in these intake points.
The transport routes from the intake points to the plazas must also be secured. This requires that the cartel have the ability to exercise some level of control along the routes, which can stretch for hundreds of miles. Occasionally these shipments are intercepted and seized by security forces, but most shipments are moved within territory under the control of the traffickers, where complicit local authorities help ensure the safety of the shipment.
Transporting drugs across the U.S. border generally requires much greater security than moving them through Mexico. In the absence of a corrupt border official to wave a shipment through, traffickers routinely conceal drug shipments among legitimate goods to be moved across the border. The list of techniques is long, but common practices include disguising marijuana among produce, or hiding cocaine, crystal methamphetamine (meth) or heroin in secret compartments of large vehicles.
Often, traffickers choose to circumvent controlled border-entry points and instead establish their own. Perhaps the simplest approach is to knock down a section of the border fence and drive a truck across, or unload the shipment from one truck into another. More sophisticated methods involve digging tunnels to be used for transporting shipments. Many tunnels make use of existing infrastructure such as sewers or storm drains to extend the network, while others are dug to connect buildings on either side of the border. A significant number of these tunnels have been discovered between San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Baja California, with many others found in Nogales and Douglas, Arizona.
Drugs are also frequently moved by air and sea, especially on routes leading to Mexico from South America. Maritime shipments have been discovered on board legitimate ships, as well as on dedicated trafficking boats. Some cartels have become known for using "submarines," though in reality these vessels are technically only capable of submersing to just along the waterline, which reduces their radar signature and makes them much more difficult to track. Airplanes have also proven useful to drug traffickers, and small single-engine planes are commonly used for moving drug cargo around Mexico. Cartel air fleets are not limited to small planes, as evidenced by the crash in September of a 21-seat Gulfstream II jet in Yucatan state, loaded with more than three tons of cocaine.
The Major Cartels
The cartels are complex and compartmentalized entities that operate a variety of criminal enterprises, and each organization has a core territory in which it does its business. The most powerful are the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, followed by the Tijuana and Juarez organizations.Some of the smaller cartels work sporadically with the larger outfits, while others have been co-opted completely by the major cartels.
Gulf Cartel
Concentrated primarily in northeast Mexico along the Texas border, the Gulf cartel has its headquarters in the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. The cartel's main area of influence includes the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, and much of the Yucatan Peninsula. Gulf's control of these areas facilitates its movement of drugs from South America to the United States, from ports such as Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula, along the Gulf of Mexico, and into Texas. An increase in 2007 in the smuggling of Cubans into Mexico through Cancun (which is in Gulf territory) has led to questions about Gulf involvement in human smuggling in the Yucatan. The strategic importance of the peninsula's ports suggests that a Gulf gatekeeper would have the area under firm control, making it difficult for other criminal groups to operate without Gulf permission.
The Gulf cartel also has an extensive operational history in the United States. Although at one point the cartel had cells established in cities as far north as Chicago, its networks in Texas have been far more extensive. Its presence is strongest in cities along the Mexican border. A former member of Los Zetas -- the cartel's paramilitary enforcement group -- testified in a U.S. court in 2007 that he had belonged to one of several Zeta cells active in Laredo, Texas, and that he had knowledge of additional cells that operated in other parts of the state. Given Gulf's complete and long-established control of border plazas, the cartel almost certainly has far-reaching support networks to facilitate its smuggling activities. Gulf controls much of the import and distribution of cocaine, heroin and other drugs to the eastern United States from its plazas on the Texas/Mexico border. The July arrest of Gulf cartel gatekeeper Carlos Landin Martinez in Texas highlights the extent to which the cartel members feel comfortable operating on the U.S. side of the border: Landin was arrested while shopping at a supermarket in McAllen, when a U.S. counternarcotics agent who was also shopping there happened to spot him and call for assistance in making the arrest.
The Gulf cartel has proven to be one of the most powerful in Mexico during 2007, though it faces significant challenges for the future. The extradition of Gulf leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen to the United States in January intensified an internal struggle for control of the organization. Cardenas had been in Mexican maximum-security prisons since he was captured by Mexican authorities in 2003, but all indications are that he was able to retain connections with his lieutenants on the outside due to security failings of the correctional institutions that housed him. However, his transfer to U.S. federal custody effectively terminated his ability to control the organization.
After Osiel Cardenas Guillen's 2003 arrest, control of the cartel briefly passed to Osiel's brother, Antonio Ezequiel "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas Guillen, previously believed to be responsible for the Matamoros-Brownsville plaza. Antonio's management was considered less than efficient, and he did not keep control of the organization for long. An April investigation by Mexican federal police revealed that he had plans to establish himself in Queretaro state, and had already acquired an apartment there that was in the process of being furnished for his arrival. However, after he became aware of the police investigation, he abandoned his plan to move to Queretaro and remains in a senior leadership position in the organization.
Since the Calderon government began an intense anti-cartel effort in December 2006, the Gulf cartel has been taking the most hits, with several mid-level lieutenants arrested and/or extradited. Given the attrition among its upper ranks, some U.S. law enforcement officials estimate that the Gulf cartel has less than two years left.
It remains to be seen how the Gulf cartel (and its rivals) will respond to its continued loss of members. One possibility is that the capture of high-ranking Gulf members will result in an overall decline in the cartel's power, allowing other organizations to extend their reachslowly. It is unlikely that Gulf will disappear from the scene completely, but the organization could split into two or even three groups, and other groups could come in to take over lost territory. (The Juarez cartel met a similar fate following the death of its leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997. Juarez had previously been the most important cartel in Mexico, and it never fully recovered after Carrillo Fuentes' death.)
It is unclear exactly who maintains control over the Gulf cartel currently, though the name most often mentioned by U.S. and Mexican law enforcement is Jorge Eduardo "El Coss" Costilla Sanchez. Costilla Sanchez is wanted by the United States for drug trafficking, as well as for a 1999 incident in Matamoros when he and about 15 of his henchmen surrounded two U.S. federal agents and threatened them at gunpoint. The U.S. government has placed a $5 million bounty on Costilla Sanchez’s head. As the highest-ranking Gulf member, he also is theoretically in charge of Los Zetas, though it is unclear how much influence he actually has over them.
It is likely that the Zetas are more directly controlled by Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano. Known also by his Zeta number, Z-3, Lazcano is a former Mexican special forces solider believed to be operating primarily in Matamoros. For his personal security detail, Lazcano reportedly relies on Kaibiles -- deserters from the Guatemalan Special Forces who have been used extensively as hired guns for the Gulf cartel.
Several other important changes have occurred in Gulf's gatekeeper assignments in the past year. Rumors that Gregorio "El Goyo" Gamboa Sanchez -- the gatekeeper for Reynosa, Tamaulipas state -- had been killed in a firefight were not true, though U.S. counterterrorism sources confirmed that he had been removed from his gatekeeper position due to a medical condition, most likely cancer. Another border gatekeeper, Miguel Trevino Morales, was also removed from his assignment in Nuevo Laredo, though he was reassigned to another plaza. It is believed that he is now responsible for Pacific ports in Michoacan and Colima states.
Sinaloa Cartel
Sinaloa territory extends south from the Mexico-Arizona border through Sonora, Sinaloa and Nayarit states. The cartel has previously maintained control over plazas in Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero states, but many of those areas are currently under dispute with the Gulf cartel, Sinaloa's main rival. Its most important plazas on the U.S. border are the Arizona border towns of Douglas and Nogales.
The Sinaloa cartel that exists today is the result of mergers and alliances with a number of smaller drug-trafficking organizations. In an alliance often referred to as the Federation or the Golden Triangle, Sinaloa leads a group of cartels that extend their coverage over much of Mexico. The Federation is run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera. Guzman Loera has been arrested several times, but managed to escape each time, and remains at large. In one prison break, more than 30 prison guards and the warden were implicated in assisting with his escape.
The most significant cartels aligned with Sinaloa are the Zambada Garcia organization and the Esparragoza organization -- led, respectively, by Ismael Zambada Garcia and Juan Jose "El Azul" Esparragoza Moreno, both of whom are former high-ranking Juarez cartel members.