Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations:
Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
June S. Beittel
Analyst in Latin American Affairs
September 7, 2011
Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
R41576
CRS Report for Congress
Pr
epared for Members and Committees of Congress
Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
Summary
The violence generated by Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in recent years has
been unprecedented. In 2006, Mexico’s newly elected President Felipe Calderón launched an
aggressive campaign against the DTOs—an initiative that has defined his administration—that
has been met with a violent response from the DTOs. Government enforcement efforts have
successfully removed some of the key leaders in all of the seven major DTOs, either through
arrests or deaths in operations to detain them. However, these efforts have led to succession
struggles within the DTOs themselves that generated more violence. According to the Mexican
government’s estimate, organized crime-related violence claimed more than 34,500 lives between
January 2007 and December 2010. By conservative estimates, there have been an additional
8,000 homicides in 2011 increasing the number of deaths related to organized crime to over
40,000 since President Calderón came to office in late 2006.
Although violence has been an inherent feature of the trade in illicit drugs, the character of the
drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico has been increasingly brutal. In 2010, several
politicians were murdered, including a leading gubernatorial candidate in Tamaulipas and 14
mayors. At least 10 journalists were killed last year and five more were murdered through July
2011. Mass killings including widely reported massacres of young people and migrants, the use
of torture, and the phenomena of car bombs have led some analysts to question whether the
violence has been transformed into something new, requiring a different set of policy responses.
The DTOs have also fragmented and increasingly diversified into other criminal activities, now
posing a multi-faceted organized criminal challenge to governance in Mexico.
U.S. citizens have also been victims of the security crisis in Mexico. In March 2010, three
individuals connected to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, two of them U.S. citizens, were
killed by a gang working for one of the major DTOs operating in that city. In February 2011, two
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were shot, one fatally, allegedly by Los
Zetas, one of Mexico’s most violent DTOs. In the U.S. Congress, these events have raised
concerns about the stability of a strategic partner and neighbor. Congress is also concerned about
the possibility of “spillover” violence along the U.S. border and further inland. The 112th
Congress has held several hearings on DTO violence, the efforts by the Calderón government to
address the situation, and implications of the violence for the United States. Members have
maintained close oversight of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and related bilateral issues.
This report provides background on drug trafficking in Mexico, identifies the major drug
trafficking organizations, and analyzes the context, scope, and scale of the violence. It examines
current trends of the violence, analyzes prospects for curbing violence in the future, and compares
it with violence in Colombia. For background on U.S. policy responses to the violence in Mexico
and information on bilateral cooperation between the United States and Mexico see CRS Report
R41349, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond . For a
discussion of the problem of violence “spilling over” into the United States, see CRS Report
R41075, Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence. For
general background on Mexico, see CRS Report RL32724, Mexico: Issues for Congress.
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Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 1
Background on Drug Trafficking in Mexico ................................................................................... 4
Mexico’s Major Drug Trafficking Organizations ............................................................................ 7
DTO Fragmentation, Competition, and Diversification .......................................................... 14
Characteristics of the Increased Violence ...................................................................................... 16
Casualty Estimates................................................................................................................... 18
Locations of the Violence and Its Impact on Business ............................................................ 19
Mexico’s Antidrug Strategy and Reaction .................................................................................... 23
Trends and Outlook........................................................................................................................ 26
Figures
Figure 1. Map of DTO Areas of Dominant Influence in Mexico .................................................. 10
Figure 2. Drug Trafficking-Related Killings in Mexico by State (2007-2010) ............................ 22
Appendixes
Appendix. Comparing Mexico and Colombia............................................................................... 32
Contacts
Author Contact Information........................................................................................................... 34
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Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
Introduction
The brutal and growing drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico—beheadings, public hanging
of corpses, killing of innocent bystanders including children, car bombs, torture, and assassination
of numerous government officials—has drawn the attention of U.S. lawmakers. In 2010, the
violence spread and became more brazen. Several political assassinations took place around the
July municipal and state elections. On June 28, 2010, Tamaulipas gubernatorial candidate
Rodolfo Torre Cantú of the PRI party was killed, the highest level political assassination in 15
years, allegedly by the drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).1 During the year, 14 mayors, most
from small towns, were killed. Little is known about the rationale for these homicides. One
interpretation is that some of these mayors were refusing to cooperate with the DTOs. However,
they could also be victims of inter-DTO rivalries.
There have also been highly publicized attacks on drug rehabilitation centers, private parties
(often with teenagers killed), the deadly firebombing of a casino in Monterrey, and a steady attack
on Mexico’s journalists. In September 2010, the leading newspaper in Ciudad Juárez published an
editorial to seek a truce with the DTOs it identified as the “de facto authorities” in the city.2 In
late August 2010, 72 Central and South American migrants passing through Mexico were found
massacred in Tamaulipas. According to a survivor, Los Zetas attempted to recruit the migrants to
assist in moving drugs and killed them when they refused. The Zetas are reported to be
significantly involved in human smuggling.3 In 2011, the DTOs recruitment of children became
another prominent concern, with estimates of the number of under-18 minors recruited since
December 2006 ranging from 23,000-30,000,4 the arrest of child assassins, and reports that over
1,000 children have been killed in the fighting since Calderón came to office. From March
through May 2011, mass graves were discovered in Durango and Tamaulipas adding to the death
toll linked to the DTOs in those states.
The 111th Congress held more than 20 hearings dealing with the violence in Mexico, U.S. foreign
assistance, and border security issues. Congressional concern has heightened since the March
2010 killing of three individuals connected to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and
the murder of Jaime Zapata, a U.S. ICE agent, on February 15, 2011. Following the explosion of
a car bomb in July 2010 that was allegedly planted by a drug trafficking organization in Ciudad
1 While the term “cartel” was commonly applied to Colombian and Mexican organizations and is used frequently in the
press, this report favors the use of the term “drug trafficking organizations.” In an earlier era, when some government
officials helped to organize the business through explicit and implicit arrangements demarking drug syndicate
territories and plazas as well as rules of game, this economic term may have made more sense. Today’s Mexican DTOs
are not necessarily engaged in price-fixing and other forms of collusive economic activity ascribed to cartels.
2 Following the murder of a second journalist on the staff at El Diario newspaper in Ciudad Juárez, the editor published
a plea to the DTOs to consider a truce after asking openly “what do you want of us?” in an editorial September 19,
2010. The Mexican government condemned the idea of a truce, although the editorial was published because the paper
said that the authorities could not guarantee the safety of their colleagues.
3 Sofia Miselem, "Migrant Massacre Challenges Mexico Anti-Crime Strategy," Agence France Presse, August 31,
2010; "Drug Cartel Suspected in 72 Migrants' Deaths," NPR: Morning Edition, August 26, 2010; Tim Johnson,
“Violent Mexican Drug Gang, Zetas, Taking Control of Migrant Smuggling,” Miami Herald, August, 12, 2011.
4 “Trying to Gauge the Extent of ‘Collateral Damage,’” Latin America Security and Strategic Review, July 2011. One
source cited in this article is a Mexican NGO, the Red por los Derechos de la Infancia en México (Redim), which
submitted a report to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children that between 25,000-30,000 minors had been
recruited by the DTOs.
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Juárez (killing four), additional car bombs have been exploded in border states such as
Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. These acts and occasional use of grenades and rocket launchers
have raised widespread concern that some Mexican drug traffickers may be adopting insurgent or
terrorist techniques. Congress has expressed its concern over the escalating violence in various
resolutions and legislation. While deeply alarmed at the violence on the Mexican side of the
border, there is increasing concern about the possibility of “spillover” violence into U.S.
communities along the border and further inland.
Violence is an intrinsic feature of the trade in illicit drugs. As in other criminal endeavors,
violence is used by traffickers to settle disputes, and a credible threat of violence maintains
employee discipline and a semblance of order with suppliers, creditors, and buyers.5 This type of
drug trafficking-related violence has occurred routinely and intermittently in U.S. cities since the
early 1980s. The violence now associated with drug trafficking organizations in Mexico is of an
entirely different scale. In Mexico, the bloodletting is not only associated with resolving disputes
or maintaining discipline, but it is directed toward the government and the news media, and is not
bounded by traditional objectives of such violence.
In the first six months of 2011, Mexico experienced numerous four-week periods in which more
than 1,000 drug trafficking-related killings occurred.6 There is a debate on exactly how many
have perished, but the results of a nearly five-year campaign to take down the DTOs and move
the drug trade out of Mexico have not brought the violence under control. As violence continues
to escalate and reach more of Mexico’s territory, more observers and policy analysts are raising
concerns about the Mexican state’s stability. The U.S. government and the administration of
Mexican President Felipe Calderón strongly deny the so-called “failed state” thesis that was put
forward by some analysts in 2008 and 2009, which suggested that the Mexican government was
no longer exercising sovereignty in all areas of the country.7 However, in early August 2010,
when President Calderón initiated a series of meetings to open up public dialogue about his
counterdrug strategy, he described the violence perpetrated by the DTOs as “a challenge to the
state, an attempt to replace the state.”8 While some observers consider parts of Mexico lost to
DTO control, this is definitely not the case for most of the country.9
Since coming to office in December 2006, after winning the presidency with a very narrow
victory, President Calderón made an aggressive campaign against the DTOs the centerpiece of his
administration’s policy. He called the increased drug trafficking violence a threat to the Mexican
state and sent thousands of military troops and federal police to combat the DTOs in drug
5 Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter, Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Times, Vices and Places (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001); Kevin Jack Riley, Snow Job? The War Against International Cocaine Trafficking
(New Brunswick: Transactional Publishers, 1996).
6 Trans-border Institute (TBI), Justice in Mexico, August 2011 News Report. TBI cites data gathered by Reforma
newspaper which is described in more detail in section “Casualty Estimates.”
7 The potential for a rapid and sudden decline in Mexico because of the undermining influence of criminal gangs and
DTOs was widely debated. See, for example, United States Joint Forces Command, “The Joint Operating Environment
2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force,” December 2008.
8 President Calderón’s full statement at the security conference was, “This criminal behavior is what has changed, and
become a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state.” See Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, “Cartels
Thrive Despite Calderon’s Crackdown; Drug Gangs Have Expanded Their Power and Reach in both Mexico and the
United States,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2010.
9 William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” The New Yorker, May 31, 2010. Mexican crime expert, Edgardo Buscaglia,
argues that about one-third of Mexican municipalities are controlled by organized crime. See, “Point Person: Our Q &
A with Edgardo Buscaglia,” Dallas Morning News, April 9, 2010.
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trafficking “hot spots” throughout the country. The federal crackdown on the DTOs led by the
well-regarded Mexican military was met with violent resistance by the trafficking organizations.
At the same time, there have been some dramatic successes in capturing and arresting drug
leaders. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), more than 35 “high
value targets”—DTO leaders identified mutually by the U.S. and Mexican governments—have
been arrested or killed in operations to detain them between January 2010 and July 2011. The
pace of removing mid and high level DTO leaders has increased sharply during the Calderón
Administration.10 Communities that have experienced increases in drug trafficking-related
violence, such as Monterrey, have successfully called for troops of the Mexican army and marines
to be sent to protect them. Despite government efforts, President Calderón’s strategy has been
criticized for not reducing the violence while sharply increasing human rights violations by the
military, which is largely untrained in domestic policing.11 Drug-trafficking related homicides
doubled between 2007 and 2008 and continued to spiral higher through 2011. The president has
indicated that he does not foresee turning the drug war over to the Mexican police, and that he
expects to stay the course with a large military presence through the end of his term in 2012.
In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in remarks to the Council on Foreign
Relations, said that the violence by the DTOs in Mexico may be “morphing into or making
common cause with what we would call an insurgency.”12 This characterization was quickly
rejected by the Mexican government and revised by then- Assistant Secretary of State for Western
Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela, the Director of the White House’s Office of National Drug
Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske, and later reportedly by President Barack Obama.13 It became
clear that the Obama Administration generally rejects the term “insurgency” to describe the
violence of drug traffickers in Mexico and their objectives. However, many U.S. government
officials have concerns about the Mexican government’s capacity to lower the violence in Mexico
and control insurgent-like or terrorist tactics being employed by the DTOs.
In addition, the so-called kingpin strategy, of taking down top DTO leaders, which worked to
fragment and help destroy the Cali and Medellin organizations in Colombia in the 1990s, has not
been replicated as successfully in Mexico to date. Many analysts maintain that the
implementation of the kingpin strategy in Mexico has created more instability and, at least in the
near term, more violence.14 These analysts suggest that intense enforcement efforts against the
DTOs have increased fragmentation and upset whatever equilibrium the organizations are trying
to establish by their displays of violent power.15 As a result, the violence in Mexico is more
10 CRS interview with DEA officials on August 5, 2011.
11 See, for example, Amnesty International, Mexico: New Reports of Human Rights Violations by the Military, London,
December 2009.
12 “A Conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 8,
2010. Transcript available at
http://www.cfr.org/publication/22896/conversation_with_us_secretary_of_state_hillary_rodham_clinton.html.
13 Assistant Secretary of State Valenzuela and Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
Kerlikowske made remarks at the annual Conference on the Americas qualifying what Secretary of State Clinton had
said earlier in the day, September 8, 2010. President Obama reportedly negated the comparison of Mexico to Colombia
20 years ago in comments he made to the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion. The White House did not provide
an English translation of the remarks printed in La Opinion. See: "Mexico Drug War Not Comparable to Colombia:
Obama," Reuters, September 10, 2010, at http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6885TH20100910.
14 Shannon K. O’Neil, “Drug Cartel Fragmentation and Violence,” Council on Foreign Relations Blog, August 9, 2011.
15 Some studies have shown that violence tends to escalate after a government launches a major law enforcement
initiative against a DTO or other organized crime group. See, for example, International Centre for Science in Drug
Policy, Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review, 2010.
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extensive, more volatile, and less predictable. Moreover, the U.S. government continues to define
the Mexican DTOs as “the greatest organized crime threat” to the United States today.16
Background on Drug Trafficking in Mexico
Drug trafficking organizations have operated in Mexico for more than a century. The DTOs can
be described as global businesses with forward and backward linkages for supply and distribution
in many countries. As businesses, they are concerned with bringing their product to market in the
most efficient way in order to maximize their profits. The Mexican DTOs are the major
wholesalers of illegal drugs in the United States and increasingly are gaining control of U.S. retail
level distribution through alliances with U.S. gangs. Their operations, however, are markedly less
violent in the United States than in Mexico despite their known presence in more than 230 U.S.
cities.17 As illegal businesses that serve a high demand (including the vast drug demand of the
neighboring United States), the DTOs use the tools of bribery and violence, which are
complementary. Violence is used to discipline employees, enforce transactions, limit the entry of
competitors, and coerce. Bribery and corruption help neutralize government action against the
DTOs, ensure impunity, and facilitate smooth operations.
The cash generated by drug sales and smuggled back into Mexico is used in part to corrupt U.S.
and Mexican border officials18 and Mexican law enforcement, security forces, and public officials
to either ignore DTO activities or to actively support and protect them. Mexican DTOs advance
their operations through widespread corruption; when corruption fails to achieve cooperation and
acquiescence, violence is the ready alternative. Police corruption has been so extensive that law
enforcement officials working for the DTOs sometimes carry out their violent assignments.
Purges of municipal, state, and federal police have not contained the problem. The continuing
challenge of police corruption was illustrated in the August 2010 firing of 3,200 officers, about
10% of the 34,500-person federal force, by Mexico’s Federal Police Commissioner after they
failed basic integrity tests. Another 465 officers were to lose their jobs, including a police chief,
for failing to carry out their duties.19
Arrests of public officials accused of cooperating with the DTOs have not been followed by
convictions. For example in May 2009, federal authorities arrested 10 Mexican mayors and 18
other state and local officials in the president’s home state of Michoacán for alleged ties to drug
trafficking organizations. All but one individual were subsequently released because their cases
16 U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment,
December 2008 and 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment, February 2010. See also U.S. Department of State,
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), March 2010.
17 U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center, National Drug Threat Assessment, 2009. The NDTA,
2009, estimated that the Mexican DTOs maintain drug distribution networks in at least 230 U.S. cities and annually
transport multi-ton quantities of illicit drugs into the United States using a variety of modalities. The NDTA, 2010,
February 2010, states “Direct violence similar to the violence occurring among major DTOs in Mexico is rare in the
United States.” For a discussion of why the violence has not spread into the United States see CRS Report R41075,
Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence.
18 For further discussion of corruption of U.S. and Mexican officials charged with securing the border, see CRS Report
R41349, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond , by Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin
M. Finklea.
19 Economist Intelligence Unit, “Mexico Politics: Whither the War on Drugs?,” September 2, 2010.
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did not hold up in court.20 In 2011, the former mayor of the resort city Cancun, Gregorio “Greg”
Sanchez, was released 14 months after his arrest on drug trafficking and money laundering
charges when his case collapsed in federal court.21 Similarly, the former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge
Hank Rhon, was released less than two weeks after his arrest in June 2011 on weapons and
murder charges due to mistakes made in the arrest procedures.22 The corruption has taken place in
states and localities governed by each of the three major political parties in Mexico, indicating
that no party is immune.23
The relationship of Mexico’s drug traffickers to the government and to one another is now a
rapidly evolving picture and any current snapshot (such as the one provided in this report) must
be continually adjusted. In the early 20th century, Mexico was a source of marijuana and heroin to
the United States. In the 1940s, Mexican drug smugglers were already notorious in the United
States.24 The growth and entrenchment of Mexico’s drug trafficking networks occurred during a
period of one-party rule in Mexico by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which
governed for 71 years.25 During that period, the government was centralized and hierarchical,
and, to a large degree, it tolerated and protected some drug production and trafficking in certain
regions of the country, even though the PRI government did not generally tolerate crime.26
According to numerous accounts, for many years the Mexican government pursued an overall
policy of accommodation. Under this system, arrests and eradication of drug crops took place, but
due to the effects of widespread corruption the system was “characterized by a working
relationship between Mexican authorities and drug lords” through the 1990s.27
The stability of the system began to fray in the 1990s as Mexican political power decentralized
and the push toward democratic pluralism began first at the local level and then nationally with
the election of the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Vicente Fox as president in 2000.28 The
process of democratization upended the equilibrium that had developed between state actors
(such as the Federal Security Directorate that oversaw domestic security from 1947 to 1985) and
organized crime. No longer were certain officials able to ensure the impunity of drug traffickers
to the same degree and to regulate competition among Mexican DTOs for drug trafficking routes,
or plazas. To a large extent, the current anti-government DTO violence appears to be an attempt
to re-establish impunity while the inter-cartel violence seems to be attempts to re-establish
dominance over specific drug trafficking plazas. The intra-DTO violence (or violence inside the
organizations) reflects reaction to suspected betrayals and the competition to succeed killed or
arrested leaders.
20 David Luhnow, "Questions Over Tape Face Mexico Politician," Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2010. In the U.S.
Department of State’s 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report it identifies the arrest of 38 officials and
police in Michoacán in 2009, 37 of whom were released for lack of evidence.
21 Tracy Wilkinson, "Ex-Mayor of Cancun Released as Case Appears to Collapse," Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2011.
22 TBI, Justice in Mexico, June 2011 News Report.
23 Luis Astorga and David A. Shirk, Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican
Context, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Mexico Institute, Working Paper Series on U.S.-Mexico
Security Cooperation, April 2010, p. 11.
24 Ibid. p. 4.
25 For more on the political history of Mexico, see CRS Report RL32724, Mexico: Issues for Congress, by Clare
Ribando Seelke.
26 Astorga and Shirk, op. cit., p. 5.
27 Francisco E. Gonzalez, "Mexico's Drug Wars Get Brutal," Current History, February 2009.
28 Shannon O'Neil, "The Real War in Mexico: How Democracy Can Defeat the Drug Cartels," Foreign Affairs, vol. 88,
no. 4 (July/August 2009).
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Before this political development, an important transition in the role of Mexico in the
international drug trade took place during the 1980s and early 1990s. As Colombian DTOs were
forcibly broken up, the highly profitable traffic in cocaine to the United States was gradually
taken over by Mexican traffickers. The traditional trafficking route used by the Colombians
through the Caribbean was shut down by intense enforcement efforts of the U.S. government. As
Colombian DTOs lost this route, they increasingly subcontracted the trafficking of cocaine
produced in the Andean region to the Mexican DTOs, who they paid in cocaine rather than cash.
These already strong organizations gradually took over the cocaine trafficking business, evolving
from being mere couriers for the Colombians to being the wholesalers they are today. As
Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations rose to dominate the U.S. drug markets in the 1990s, the
business became even more lucrative. This “raised the stakes,” which encouraged the use of
violence in Mexico to protect and promote market share. The violent struggle between DTOs over
strategic routes and warehouses where drugs are consolidated before entering the United States
reflects these higher stakes.
Today the major Mexican DTOs are polydrug, handling more than one type of drug although they
may specialize in the production or trafficking of specific products. Mexico is a major producer
and supplier to the U.S. market of heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana and the principal
transit country for more than 95% of the cocaine sold in the United States.29 The west coast state
of Sinaloa (See Figure 1), which has a long coastline and difficult-to-access areas favorable for
drug cultivation, is the heartland of Mexico’s drug trade. Marijuana and poppy cultivation has
flourished in this state for decades.30 It has been the source of Mexico’s most notorious and
successful drug traffickers.
According to the U.S State Department’s 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,
Mexico’s production of marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine is rapidly growing. Between
2008 and 2009, marijuana cultivation grew by 45% to 17,500 hectares.31 Cultivation of poppies
from which heroin is derived has sharply increased over the past four years. The U.S. government
estimated that Mexico produced 19,500 hectares of poppy in 2009, surpassing Burma as the
second largest cultivator of poppy in the world. 32 Production of methamphetamine is also
believed to be climbing, suggested by the number of laboratories that were destroyed by the
Mexican authorities in 2009 (three times greater than the year before).33 In the United States, the
availability of cocaine declined in 2009, which some authorities have attributed in part to an
increase in law enforcement efforts in both Mexico and the United States. Coca production in
29 U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), March 2011.
30 The region where Sinaloa comes together with the states of Chihuahua and Durango is a drug-growing area
sometimes called Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” after the productive area of Southeast Asia by the same name. In this
region, a third of the population is estimated to make their living from the illicit drug trade. See Tim Johnson, “For
Mexican Cartels, Marijuana is Still Gold,” San Jose Mercury News, September 5, 2010.
31 U.S. Department of State, INCSR 2011.
32 U.S. Department of State, INCSR 2011. The report states notes “While opium poppy cultivation in Mexico is very
sparse in comparison to the densities estimated in Burma and Afghanistan, Mexico’s share of global poppy production
has been increasing in recent years.” Mexico only produces 7% of the world’s supply of heroin, but is the major
supplier of heroin to the United States. In addition, some authorities in Mexico question the size of the poppy
cultivation estimates of the U.S. government and the United Nations. See Steven Dudley, “Raw Feed: Making Sense of
Mexico’s Heroin Production,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas, March 7, 2011, at
http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/649-rawfeed-deciphering-mexicos-rise-in-heroin-productio.
33 William Booth and Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Mexican Cartels Emerge as Top Source for U.S. Meth," Washington
Post, November 28, 2010.
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Colombia has also declined, and there has been an increasing flow of Colombian cocaine to other
regions such as West Africa and Europe.
Mexico’s Major Drug Trafficking Organizations
By President Calderón’s inauguration in December 2006, there were four dominant DTOs: the
Tijuana/Arellano-Felix organization (AFO), the Sinaloa cartel, the Juárez/Vicente Carillo Fuentes
organization (CFO), and the Gulf cartel. Since the Calderón antidrug crackdown began, these
organizations have become more competitive as they have sought control over different drug
trafficking routes, or plazas. They have increased their transportation and distribution networks
and displaced other Latin American DTOs, such as the Colombians. Today, seven Mexican drug
organizations dominate the landscape and control trafficking routes into the United States. (See
Figure 1). They are Sinaloa, Tijuana/AFO, Juárez/CFO, Beltrán Leyva organization, Los Zetas,
Gulf, and La Familia Michoacana. Notably, the Gulf cartel, based in northeastern Mexico, was
considered one of the most powerful DTOs in the country in terms of territory and profit until
President Calderón came to office. Since then, the Gulf cartel’s enforcers—Los Zetas, who were
organized around Mexican military deserters—have split to form a separate DTO and turned
against their former employers. The well-established Sinaloa DTO, with roots in western Mexico,
has fought brutally for increased control of routes through Chihuahua and Baja California with
the goal of becoming the dominant DTO in the country. Sinaloa has a more decentralized
structure of loosely linked smaller organizations, which has been susceptible to conflict when
units break away. Nevertheless, the decentralized structure has enabled it to be quite adaptable in
the highly competitive and unstable environment that now prevails.34
Tijuana/Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO)— One of the founders of modern Mexican DTOs,
Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, a former police officer from Sinaloa, created a network that
included the Arellano Felix family, and numerous other DTO leaders such as Rafael Caro
Quintero, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and current fugitive Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The seven
“Arellano Felix” brothers (five of whom dedicated themselves to the drug business) and four
sisters inherited the drug fiefdom (AFO) from their uncle, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, after his
arrest in 1989 for the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.35
By the late 1990s and the early 2000s, this DTO, based in Tijuana, was one of the two dominant
organizations, and competed against the more powerful Juárez organization. The AFO structure
began to dissolve after several of its leaders were arrested. Of the Arellano Felix brothers, in 2002
Ramón was killed and Benjamin was later arrested. In October 2008, Eduardo Arellano, the last
of the brothers, was apprehended in Tijuana.
A bloody battle for control broke out in 2008 when the AFO organization split into two factions.
In the vacuum left by the arrests of the AFO’s key players, other DTOs in the region attempted to
assert control over the profitable Tijuana/Baja California-San Diego/California border plaza. The
34 Oscar Becerra, “Traffic Report - Battling Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel,” Jane's Information Group, May 7, 2010. The
author describes the networked structure: “The Sinaloa Cartel is not a strictly vertical and hierarchical structure, but
instead is a complex organization containing a number of semi-autonomous groups.”
35 Special Agent Camarena was an undercover DEA agent working in Mexico who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed
in 1985. The Felix Gallardo network broke up in the wake of the investigation of its role in the murder. The famous
case and ensuing investigation is chronicled on a DEA website honoring Agent Camarena at
http://www.justice.gov/dea/ongoing/red_ribbon/redribbon_history.html.
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AFO suffered another blow when Eduardo Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental, a former AFO
lieutenant, aligned himself with the Sinaloa cartel, which led to a surge of violence in Tijuana.
The organization is thought to have been responsible for a series of murders and to have close ties
with corrupt police and “narco juniors”36 who facilitate their operations. Since the January 2010
arrest of Garcia Simental, violence in Tijuana has markedly decreased.37 Some government
officials have claimed the decrease in violence is a law enforcement success, while others suggest
competing DTOs may have come to an agreement on the use of the drug trafficking route.38
Fernando Sanchez Arellano (alias “El Ingeniero”) is a nephew of the founding Arellano Felix
brothers. According to several sources, he maintains leadership of the diminished AFO (also
known as the Tijuana DTO). STRATFOR reports that he has worked out a deal with the dominant
Sinaloa organization to pay a fee for the right to use the lucrative plaza once under the AFO’s
control.39 Other analysts suggest the Tijuana leader is purposefully maintaining a low profile to
reduce attention from the media and Mexican government while maintaining a steady business
moving drugs North into California.40
Sinaloa DTO—This organization retains the Sinaloa core that has descended from the Felix
Gallardo network. Headed by the fugitive prison escapee and billionaire Joaquín “El Chapo”
Guzmán, the Sinaloa DTO emerged as an effective leader in moving cocaine from South America
to the United States. Early in 2008, a federation dominated by the Sinaloa cartel (which included
the Beltrán Leyva organization and the Juárez cartel) broke apart. Sinaloa, still composed of a
network of smaller organizations, has grown to be the dominant DTO operating in Mexico today,
controlling by one estimate 45% of the drug trade in Mexico.41 In addition to Guzmán, top
leadership of the DTO includes Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García. Examining arrest data from
the period of the Calderón antidrug effort, some analysts believe they have detected a pattern of
arrests demonstrating favor toward the Sinaloa DTO whose members have not been arrested at
the same rates as competing DTOs. President Calderón has strongly denied any accusation of
favoritism.42 The Mexican military’s July 2010 killing of Ignacio Coronel Villarreal (alias “El
Nacho”), reportedly the third-highest leader overseeing Sinaloa operations in central Mexico, has
given credence to the argument that Sinaloa has taken serious hits like the others.
36 The AFO frequently recruited children from wealthy Mexican families, commonly referred to as “narco juniors,”
who had U.S. citizenship and could travel between countries to help with transshipments.
37 Sandra Dibble, “Tijuana Violence Slows, Drops from Spotlight,” San Diego Union Tribune, April 26, 2010.
Following the January 12, 2010 arrest of Teodoro “El Teo” Garcia Simental, on February 8, 2010 his brother, Manuel,
and their chief lieutenant Raydel Lopez Uriarte, were arrested. For more information, see testimony of Anthony P.
Placido, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Administration and Kevin L. Perkins, Assistant
Director, Criminal Investigative Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, before the Senate Caucus on International
Narcotics Control, May 5, 2010.
38 Interview with David Shirk, Director of the Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, May 13, 2010.
39 STRATFOR [Formerly Stratfor Global Intelligence, a subscription database], “Mexican Drug Wars Update:
Targeting the Most Violent Cartels,” July 21, 2011.
40 Patrick Corcoran, “A Survey of Mexico’s Trafficking Networks,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas, June
27, 2011.
41 “Outsmarted by Sinaloa: Why the Biggest Drug Gang Has Been Least Hit,” Economist, January 7, 2010.
42 Ibid. See also: John Burnett and Marisa Peñaloza, “Mexico’s Drug War: A Rigged Fight,” NPR, All Things
Considered, May 18, 2010.
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Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
Sinaloa reportedly has a substantial international presence in some 50 countries, including
throughout the Americas, Europe, West Africa and Southeast Asia.43 Often described as the most
powerful mafia organization in the Western Hemisphere, Sinaloa is also reported to be the most
cohesive. In 2011, it expanded operations into Mexico City, and into Durango, Guerrero, and
Michoacan states while continuing its push into territories in both Baja California and Chihuahua
once controlled by the Tijuana and Juárez DTOs. Sinaloa experienced several arrests of some of
its leaders in the spring of 2011, but some of these may have been the result of betrayals to weed
out threats from within the DTO.44
Juárez/Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization—This DTO is led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes,
who took over from his brother Amado, founder of the DTO, who died in 1997. Vicente oversaw
the operations when the Juárez DTO was part of the Sinaloa federation from which it split in
2008.45 The Juárez DTO and its enforcement arm, La Línea, have ferociously fought their former
Sinaloa ally to maintain their core territory, the Ciudad Juárez corridor abutting El Paso, TX.
Since 2008, this three-year battle has raged, resulting in thousands of deaths in Ciudad Juárez,
making the surrounding Mexican state of Chihuahua the deadliest in the country.46 The Juárez
DTO has reportedly been worn down by the conflict and resorted to other lucrative activities to
finance its battle, including domestic drug sales in Ciudad Juárez (where rates of abuse are among
the highest in Mexico). The Juárez DTO has battled for control of local drug markets with proxy
street gangs. Los Aztecas, one of the larger gangs, is fighting for the Juárez organization against
two gangs, the Artistas Asesinos and the Mexicales, representing the Sinaloa DTO.47
The degree of decline this organization has suffered is contested. Some analysts believe it is a
“spent force,” while others have identified a tenacity to hold on to parts of Ciudad Juárez and
other cities in Chihuahua.48 The DTO’s enforcement arm, the La Linea gang, suffered a major
loss when leader Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez (alias “El Diego”) was arrested in late July
2011. He reportedly confessed to ordering more than 1,500 murders and is suspected of the
March 2010 murder of the three people connected to the U.S. consulate in Juárez.49
43 Geoffrey Ramsey, “Colombian Officials Arrest Money Launderer for ‘Chapo’ Guzman,” In Sight:Organized Crime
in the Americas, August 11, 2011.
44 STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Wars Update: Targeting the Most Violent Cartels,” July 21, 2011.
45 Some analysts trace the origins of the split to a personal feud between “El Chapo” Guzmán of the Sinaloa DTO and
former ally Vicente Carillo Fuentes. In 2004, Guzmán allegedly ordered the killing of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes,
another of Vicente’s brothers. Guzmán’s son, Edgar, was killed in May 2008 allegedly on orders from Carrillo Fuentes.
See Alfredo Corchado, “Juárez Drug Violence Not Likely To Go Away Soon, Authorities Say,” Dallas Morning News,
May 17, 2010.
46 Molly Molloy, research librarian at New Mexico State University, keeps a tally of homicides as reported in the
Juárez media and the official reports from the Chihuahua Attorney General. She and others have reported more than
3,000 deaths in Ciudad Juárez in 2010, and more than 7,800 deaths in the beleaguered city from January 2007 through
the end of 2010. See: Frontera List, at http://groups.google.com/group/frontera-list.
47 STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Cartels: Two Wars and a Look Southward,” December 17, 2009.
48 Patrick Corcoran, “A Survey of Mexico’s Trafficking Networks,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas, June
27, 2011; STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Wars Update: Targeting the Most Violent Cartels,” July 21, 2011.
49 Jen Sokatch, “Mexico Captures ‘Gang Boss’ Accused of Juarez Consul Killings,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the
Americas, August 1, 2011.
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Figure 1. Map of DTO Areas of Dominant Influence in Mexico
Source: DEA, May 2011, adapted by CRS
CRS-10
Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
Gulf DTO— The Gulf DTO is based in the border city of Matamoros in the northeastern
Mexican state of Tamaulipas. It arose in the bootlegging era of the 1920s. In the 1980s, its leader,
Juan García Abrego, developed ties to Colombia’s Cali cartel as well as to the Mexican Federal
Police. His violent successor, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, successfully corrupted elite Mexican
military forces sent to capture him. Those corrupted military personnel became known as Los
Zetas and fused with the Gulf cartel. At the beginning of the 21st century, Gulf was considered
one of the most powerful Mexican DTOs. Cárdenas was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2003,
but he successfully ran his drug enterprise from prison.50 The violent struggle to succeed him did
not begin until his extradition to the United States in early 2007. (In February 2010, Cárdenas was
sentenced to serve 25 years in a U.S. prison). Despite a difficult internal succession battle and
successful law enforcement operations against it, the Gulf organization continues to successfully
move drugs. On November 5, 2010, Osiel’s brother, Antonio Ezequiél Cárdenas Guillén (alias
Tony Tormenta), was killed in Matamoros in a gun battle with Mexican marines. He had risen to a
top position in the Gulf DTO following his brother’s extradition. His death set off renewed
violence as the weakened Gulf DTO attempted to fight off the continued assault by its former
allies, Los Zetas.51 In 2011, Gulf continued its battle with the Zetas for control over its former
strongholds in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Veracruz.52
Los Zetas—This group was originally composed of former elite airborne special force members
of the Mexican Army who defected to the Gulf cartel and became their hired assassins.53 In 2008,
Los Zetas began to contract their services to other DTOs operating throughout the country,
notably the Beltrán Leyva organization and the Juárez DTO.54 Los Zetas split with the Gulf cartel
in the period of late 2008 to 2010 to become an independent DTO. Since February 2010, Los
Zetas and the Gulf cartel have been battling in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León for control of drug
smuggling corridors. What is especially significant is that in order to fight Los Zetas, the Gulf
cartel has allied itself with two former enemies—La Familia Michoacana (LFM) and the Sinaloa
cartel—creating an environment of urban warfare with commando-style raids on state prisons,
abduction of journalists, murder of police, and attacks on military posts. They have organized
elaborate road blockades during their violent operations to prevent legitimate police from
responding.55 In 2010, the battle for territory between the Zetas and the Gulf-Sinaloa-La Familia
alliance (a temporary alliance of convenience) increased casualties among the government’s
50 George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2010), pp. 72-73.
51 Nacha Cattan, “Killing of Top Mexico Drug Lord ‘Tony Tormenta’ May Boost Rival Zetas Cartel,” Christian
Science Monitor, November 8, 2010.
52 Patrick Corcoran, “A Survey of Mexico’s Trafficking Networks,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas, June
27, 2011.
53 Most reports indicate that Los Zetas were created by a group of 30 lieutenants and sub-lieutenants who deserted from
the Mexican military’s Special Mobile Force Group (Grupos Aeromóviles de Fuerzas Especiales, GAFES) to join the
Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s. See CRS Report RL34215, Mexico’s Drug Cartels, by Colleen W. Cook.
54 Scott Stewart and Alex Posey, “Mexico: The War with the Cartels in 2009,” STRATFOR, December 9, 2009; DEA
maintains the split between Los Zetas and the Gulf DTO began in March 2008 at the same time there was growing
evidence that Los Zetas had aligned themselves with the BLO. CRS consultation with the Drug Enforcement
Administration, December 20, 2010.
55 William Booth, “Drug War Violence Appears in Mexico’s Northeast, Near Texas Border,” Washington Post, April
21, 2010.
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security forces.56 Some observers argue that this killing does not suggest a tactic by the DTOs to
target government officials, but rather an increase in inter-cartel rivalry.57
Los Zetas gained power under the leadership of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano.58 The Zetas have
expanded their operations to Central America to collaborate with their Guatemalan equivalent,
Los Kaibiles, and with Central American gangs in an effort to take control of cocaine shipments
from Guatemala to Mexico.59
As of mid-2011, Los Zetas seem to have the largest area of influence in Mexico and appear to be
growing stronger in Guatemala. The Zetas are also believed to have achieved the most
diversification in other criminal activities. (See section “DTO Fragmentation, Competition, and
Diversification”). While they have been aggressively expansionist, some analysts question if this
DTO is responsible for the largest portion of the violent conflict in Mexico. The Zetas have been
targeted by both the Mexican and U.S. governments for increased enforcement in 2011, but the
Sinaloa DTO is still considered by many observers to be the most dominant.60
Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO)—Until 2008, this syndicate was a part of the Sinaloa
federation and controlled access to the U.S. border in Sonora state. The January 2008 arrest of
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, brother of the syndicate’s leader, Arturo, and a leading lieutenant in the
organization, is believed to have been abetted by “El Chapo” Guzmán, the top leader of the
Sinaloa DTO. The loss of Alfredo cemented the animosity between the two organizations. Despite
resistance from the Sinaloa federation, the BLO successfully secured drug transport routes in the
states of Sinaloa, Durango, Sonora, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, and Morelos. In addition, the
BLO, like other dominant Mexican DTOs, is believed to have infiltrated the upper levels of the
Mexican government to help maintain its strong presence and control.61 The BLO has executed
uncooperative officials, and is believed to be responsible for the May 2008 assassination of acting
federal police director Edgar Millan Gomez.62 The organization has shown a high level of
sophistication in its operations, forming a strategic alliance with Los Zetas to fight for important
drug territory against the Gulf, Sinaloa, and La Familia DTOs. The BLO had long-standing links
to Colombian sources, and control over multiple and varied routes into Mexico. Along with the
Sinaloa DTO, it had also enjoyed a significant presence in southern Mexico.
56 “The War Is Mainly Between the Drug Cartels,” Latin American Security and Strategic Review, April 2010.
57 Ibid.
58 According to one account, Los Zetas are active throughout the Gulf Coast with centers of operation in Veracruz, the
southern states of Tabasco, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Chiapas, and in the Pacific Coast states of Guerrero and
Oaxaca, as well as Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. They are also gaining dominance in Mexico State and Hidalgo,
which they are using to gain entree to Mexico City. See chapter “Emerging and New Narco Sects—Los Zetas and La
Familia,” in George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2010.)
59 Steven S. Dudley, "Drug Trafficking Organizations in Central America: Transportistas, Mexican Cartels and Maras,"
in Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Options for Confronting Organized Crime, ed. Eric L. Olson, David A. Shirk,
and Andrew Selee (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of San
Diego, 2010).
60 Patrick Corcoran, “Are the Zetas the Most Dangerous Drug Gang in Mexico?,” In Sight:Organized Crime in the
Americas, August 8, 2011.
61 James C. McKinley, Jr. “Keeping Resident Close, and Maybe a Cartel Closer, Mexican Mayor’s First Months in
Office Marked by Scandal, Twists,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 25, 2010.
62 STRATFOR, “Mexico: The Cartel Turf War Intensifies,” May 9, 2008.
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The organization suffered a series of setbacks at the hands of the Mexican security forces
beginning with the December 2009 killing of Arturo Beltrán Leyva during a raid conducted by
the Mexican navy, and the arrest of Carlos Beltrán Leyva in January 2010. Some experts believe
that the remaining Beltrán Leyva brother, Hector, is the acting head of the organization now that
the three others have been arrested or killed. Gerardo Alvarez-Vazquez, who was arrested in April
2010, had been fighting Hector Beltrán Leyva for control of the DTO along with Edgar Valdez
Villarreal (alias “La Barbie”).63
However, on August 30, 2010, Edgar Valdez was arrested by the Mexican military, a major
victory for the Mexican authorities and for President Calderón’s drug strategy.64 Valdez reportedly
was one of the rare Mexican-Americans who was a top leader of a Mexican DTO.65 The power
vacuum left by the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva had led to major fighting among members of
the BLO and contributed significantly to violence in the central region of the country such as the
state of Morelos in early and mid-2010.66 The capture of Valdez (who had a $2 million reward for
his arrest in both the United States and Mexico) may decrease the BLO’s importance and lead to
an internal power struggle, or a struggle by other DTOs to take control of the BLO routes. Edgar
Valdez’s arrest may be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for cocaine smuggling
and conspiracy. For more on the recent splits in the BLO caused by Arturo’s death and “La
Barbie’s” arrest, see section “DTO Fragmentation, Competition, and Diversification.”
La Familia Michoacana (LFM)—This DTO is a newer organization that acquired notoriety for
its hyper-violent crimes in 2006, although it traces its roots back to the 1980s. Ironically, it started
as a vigilante group to eradicate drug use in Mexico and Michoacán, where it is based. But as a
DTO it has specialized in methamphetamine production and smuggling (reportedly for sale in the
United States only) and is also a vigorous trafficker of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin.67 LFM is
known for its use of extreme, symbolic violence and a pseudo-ideological or religious
justification for its existence. According to one study, the LFM is “a hybrid fusion of criminal
drug enterprise entity and Christian evangelical beliefs” combining social, criminal, and religious
elements in one movement.68 LFM is known for leaving signs (“narcomantas”) on corpses and at
crime scenes, describing their actions as “divine justice.”69 It also has reportedly made donations
of food, medical care, and schools to benefit the poor in order to project a “Robin Hood” image.70
Once affiliated with Los Zetas (when the Gulf and Zeta DTOs were merged), the LFM now
63 Ivan Moreno, “Mexico City Area Shootout Leads to Arrest of Major Alleged Drug Trafficker,” Associated Press,
April 23, 2010.
64 The Mexican government’s strategy to remove high-value targets or kingpins has been especially productive since
the end of 2009 when Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed. That event was followed in 2010 by the arrest or attempted
arrest and killing of several other key leaders or top lieutenants vying for leadership such as Edgar Valdez. At the close
of 2010, the pace of the strategy to take out top leaders seemed to be increasing.
65 Edgar Valdez is an American-born drug smuggler from Laredo, Texas and allegedly started his career in the United
States dealing marijuana. His nickname is “La Barbie” because of his fair hair and eyes. Nicholas Casey and Jose de
Cordoba, “Alleged Drug Kingpin Is Arrested in Mexico,” Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2010.
66 “15 Suspected Drug Cartel Enforcers Captured in Mexico,” EFE News Service, April 24, 2010; Trans-Border
Institute, Justice in Mexico, February and March 2010 News Reports.
67 Finnegan, op. cit. With regard to heroin, LFM has allowed independent traffickers to cultivate opium poppies and to
produce heroin for a “tax” in Michoacán, according to a source at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
68 Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution Revisited: Third Phase Cartel Potentials and Alternative
Futures in Mexico,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, vol. 21, no. 1 (March 2010), p. 45.
69 Finnegan, op. cit.
70 Samuel Logan and John P. Sullivan, Mexico's Divine Justice, ISN Security Watch, August 17, 2009.
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violently opposes Los Zetas. Declared Mexico’s most violent DTO in 2009 by Mexico’s then-
attorney general, LFM has used some of the ruthless techniques learned from the paramilitary
Zetas.71 In 2010, however, LFM played a less prominent role, and in November 2010, the LFM
reportedly called for a truce with the Mexican government.72 In a December 10, 2010, gun battle
with the Mexican federal police, the LFM’s spiritual leader Nazario Moreno González (alias “El
Más Loco”) was killed, according to Mexican authorities.73 LFM reportedly has suborned
politicians in the states where it operates: Michoacán, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Mexico, Jalisco and
Queretaro.74 In Mexico state, it competes with Sinaloa, Los Zetas, and the Beltrán Leyva
organization. In June 2011, LFM leader José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, was arrested. A new
organization that calls itself the Knights Templar claims to be a successor of LFM, as described
below.
DTO Fragmentation, Competition, and Diversification
The DTOs that pose a serious challenge to governance in Mexico today are more fragmented and
competitive than the larger and more stable organizations that President Calderón faced at the
beginning of his administration.75 Analysts disagree about the extent of this fragmentation and its
importance, and whether the resulting highly competitive group of smaller organizations will be
easier to dismantle. There is more agreement that the environment is growing more violent and
that the “violent free for all” is a relatively new development in Mexico.76
When President Calderón took office in December 2006, there were four major DTOs: three then
aligned in the Sinaloa Federation (that included the core Sinaloa DTO, the once-dominant Juárez
DTO, and the Beltrán Leyva organization) and the Gulf DTO. Over the course of the Calderón
Administration, the criminal landscape has been transformed from a few “hegemonic” actors to
the competitive (and violent) environment that now prevails. However, there are still large and
powerful organizations, and some analysts identify the current dominant actors as the Sinaloa
DTO and Los Zetas.77
As outlined above there are currently seven major organizations—yet even these have broken up
and realigned under different names in the first half of 2011. The most well-defined recent split,
which resulted in a new major DTO, was the breakup between Los Zetas and their former
employer, the Gulf DTO. The Zetas became fully independent sometime in the period from late
2008 to early 2010 (analysts disagree on the exact timing), sparking a vicious battle for control in
the northeastern states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and other territory once controlled by Gulf. In
71 Sidney Weintraub and Duncan Wood, Cooperative Mexican-U.S. Antinarcotics Efforts, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, November 2010.
72 STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Wars: Bloodiest Year to Date,” December 20, 2010.
73 Ibid.
74 STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Cartels: Two Wars and a Look Southward,” December 17, 2009.
75 Patrick Corcoran, “A Survey of Mexico’s Trafficking Networks,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas, June
27, 2011.
76 Patrick Corcoran, “Mexico: Upstart Gangs Eat into Cartel Hegemony,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas,
August 4, 2011.
77 See, for example, Prem Mahadevan, A War Without 'Principals': Narco-Violence in Mexico, Research Institute for
European and American Studies (RIEAS), Research Paper No. 150, Athens, Greece, May 2011. The author writes
“One way of breaking this cycle of violence might be for the Mexican government to conduct synchronized operations
against the two main trafficking organizations: the Sinaloa cartel and its rival, Los Zetas.”
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addition, important splits occurred in the Beltrán Leyva organization (BLO) following the killing
of leader Arturo Beltrán Leyva by the Mexican military in December 2009. Two new
organizations have emerged: the South Pacific Cartel reportedly led by Arturo’s brother Hector
and the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, which contains remnants of the old BLO that were loyal
to Edgar Valdez (“La Barbie”) who was arrested in August 2010. Another new DTO is the
Knights Templar, a re-branded faction of La Familia Michoacana, after the organization suffered
two major losses: the death of its “spiritual leader” Nazario Moreno González in December 2010
and the arrest of José de Jesús Méndez Vargas on June 20, 2011. This offshoot of LFM is lead by
charismatic former lieutenant Servando Gomez, (alias “La Tuta”), and it may eventually replace
the older organization with which it is now locked in competition. Others in the growing array of
smaller organizations include the Resistance and the Jalisco Cartel New Generation that are
reportedly competing for territory in the coastal states of Nayarit, Colima, and Jalisco.78
With the growing fragmentation of the DTOs has come even more violent competition for control
of drug routes. This is not the outcome analysts would anticipate who see Colombia’s experience
of the 1990s as applicable to that of Mexico today. In Colombia’s case, successfully targeting the
huge and wealthy Medellín and Cali cartels sequentially and dismantling them meant that a
number of smaller drug trafficking organizations replaced them. One result of Colombia’s
splitting up these enormous organizations and replacing them with smaller organizations
(“cartelitos”) was the government was able to successfully reduce violence in the drug trade.
Critically, however, were other factors in Colombia that were not present in Mexico such as the
presence of guerilla insurgents and paramilitaries who became deeply involved in the illegal drug
business.
Contrary to the experience in South America, fragmentation in Mexico has been associated with
escalating violence.79 A “kingpin strategy” has been successfully implemented by the Mexican
government which has “taken down” numerous top and mid level leaders in all the major DTOs,
either through arrests or deaths in operations to detain them. However, this strategy in
combination with political decentralization has contributed to violent succession struggles,
shifting alliances among the DTOs, a proliferation of new gangs and small DTOs, and the
replacement of existing leaders and criminal groups by ones who are even more violent.80 Several
analysts have observed that as the Mexican DTOs have fragmented and multiplied, violence has
escalated to an all time high.81 Others analysts caution not to overstate the level of fragmentation.
Many of these organizations and smaller gangs are new and it is premature to predict how they
will fare. The Mexican government has asserted that the removal of DTO leadership through
government enforcement operations has not caused violence to spike.82
78 Patrick Corcoran, “Mexico: Upstart Gangs Eat into Cartel Hegemony,” In Sight: Organized Crime in the Americas,
August 4, 2011.
79 Shannon K. O’Neil, “Drug Fragmentation and Violence,” Council on Foreign Relations blog, August 9, 2011.
80 STRATFOR, “Mexico’s Drug Wars: Bloodiest Year to Date,” December 20, 2010; STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug
Wars Update: Targeting the Most Violent Cartels,” July 21, 2011.
81 Shannon K. O’Neil, “Drug Cartel Fragmentation and Violence,” Council on Foreign Relations blog, August 9, 2011;
Eduardo Guerrero Guitiérez, “La Raiz de La Violencia,” Nexos en Línea, June 1, 2011. Guerrero also argues that
eliminating leaders has dispersed the violence.
82 See Alejandro Poiré and Maria Teresa Martinez, “La Caida de los Capos No Muliplica la Violencia: El Caso de
Nacho Coronel,” Nexos en Linea, May 1, 2011. (Alejandro Poiré and Maria Teresa Martinez are officials from the
National Public Security Council).
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Another emerging factor has been the increasing diversification of the DTOs. Mexican DTOs
have become poly-criminal organizations engaging in a wide variety of criminal activities in
addition to selling illegal drugs. They have branched into other profitable crimes such as
kidnapping, assassination for hire, auto theft, operating prostitution rings, extortion, money-
laundering, software piracy, resource theft, and human smuggling. The surge in violence due to
inter- and intra-cartel conflict over lucrative drug smuggling routes has been accompanied by an
increase in kidnapping for ransom and other crimes. According to recent estimates, kidnappings
in Mexico have increased by 188% since 2007, armed robbery by 47%, and extortion by 101%. 83
Some believe this movement into other criminal activities may be evidence of organizational
vitality and growth, while others contend that this diversification is a sign that U.S. and Mexican
drug enforcement measures are cutting into profits from drug trafficking. The growing public
condemnation of the DTOs may also be related to their diversification into street crime, which
has a more profound effect on average Mexican civilians than intra and inter-DTO violence
related to conflicts over drug trafficking.
Because the DTOs have diversified, some analysts now refer to them as transnational criminal
organizations (TCOs), or simply as organized crime groups or mafias.84 Others maintain that
much of their non-drug criminal activity is in service of the central drug trafficking business.85
Whatever the label, no one has an accurate way to assess how much of the DTOs’ income is
earned from their non-drug activities. Los Zetas, widely known for their hyper-violent tactics, are
one of the most diversified DTOs. Their satellite businesses include the theft of petroleum from
the state-owned oil company PEMEX,86 software piracy, and human smuggling, as well as
extortion, money laundering and robbery. In July 2011, the Obama Administration released a new
strategy to combat transnational organized crime, citing the Mexican DTOs as some of its target
subjects.87 On July 25, the White House issued an executive order that named four groups around
the world that represented transnational organized crime threats. Not surprisingly, Los Zetas were
identified for their diverse criminal activities and their propensity to commit mass murder. Some
analysts have questioned why Los Zetas were singled out, when Sinaloa and other Mexican
DTOs are also known to be significantly involved in other forms of crime.88
Characteristics of the Increased Violence
As the DTOs have fractured and more organizations vie for control of trafficking routes, the level
of inter- and intra-cartel violence has spiked. Inter-DTO violence is used when the cartels fight
83 Mária de la Luz González, “Delitos Aumentan en el País, Alertan,” El Universal, August 23, 2011, citing data from
México Evalua that is available in Spanish at: http://www.mexicoevalua.org/.
84 See for example, Eric L. Olson and Miguel R. Salazar, A Profile of Mexico’s Major Organized Crime Groups,
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, February 17, 2011.
85 Often kidnapping and extortion are a mechanism to collect payment for drug deliveries, for example. Weapons
trafficking and money laundering are obviously closely tied to drug trafficking. DEA officials suggested in an
interview that about 80% of the DTOs income may come from drugs, and they continue to use DTO or cartel to
identify the organizations. CRS interview with DEA officials on August 5, 2011.
86 William Booth, “Drug War Violence Appears in Mexico’s Northeast, Near Texas border,” Washington Post, April
21, 2010.
87 President of the United States, Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, July 19, 2011 at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Strategy_to_Combat_Transnational_Organized_Crime_July_2011.pdf.
88 Tim Johnson, "Do U.S., Mexican Officials Favor One Cartel Over Another?," Miami Herald, August 24, 2011.
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one another to dominate trafficking routes. Besides inter-DTO violence (between the different
organizations), there has been widespread violence within the organizations, as factions battle in
succession struggles to replace fallen or arrested leaders. The succession battles are hastened by
the drug war victories by the Mexican government. In describing the violence resulting from the
elimination of a leader, one observer refers to “internal vacancy chains” that result when an
organization is squeezed by the government and there is great uncertainty about how the leader
will be replaced (either through internal succession or external replacement). In some cases, a
weakened DTO will be attacked by other DTOs in a “feeding frenzy” until the uncertainty of
succession is resolved.89 Thus highly charged violence may result from asymmetric weakening of
competitive organizations.90 Intra-DTO violence is used to assert leadership inside the cartel or to
impose organizational discipline and loyalty. The violent response of the DTOs to the
government’s aggressive security strategy is a third key element leading to escalation. Gun battles
between government forces and the DTOs are regular occurrences. And with the expansion of
democratic pluralism, DTOs are fighting the state to reassert their impunity from the justice
system.
Drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico has been brutal, and, in an apparent contradiction,
both widespread and relatively concentrated. However, since 2010 the violence has dispersed to
new areas and involved more municipalities. The violence, while still concentrated along drug
trafficking routes and in a small percentage of Mexican municipalities, has spread to almost every
state and flared in the northern border states. There is a debate about exactly how many have
perished in the violence.
The Mexican government released data on homicides in Mexico linked to organized crime during
the Calderón Administration in January 2011.91 The government reported that between January
2007 and December 2010 more than 34,500 killings were organized crime-related homicides.
These official figures are about 15 to 25% higher than the tallies provided in some media
reporting such as that of the Mexican media outlet Grupo Reforma, which have been presented in
this report and which are used by the Trans-Border Institute (TBI) at the University of San Diego
to track violence in Mexico. As of the time of this update, the Mexican government has not
updated the figures it provided in mid-January 2011.
According to more conservative estimates, such as the Reforma data, drug trafficking-related
violence in Mexico resulted in more than 2,200 killings in 2007, 5,100 killings in 2008, 6,500
killings in 2009, and 11,500 killings in 2010—an increase of more than 70% over the prior year.92
(See Figure 2). According to the Reforma data, in 2011 the number of killings associated with
drug trafficking-related crime exceeded 8,600 between January and the end of August, on a pace
to exceed last year’s total by more than 15%.93 While casualty estimates from the government and
89 Phil Williams, “El Crimen Organizada y la Violencia en Mexico: Una Perspectiva Comparativa,” ISTOR: Revista de
Historia International, 11th Year, Number 42, Fall 2010. Professor Williams argues that the leaders of the DTOs act
like medieval barons, “engaged in constant power struggles and fluid alliances,” even as their businesses have fully
exploited the opportunities of 21st century globalization.
90 Williams, op. cit.
91 The Mexican government maintains its searchable database on organized crime homicides on the website of the
presidency (link to website is http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/base-de-datos-de-fallecimientos/.)
92 For a discussion of the different tallies of the casualties reported by the Mexican media and those of the Mexican
government, see: Viridiana Ríos and David Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2010, Trans-
Border Institute (TBI), University of San Diego, January 2011.
93 TBI, Justice in Mexico, July 2011 News Report and August 2011 News Report.
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media sources have not been identical, they have reflected similar trends. All reports have shown
the violence rising sharply since early 2007 and spreading to new parts of Mexico.
Casualty Estimates
The Mexican authorities maintained in July 2010 that more than 90% of the casualties (those who
have died since President Calderón’s crackdown in December 2006) were individuals involved
with or linked in some way to the criminal activities of the DTOs. Critics, however, have
questioned this assertion and noted it does little to mitigate the Mexican public’s growing alarm
about public safety. Mexican government information has neither been easy to access nor
reported regularly. The Trans-Border Institute (TBI) at the University of San Diego in California
and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have made repeated requests to the Mexican
government for detailed information to substantiate these totals, but the information has not been
provided.94 To track the violence, TBI and others have turned to Mexican media reporting.
Newspapers and other media organizations keep daily tallies of the killings that are considered a
close approximation of the overall situation. TBI’s Justice in Mexico project has used the data
collected by the national Mexican newspaper Reforma to tabulate Mexico’s drug trafficking
violence over the past decade.
TBI has found that Reforma is generally more conservative and cautious about classifying a death
as drug trafficking-related than are official sources and other media outlets.95 Reforma’s
classification of a homicide attributed to the drug trafficking organizations is based on criminal
justice protocols and the presence at the crime scene of characteristics traditionally used by DTOs
such as high-caliber weapons, decapitations, or “narco” messages.96 The possibility that other
criminals could carry out murders in a manner to make them appear to be those of the DTOs is
one cause to question the accuracy of the figures. Further concerns are that authorities often fail
to identify and fully investigate drug trafficking-related homicides and that some DTOs will
attempt to eliminate all evidence of murders. According to the Reforma data, there were 11,583
drug trafficking-related homicides in 2010 and according to the government database the total
murders attributed to organized crime exceeded 15,270. The higher government figure may be
due to a definition of organized crime which is broader than drug trafficking. But the trends in the
data produced by Reforma closely correlate with those released by the government.97 Both
sources report a sharp increase in homicides between 2008-2010, when, according to the Reforma
data, the average number of deaths per day rose from greater than 14 per day in 2008 to exceed
30 per day by 2010.
The Mexican government announced in September 2010 that for future casualty statistics it
would collaborate to produce a single set of figures on a regular basis. Alejandro Poire,98 the
technical secretary of the National Public Security Council, indicated that the new system for
94 Angelica Duran-Martinez, Gayle Hazard, and Viridiana Rios, 2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence in Mexico,
Trans-Border Institute, August 2010.
95 TBI, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis from 2001-2009, January 2010.
96 TBI, 2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence in Mexico, August 2010.
97 For a discussion of how the two sources compare, see Viridiana Ríos and David A. Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico:
Data and Analysis Through 2010, Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, February 2011.
98 During the summer of 2010, Mr. Poire was appointed as the government spokesperson for the government’s security
strategy. Previously, no federal government representative was explaining the government’s strategy to the public.
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producing the drug trafficking-related crime statistics would become operational in late 2010.99
However, since Mexico’s government initially released its database in mid-January 2011 it has
not updated its figures, as of the writing of this update. As a result, TBI and others have continued
to rely on the regularly reported Reforma data to track Mexico’s drug trafficking-related killings
in 2011.
Locations of the Violence and Its Impact on Business
As the violence in Mexico has sharply increased over the past several years, it has also shifted
locations. Drug trafficking-related violence has noticeably increased in the northern border states,
including Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, and remained high in Chihuahua although it amounts to a
smaller percentage of the total in 2011. As it has spread to new locations, the fear of violence has
closed businesses and had an impact on tourism. American investors in Mexico have grown
concerned about the violence, as businesses have sent home dependents or closed operations
altogether in some cities. Small and medium- sized businesses have been particularly hard hit,
without the resources to hire private security firms and provide for employee safety in the same
way as have the larger businesses and multinational corporations.100 The Mexican government
recently published a report indicating that foreign direct investment (FDI) has continued to pour
into some of the most violent states at levels exceeding the investment prior to 2006, but others
argue that job creating investment has been moving into safer cities in central Mexico where drug
trafficking-related violence is lower.101 According to press reports, in April 2011 the Governor of
Mexico’s central bank Agustin Carsten said that the most significant factor inhibiting growth and
investment in Mexico was crime and violence.102
In 2008, drug trafficking-related violence was concentrated in a few cities and states. About 60%
of the killings took place in three cities: Tijuana (Baja California), Culiacán (Sinaloa), and highly
contested Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua). By far, the largest number of drug trafficking-related
deaths took place in Ciudad Juárez, a city of approximately 1.3 million inhabitants that lies
directly across the border from El Paso, TX. The Mexican border city is where the conflict
between the Sinaloa and Juárez DTOs is most focused. (Mexico’s National Public Security
Council estimates that 36% of the drug trafficking-related deaths in Mexico’s drug war from
December 2006 through July 2010 could be attributed to the conflict centered in Ciudad
Juárez.)103 According to State Department and media reports, more than 3,000 people were killed
in Ciudad Juárez in 2010 alone making it one of the most violent cities in the world.104
99 “Government to Overhaul Gang-Killing Figures,” LatinNews Weekly Report, September 30, 2010.
100 Dora Beszterczey and Shannon O'Neil, "Breaking the Cycle," Americas Quarterly, Winter 2011. This source notes
that as many as 10,000 businesses have closed down in Ciudad Juárez alone, while the city’s unemployment rate soared
from “virtually zero” to 20% in the last three years.
101 Nacha Cattan, "Is Violence in Mexico Affecting Foreign Investment? No, Say Recent Reports," Christian Science
Monitor, August 8, 2011; Secretaría de Economia, Subsecretaria de la Inversión Extrajera Directa (IED) a Nivel
Nacional y Subnacional: Seguridad y Otros Factores, July 27, 2011.
102 “Banco de Mexico: Violence has Affected Investment, Growth,” EFE News Service, April 7, 2011.
103 Mexican Federal Government, “Información Sobre el Fenómeno Delictivo en México,” August 2010; David Shirk,
“Mexican Government Reveals Distribution of Drug Violence,” Justice in Mexico blog, Trans-Border Institute,
http://justiceinmexico.org/2010/08/28/.
104 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Travel Warning: Mexico, April 22, 2011,
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_5440.html; Andrew Rice, "The End of America: Why Mexico's Pain is El
Paso's Gain," New York Times, July 31, 2011.
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Starting in 2009, the violence has spread to new areas throughout the country. This can be
attributed to changing alliances and competition between and within the DTOs, the succession
struggles when leaders are taken down or eliminated, and expanding DTO efforts to corrupt and
intimidate officials to permit the trade.105 In addition, the intense government crackdown using
army and navy forces has provoked a violent response from the DTOs intended to communicate a
lack of fear of the government. Meanwhile, Mexico’s law enforcement and courts have been
ineffective in investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators of violence, leaving the DTOs to
continue their attacks free of legal consequences.
Violence spread from near the border in northern Mexico south to Durango and Guerrero in 2009,
doubling in both states.106 As in 2009, violence in 2010 continued along the U.S./Mexico border
including Chihuahua, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, (the latter two states being the locus of the
2010 conflict between the Zetas and the Gulf DTOs) and with notable increases in Sinaloa,
Guerrero, Durango, and the State of Mexico.107 In 2010, some of the Central Pacific states
experienced a large increase in violent activity, including Jalisco and Nayarit. Violence in the
Central Pacific states (including the State of Mexico, Guerrero, Morelos, Jalisco, and Nayarit) has
been attributed to the conflict between factions of the Beltrán Leyva organization and inter-DTO
rivalries with La Familia Michoacana and the Sinaloa DTO.108
In the first half of 2011, the violence has spiraled higher and continued to spread. While violence
in Baja California and Chihuahua has declined somewhat, it has spiked in Tamaulipas and Nuevo
León. The Gulf DTO’s struggle to dislodge the Zetas from Monterrey, the major industrial and
financial hub 140 miles from the Texas border, has produced a near-paralyzing conflict that has
frightened business owners and marred the city’s reputation as one of Mexico’s safest cities.109
Violence had leveled off somewhat in Sinaloa by late August 2011 (in comparison with 2010)
while increasing in the Pacific states of Nayarit, Guerrero, and Jalisco, as well as the interior
states of Durango and San Luis Potosí. The discovery of mass graves in Durango and Tamaulipas
have added to the drug trafficking death tolls in those states.110
As mentioned earlier, a feature of the violence is that it is highly concentrated along key drug
routes and within a relatively few cities and towns. In August 2010, when the Mexican
government released a report that it had recorded 28,000 homicides linked to organized crime
(from December 2006 through July 2010), it provided some analysis. The data revealed that 80%
of drug trafficking-related homicides occurred in 162 of Mexico’s 2,456 municipalities, or under
7% of the nation’s municipalities.111 Through additional analysis of municipal-level data,
Mexican political scientist Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez identified six clusters of the most violent
105 The choice of “silver or lead” (either a bribe or a bullet) is forced on many government officials by Mexico’s drug
traffickers. See William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” The New Yorker, May 31, 2010.
106 TBI, Justice in Mexico, January 2010 News Report.
107 Angelica Duran-Martinez, Gayle Hazard, and Viridiana Rios, 2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence in Mexico,
Trans-Border Institute (TBI), August 2010.
108 TBI, Justice in Mexico, November 2010 News Report.
109 Nik Steinberg, "The Monster and Monterrey: The Politics and Cartels of Mexico's Drug War," The Nation, May 25,
2011; David Luhnow, “Expats Flee Drug War in Mexico’s No. 3 City,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2010.
110 TBI, Justice in Mexico: June 2011 News Report.
111 Mexican Federal Government, “Información Sobre el Fenómeno Delictivo en México,” August 2010; David Shirk,
“Mexican Government Reveals Distribution of Drug Violence,” Justice in Mexico blog, Trans-Border Institute,
http://justiceinmexico.org/2010/08/28/.
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municipalities in the country.112 The 36 municipalities he classified as the most violent are located
in five states (there are two high-violence zones in the border state of Chihuahua), and Guerrero
argues that if an effective anti-violence strategy targeted these zones, the drug trafficking-related
violence could be reduced.113
While drug trafficking-related killings remain concentrated in a relatively few cities, the violence
is spreading to more populated and economically important urban centers. Killings, kidnappings,
and other violence have dramatically increased in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico’s third-largest
city. In August 2010, business and civic leaders from Monterrey published an open letter to
President Calderón urging him to send three army battalions and a battalion of marines to combat
the drug traffickers.114 The resort city of Acapulco, a seaport in Guerrero state, has also seen a
sharp increase in violence along with outlying areas. According to media reporting, this violence
has made Guerrero homicide totals almost equal to Chihuahua where Ciudad Juárez is located.
TBI contends the battles in Guerrero are a three way contest between the remnants of the Beltrán
Leyva organization, La Familia Michoacana, and Sinaloa.115
The government has touted the decline in violence in Ciudad Juárez in 2011 as evidence their law
enforcement efforts and social reforms are working. But another possible cause is that the Sinaloa
DTO and its rival the Carillo Fuentes/Juárez DTO have come to some type of accommodation on
use of the drug corridor. According to some assessments, the Sinaloa DTO is the most powerful
DTO in Mexico.116 It has successfully pushed into territories in both Baja California and
Chihuahua that were once controlled by the Tijuana and Juárez DTOs. Some analysts have
speculated that Sinaloa’s dominance may be the reason for a decline in violence in Tijuana and, in
the first half of 2011, in Ciudad Juárez.117
Major tourist destinations, such as Acapulco, Cancún, Mazatlan, Taxco, and Cuernavaca, have
been hit by violence, and the economically vital tourist industry has been affected. Tourism along
the U.S.-Mexico border has also suffered a dramatic decline because of fears of violence. In early
November 2010, the president of Comparmex, Mexico’s employers’ federation, released a
statement that the violence in certain parts of the country was endangering Mexican businesses.
The Calderón government acknowledged the criticism and announced that more assistance would
be available to service-sector businesses in blighted areas like Ciudad Juárez.118 The business
association’s message was reinforced a couple of days later when former U.S. Ambassador to
Mexico, Carlos Pascual, cited the results of a U.S. State Department survey conducted in July
2010 that a third of U.S. companies operating in Mexico had been affected by crime (usually
either blackmail or kidnapping) and one-half had been affected by the government’s drug war
with the traffickers.119 This was reiterated in a poll by the American Chamber of Commerce in
112 Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez, “Cómo Reducir La Violencia en México,” Nexos en Línea,” November 3, 2010.
113 Ibid.
114 "Mexico: What is Going on in Monterrey?," Latin American Weekly Report, August 19, 2010.
115 TBI, Justice in Mexico: July 2011 News Report.
116 See, for example, STRATFOR, “The Evolution of Mexican Drug Cartels’ Areas of Influence,” April 28, 2011;
STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Wars Update: Targeting the Most Violent Cartels,” July 21, 2011.
117 Ibid.
118 "Business Calls for Action in Killings," Latin American Weekly Report, November 4, 2010.
119 “U.S. Ambassador Warns Mexico,” LatinNews Daily, November 5, 2010.
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Figure 2. Drug Trafficking-Related Killings in Mexico by State
(2007-2010)
Source: Crime Indicator Database of the Trans-Border Institute (TBI) at the University of San Diego, adapted
by CRS. The data represented are from Reforma newspaper.
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March 2011 which showed security fears among U.S. companies had increased during 2010.120
The State Department’s travel warning updated in April 2011 reported that the number of
Americans murdered in Mexico rose from 35 in 2007 to 111 in 2010.121
One consequence of the intense violence in many municipalities is the forced displacement of
residents fleeing for safety. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in December
2010 that 230,000 persons were displaced, roughly half of whom have fled to the United States
and the others are internally displaced inside Mexico. In some municipalities where gun battles
have been fought in the streets, those who are able to have abandoned their homes, such as in
Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas in 2010.122 In addition, many Mexican nationals fearing that they could
be victims of the violence (including journalists and law enforcement officers) have sought
asylum in the United States. 123 According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were 3,231
requests for asylum from Mexico in FY2010, but only 49 requests (1.5%) were granted.124
Mexico’s Antidrug Strategy and Reaction 125
President Calderón’s military-led crackdown on the drug trafficking organizations has been at the
center of his domestic policy, and he launched his aggressive approach almost immediately after
his inauguration in December 2006. He has since deployed some 50,000 Mexican military and
thousands of federal police around the country to combat the DTOs.126 The basic strategy has
been to confront and dismantle the drug trafficking organizations by going after the high-value
targets: the leadership of the major DTOs.
The DTOs have fought back strongly, refusing to allow law enforcement actions from taking
place or going unpunished and making an all-out effort to neutralize repressive measures. The
DTOs have also demonstrated an unanticipated resilience as their leadership is arrested or killed.
Mexico’s Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna and others have acknowledged that
removing the high-value targets at the top of the organization has not paralyzed the DTOs
because in most cases the organizations have transferred power to new and sometimes more
120 "Mexico Security Fears Grow for U.S. Firms-Survey," Reuters, March 15, 2011. This article also notes that the
Chamber of Commerce overall remains “bullish” about investment in Mexico.
121 The State Department does not identify which murders may be attributed to the drug trafficking-related violence or
organized crime, although the April 2011 travel warning does describe the heightened risk caused by transnational
criminal organizations (TCOs) in different parts of the country. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs,
Travel Warning: Mexico, April 22, 2011, http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_5440.html. See also Dudley
Althaus, “Record Number of U.S. Citizens killed in Mexico in 2010,” San Antonio Express News, April 29, 2011.
122 Norwegian Refugee Council – Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Briefing Paper on Forced Displacement
in Mexico due to Drug Cartel Violence,” December 2010.
123 Patricia Giovine, "More Mexicans Fleeing the Drug War Seek U.S. Asylum," Chicago Tribune, July 14, 2011.
124 U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Office of Planning, Analysis, and
Technology, Immigration Courts, FY2010 Asylum Statistics, at http://www.justice.gov/eoir/efoia/FY10AsyStats.pdf.
125 For a fuller discussion of the Mexican government’s strategy see: CRS Report RL32724, Mexico: Issues for
Congress, by Clare Ribando Seelke. The report notes there are several elements to the Calderón government’s
approach: 1) deploying the military to restore law and order; 2) expanding law enforcement operations; 3) initiating
institutional reform and anti-corruption efforts; 4) recovering social cohesion and trust, and 5) building up international
partnerships against crime and drugs (such as the Mérida Initiative and Beyond Mérida, as proposed in the Obama
Administration’s FY2011 budget).
126 Ken Ellingwood, "An Agony of Its Own; Some See a Colombian Parallel to Mexico's Drug Violence. But as the
U.S. Considers Its Options, It's the Differences that Will Count," Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2010.
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violent leaders.127 An additional complexity is that the drug organizations are adapting and
transforming themselves from hierarchical and vertical organizations to becoming more multi-
nodal and horizontal in their structure. Some now operate in a manner of independent cell-like
structures that is harder for law enforcement to decapitate.128 As the Mexican military has shifted
resources in its pursuit of leaders of the DTOs, it appears to have fewer resources to devote to
older missions such as eradication and other programs. This may be contributing to the increases
in the cultivation of opium and marijuana, and production of heroin and methamphetamine,
which, unfortunately, are generating more income for the DTOs.
In carrying out his antidrug strategy, President Calderón has demonstrated an unprecedented
willingness to collaborate with the United States on counterdrug measures. U.S.-Mexican security
cooperation has been structured upon the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.-funded $1.5 billion program to
expand bilateral and regional cooperation to combat organized crime, DTOs, and other criminal
gangs from 2008-2010.129 The initiative, as it was originally conceived by Presidents George W.
Bush and Felipe Calderón in 2007, was to end with the FY2010 budget cycle. Its focus has
evolved from providing hardware to Mexican security forces to modernizing and strengthening
institutions of law enforcement and judicial systems in Mexico and Central America. A successor
to the Mérida Initiative strategy focused on Mexico—called “Beyond Mérida”—was introduced
by the Obama Administration in the FY2011 budget request. The “four pillars” of the new
strategy, outlined in the FY2011 request, are (1) disrupting organized crime groups; (2)
institutionalizing the rule of law; (3) building a 21st-century border; and (4) building strong and
resilient communities. The Obama Administration’s funding priorities are moving way from
providing equipment to Mexican security forces to supporting institutional reform programs in
Mexico.
A similar shift is evident in Mexico’s domestic strategy. Following a brutal massacre of 15 youth
at a party in Ciudad Juárez in January 2010, President Calderón made a series of visits to the
border city and announced that police and military action alone were insufficient to address
Juárez’s problems. Within weeks, the Calderón Administration released a plan, “Todos Somos
Juárez,” to address social causes that sustain the drug trade such as unemployment and a weak
education system, which parallels Pillar 4 of the Beyond Mérida strategy.130 In addition, the
Calderón government has taken advantage of improved sharing of U.S. intelligence, and
vigorously responded to extradition requests of suspects wanted by the United States.131 The
127 One former drug operative in Mexico described the dilemma in an interview. “Trying to stop the gangsters ‘is like
mowing the grass….You can cut it down. But it always grows back.’” See "Under the Volcano," Economist, October
16, 2010. See also: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Long War of Genaro Garcia Luna,” New York Times, July 13,
2008.
128 The evolution is described by Luis Astorga and David Shirk as a move from centralized, hierarchical structures to
“an increasingly multi-polar constellation of trafficking organizations with varying specializations and capacities in the
late 1990s and 2000s.” Luis Astorga and David A. Shirk, Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies
in the U.S.-Mexican Context, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Mexico Institute, Working Paper
Series on U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation, May 2010, p. 25. See also: Juan Carlos Garzón, Mafia & Co.: The
Criminal Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, June 2008.
129 For background on the Mérida Initiative and its successor Beyond Mérida, see CRS Report R41349, U.S.-Mexican
Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond , by Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea.
130 Estrategia Todos Somos Juárez, http://www.todossomosjuarez.gob.mx/estrategia/index.html
131 One of the earliest successes of the Calderón counterdrug strategy was the extradition of Osiel Cardenas Guillen (the
notorious leader of the Gulf DTO) to the United States in January 2007. Extraditions have increased significantly
during the five-years of the Calderón government. For example, in 2009, the Mexican government extradited a record
107 suspects to the United States and in 2010 another 94 individuals.
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Calderón administration is also implementing a major restructuring of the judicial system and
building a federal police force vetted to reduce corruption.
President Calderón convened for the first time a “dialogue on security” bringing together
government officials with business leaders, civic leaders, and academics in August 2010 to
publicly discuss the country’s antidrug strategy. These discussions were partly a response to the
Mexican government’s inconsistent and incomplete releases of public information on drug
trafficking-related homicides.132 President Calderón notably said at one forum he would be
willing to discuss the option of drug legalization, although he quickly announced that he was not
a supporter of legalization.133 He reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the antidrug fight
observing that the violence threatened the media and democratic governance.134
The Mexican military had initially been in the forefront of the government’s drug campaign as an
interim solution until enough police could be vetted, trained, and equipped to take back the lead
in the public security function. The Calderón Administration has apparently assessed that current
programs of police and justice reform will be insufficient to rid the system of corruption before
Calderón’s six-year term expires at the end of 2012.135 Persistent police corruption was
highlighted in the August 30, 2010, purge of the federal police in which more than 3,000 officers
were fired. In addition, supporters of the Calderón strategy maintain that to confront DTOs armed
with powerful assault and military-style weapons a well-armed military-led response is necessary.
At the conclusion of the August 2010 security dialogue, President Calderón said that the military,
which has led the fight against the DTOs during the first four years of his administration, would
remain in place until the end of his term.
Another challenge for the Calderón strategy has been a rise in drug abuse in border cities such as
Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, and the gang warfare that has broken out to control that local drug
trade.136 Local drug dealing increased because drugs headed for the U.S. market are being stopped
from going over the border. Gangs that are hired by the DTOs for protection and other
“outsourced” services are paid in product (illegal drugs) and need to convert the drugs to cash. To
control street corner sales, DTO-supplied gangs are killing each other in both border cities.
Unemployment, caused by the economic downturn and businesses fleeing the violence, has also
provided ready recruits for the gangs, who are also hired by the DTOs to fight as their proxies.
In order to improve intelligence sharing and increase U.S. support for Mexico’s struggle against
organized crime, binational cooperation in 2011 included the deployment of U.S. unmanned
aerial vehicles to gather intelligence on DTO activities137 and the recent opening of a compound
132 David Shirk, “Mexican Government Reveals Distribution of Drug Violence,” Justice in Mexico blog, Trans-Border
Institute, http://justiceinmexico.org/2010/08/28/.
133 "Mexico's President Calls Legalisation Debate," LatinNews Daily, August 4, 2010. President Calderón subsequently
expressed opposition to a California ballot initiative, Proposition 19, which would have legalized adult use of
marijuana. California voters defeated the measure in the November 2010 general election.
134 "Calderón Calls for Debate on Marijuana," Latin News Weekly Report, August 5, 2010.
135 Economist Intelligence Unit, “Mexico Politics: Whither the War on Drugs?,” September 2, 2010.
136 Thousands of gang members in both the United States and Mexico serve the Mexican DTOs. In Ciudad Juárez there
are an estimated 500 gangs with a combined membership of between 15,000 to 25,000 persons. Eduardo Guerrero
Gutiérrez, “Cómo Reducir La Violencia en México,” Nexos en Línea,” November 3, 2010.
137 Ginger Thompson and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. Drones Fly Deep in Mexico to Fight Drugs,” New York Times, March
16, 2011.
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to gather intelligence in northern Mexico.138 The compound, reportedly staffed by DEA, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and civilian personnel from the Pentagon’s Northern Command, is to
be modeled on “fusion intelligence centers” operated by the United States in Afghanistan and
Iraq.139 Responding to concerns about the fusion center, William J. Burns, U.S. Deputy Secretary
of State, in a roundtable with Mexican news media stressed that this intelligence analysis program
is not a basis for U.S. personnel to conduct operations or engage in law enforcement activities in
Mexico.140 In his remarks on August 16, 2011, he stated the United States would always respect
Mexican sovereignty and provide cooperation based upon the request of Mexican authorities.141
Trends and Outlook
Notwithstanding how the violence is characterized, a few trends are clear. First, the drug-
trafficking related violence has continued to increase dramatically. According to the Reforma
data, the number of killings doubled between 2007 and 2008. In 2009, with more than 6,500 drug
trafficking-related homicides, the number of deaths increased by at least 20% over 2008. In 2010,
the number of drug trafficking-related deaths surpassed 11,000, a more than 70% increase over
the prior year, according to media reporting. In data released in January 2011, the Mexican
government reported organized crime killings surpassed 15,000 in 2010.142
Second, the violence is concentrated in a few cities and towns, with 80% of the deaths
concentrated in slightly under 7% of Mexico’s municipalities, according to Mexican government
data released in August 2010.143 According to the newer Mexican government data, violence in
2010 continued to be concentrated in relatively few cities with over 70% of the violence in just 80
municipalities.144
Third, the violence is largely targeted at people with ties to the drug trafficking organizations
because much of the violence is open warfare between and within the organizations. The number
of Mexican security forces (military and police) killed is believed to be approximately 7% of the
total, although estimates vary.145 Some of these deaths involve individuals who may have at some
time colluded with one DTO or another. Until recently, the Mexican government maintained that
most of the victims are tied to the DTOs so the extensive violence should be seen as a sign of
success.
138 Ginger Thompson, “U.S. Widens Its Role in Battle Against Mexico’s Drug Cartels,” New York Times, August 7,
2011.
139 Ibid.
140 William J. Burns, Deputy Secretary of State, “Roundtable with Mexican Media,” U.S. Embassy, Mexico City,
August 16, 2011.
141 Ibid.
142 Viridiana Ríos and David Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2010, Trans-Border Institute
(TBI), University of San Diego, January 2011.
143 Mexican Federal Government, “Información Sobre el Fenómeno Delictivo en México,” August 2010; David Shirk,
“Mexican Government Reveals Distribution of Drug Violence,” Justice in Mexico blog, Trans-Border Institute,
http://justiceinmexico.org/2010/08/28/.
144 Ríos and Shirk, op. cit.
145 TBI, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis from 2001-2009, January 2010.
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Fourth, the power of the DTOs is fluid and the boundaries of their operations change. The seven
significant organizations are loosely geographically based, but their areas of operation evolve
rapidly and are likely to continue to do so. The conflict evolves as fighting between DTOs over
drug plazas and corridors is exacerbated or resolved. Some DTOs have splintered. The
fragmentation of DTOs has generated more violence, but there is a debate if fragmentation
represents a long-run weakening of the DTOs’ influence and makes them more susceptible to
state penetration.146
While forecasting changes in the levels of the violence is speculative, most analysts see the high
rates of violence continuing in the near term.147 The inputs from the United States that fuel the
violence—high-powered guns and illicit profits—have not been significantly disrupted.148 A 2010
report maintains that from the start of the Calderón Administration until February 2010, the
Mexican government seized and submitted for tracing about 75,000 illegal firearms, and of those
the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)
determined that the majority came from the United States.149 Seizures of illicit funds derived from
drug trafficking have been low. An estimated $20 billion to $25 billion annually in bulk cash
flows back to Mexico and its Colombian suppliers from drug sales in the United States.
According to an analysis by the Washington Post of data from the U.S. and Mexican
governments, only about 1% of this cash is recovered despite unprecedented efforts to seize
more.150
146 Diana Villiers Negroponte, “Measuring Success in the Drug War: Criteria to Determine Progress in Mexico’s
Efforts to Defeat Narco-traffickers,” Brookings Institution, October 19, 2010, at
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0525_mexico_drug_war_negroponte.aspx.
147 See STRATFOR, “Mexican Drug Cartels: An Update,” May 17, 2010. The DEA in various testimony before
Congress has predicted that the violence will continue to increase. For example, in testimony before the Senate Caucus
on International Narcotics Control, DEA’s Anthony Placido said “The fight against Mexican DTOs is at a critical stage
and the violence which is the by-product of this contest may get worse before it gets better. As such, we must manage
expectations as well. It took decades for these Mexican DTOs to gain the level of power and impunity that they
presently enjoy. We’re working at breakneck pains with our government of Mexico counterparts to deal with this
cancer, but we may have to deal with the chemotherapy in the process.” For more see, Statement of Anthony P.
Placido, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Administration and Kevin L. Perkins, Assistant
Director, Criminal Investigative Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, hearing before the Senate Caucus on
International Narcotics Control, Drug Trafficking Violence in Mexico: Implications for the United States, May 5, 2010.
148 For background on the problem of gun trafficking, see CRS Report R40733, Gun Trafficking and the Southwest
Border, by Vivian S. Chu and William J. Krouse. It is estimated that illicit drug sales in the United States generate
between $19 billion and $29 billion that flows back to Mexico each year. Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
United States-Mexico Criminal Proceeds Study, June 2010. Analysts have found it difficult to determine how much of
these funds are transferred back to the Mexican DTOs through bulk cash flows and how much is laundered through
other methods. Douglas Farah, "Money Laundering and Bulk Cash Smuggling: Challenges for the Mérida Initiative," in
Shared Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Options for Confronting Organized Crime, ed. Eric L. Olson, David A. Shirk, and
Andrew Selee (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of San Diego,
2010).
149 Colby Goodman and Michael Marizco, U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico: New Data and Insights Illuminate Key
Trends and Challenges, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Mexico Institute, Working Paper on U.S.-
Mexico Security Cooperation, September 2010. The study states “In May 2010, for example, the Mexican government,
which has received training from ATF to better identify firearms, said that of the 75,000 firearms it seized in the last
three years about 80 percent, or 60,000 firearms, came from the United States.” Analysts contest how many firearms
the Mexican government has seized and if the sample of those submitted for tracing to the ATF is representative. The
Mexican government and many others have argued the increased availability of high-powered weapons, often
originating from the United States, provides the tools for more violence.
150 William Booth and Nick Miroff, "Stepped-up Efforts by U.S., Mexico Fail to Stem Flow of Drug Money South,"
Washington Post, August 25, 2010.
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Nevertheless, cooperation between Mexico and the United States has markedly increased under
the Mérida Initiative over the last three years. Mexico has recently made an increased
commitment to control its borders and announced a new initiative in September 2010 to control
money laundering and disrupt the flow of drug money.151 In the United States, bilateral
cooperation on money laundering cases, including training for Mexican prosecutors, has
increased.152 The United States and Mexico have formed a Bilateral Money Laundering Working
Group to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of money laundering and bulk cash
smuggling.153 Since 2001, the United States has applied financial sanctions to all the major DTOs
in Mexico or individuals heading those DTOs (as well as several smaller organizations) under the
Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.154 For example, in April 2009 President Obama
designated as significant foreign narcotics traffickers La Familia Michoacana, the Sinaloa, and
Gulf DTOs pursuant to the act.155
The brutal violence associated with drug trafficking in Mexico appears to exceed the violence that
is intrinsic to narcotics trafficking and organized crime in general. The attack on civil society has
been particularly harsh for local government officials and journalists. In 2010, 14 Mexican
mayors were killed allegedly by drug traffickers. In the five years of the Calderón government’s
crackdown on the DTOs, more than 30 journalists in Mexico have been murdered or disappeared
according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists, including at least 10 journalists in
2010.156 Journalists have come together for protection and in many cases increasingly engage in
self censorship to prevent being attacked. In 2011, between January and July, five journalists were
assassinated in Mexico possibly for reasons related to their profession157 There have been reports
of innocent bystanders increasingly being caught in the violence. On August 25, 2011, 52 people
lost their lives in a casino fire allegedly ignited by Los Zetas, the highest number of Mexican
civilians killed in a single incident since the beginning of the government’s campaign against
organized crime.158 President Calderón decried the incident as the work of “true terrorists,”159
others have noted that this may prove to be another example of organized crime’s involvement in
corruption and extortion.160
151 Embassy of Mexico, “Fact Sheet – National Strategy for Preventing and Fighting Money Laundering and the
Financing of Terrorism,” September 2010.
152 Joseph Palazzo, "U.S. in New Drug-Money Push," Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2010.
153 For more background, see CRS Report R41349, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and
Beyond , by Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea.
154 The U.S. Department of the Treasury of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) targets and blocks
financial assets, subject to U.S. jurisdiction, of drug kingpins and related associates and entities. See CRS Report
R41215, Latin America and the Caribbean: Illicit Drug Trafficking and U.S. Counterdrug Programs, coordinated by
Clare Ribando Seelke.
155 The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Fact Sheet: Overview of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin
Designation Act,” April 15, 2009. President Obama made the designation prior to a trip to Mexico to meet with
President Calderón to discuss counternarcotics cooperation and other bilateral issues on April 16-17, 2009.
156 “Attacks on the Press 2010: Mexico,” Committee to Protect Journalists, February 15, 2011, at
http://www.cpj.org/2011/02/attacks-on-the-press-2010-mexico.php; Carlos Lauria and Mike O'Connor, Silence or
Death In Mexico's Press: Crime, Violence, and Corruption Are Destroying the Country's Journalists, Committee to
Protect Journalists, September 8, 2010, at http://cpj.org/reports/2010/09/silence-or-death-in-mexicos-press.php.
157 Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, “Press Release: Office of the Special Rapporteur
Condemns Murder of a Journalist in Mexico,” R81/11, July 29, 2011.
158 Tracy Wilkinson, "As Fury Builds in Mexico, 5 Arrested in Casino Fire," Chicago Tribune, August 30, 2011.
159 Dudley Althaus, “Calderon: Casino Killers 'Terrorists',” Houston Chronicle, August 27, 2011.
160 “Corruption, not terrorism? Extortion now suspected in casino deaths,” Washington Post, September 1, 2011.
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The use of car bombs, simultaneous attacks in different cities, and a couple of incidents of
seemingly indiscriminate attacks on civilians (including the aforementioned casino fire) have
raised concerns that the DTOs may be using tactics similar to those of insurgent groups or
terrorists. 161 The DTOs, however, appear to lack a discernible political goal or ideology, which is
one element of a widely recognized definition of terrorism. The U.S. State Department, in its
Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, published in August 2011, maintains that notwithstanding
Mexico’s “unprecedented drug trafficking-related violence... No known international terrorist
organization had an operational presence in Mexico and no terrorist group targeted U.S. interests
and personnel in or from Mexican territory. There was no evidence . . . that the criminal
organizations had aims of political or territorial control, aside from seeking to protect and expand
the impunity with which they conduct their criminal activity.”162
The violence has affected the state of democracy in Mexico. For example, the human rights group
Freedom House downgraded Mexico in its 2011 ranking as part of its annual evaluation of
political rights and civil liberties worldwide. Freedom House ranks countries as free, partly free,
or not free. In its Freedom in the World 2011 report, Mexico was downgraded from “free” in 2010
to “partly free” in 2011 because of a decline in its political rights rating “due to the targeting of
local officials by organized crime groups and the government’s inability to protect citizens’ rights
in the face of criminal violence.”
For the foreseeable future, current and future Mexican governments will likely have to deal with
the DTOs and the violence they generate. The DTOs are having a profound demoralizing and
delegitimizing effect on local, state, and federal government in Mexico. It may take years of
building stronger institutions before violence is markedly reduced. Notwithstanding the DTO
violence, Mexico continues to have one of the lower homicide rates in the region, although the
recent escalation in drug trafficking-related deaths has pushed the national homicide rate
significantly higher. From a nationwide homicide rate of 11 homicides per 100,000 in 2008, the
national homicide rate rose to 14 per 100,000 in 2009163 and according to Mexico’s National
Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) it rose to 22 per 100,000 in 2010. Still, national
homicide rates in several Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, and El
Salvador, are much higher (40-80 per 100,000).164 Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela’s national
homicide rates also significantly exceeded Mexico’s in recent years.165 The marked increased in
2010 is firm evidence that organized crime homicides are having a major national impact.166
The Mexican public does not appear to credit the government’s claim of success in reducing the
violence and improving street security. Recent polls have shown Mexicans believe the DTOs are
161 Mark A. R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caukins, and Angela Hawken, Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to
Know (Oxford University Press, 2011); Jane’s Information Group, “Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment – Central
America and the Caribbean,” February 16, 2011. Of note, some Members of Congress have introduced legislation
(H.R. 1270) that would direct the U.S. Secretary of State to designate six of the Mexican DTOs as foreign terrorist
organizations.
162 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, August 18, 2011.
163 Economist Intelligence Unit, “Mexico Risk: Security Risk,” September 23, 2010.
164 William R. Brownfield, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs,
“Remarks at the Council of Americas,” August 11, 2011.
165 Williams, op. cit. For a comparison to Brazil (26 homicides per 100,000), see U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos
Pascual’s speech “Mexico at a Crossroads,” Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series, Stanford University,
delivered October 20, 2010.
166 "Study: Mexico Homicides Rose 23 Percent in 2010," USA Today, July 29, 2011.
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winning the conflict. For example, a poll in March 2011 found that 59% of respondents believed
that the drug cartels were winning the conflict, and more than two-thirds polled said that Calderón
had lost control of the situation in Mexico.167 A survey conducted by Pew Research Center and
published in late August 2011, had a similar finding: less than half (45%) believed the
government is making progress in the campaign against the DTOs.168 However, the Pew study
had some interesting additional findings. The Mexican public, while appalled at the violence, has
continued to back the use of the Mexican military as part of the Calderón government’s antidrug
campaign (83% of respondents). This apparent support for the military’s role in the antidrug effort
comes despite a popular movement protesting abuses by the military which has gained ground
since early 2011 (see below). According to the PEW survey, a larger fraction says they would
support American military assistance (38%) than in 2010, with nearly three-quarters of
respondents indicating they welcomed U.S. help to train the Mexican police and the military.169
President Calderón has confronted a recently emerging peace movement led by Mexican poet
Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed by drug gangs in Cuernavaca in March 2011. Sicilia, who
now leads the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, has met with the President several
times including in a televised meeting in June 2011. He has led a peace caravan across Mexico,
and headed recent demonstrations in Mexico City. Sicilia has urged the president to abandon his
military-led strategy, which some of his supporters believe has caused violence and human rights
abuses by security forces. They propose a new approach focused on combating poverty,
inequality, and unemployment which they say are contributing to the rising violence.170
For many Mexican citizens, the primary sign of success of Calderón’s anti-DTO program would
be a significant reduction in the violence. But such a goal may prove illusive given that the
government’s current strategy is stimulating DTO rivalries and intra-DTO battles for succession.
In addition, the operations of the Mexican military have led to complaints of human rights
violations that include forced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary detention.171 The manner in
which the violence will be reduced could depend upon the policies of the president who succeeds
Calderón when his term ends in 2012.172
To reduce the violence will require public support for the government’s policy. Thus far, the
confrontation with the DTOs and other criminal organizations has failed to bring the violence
down, and public backing for the Calderón counterdrug strategy has waned. Some observers have
criticized the Calderón government for adopting an aggressive approach (literally declaring war
on the drug traffickers) without having a clear definition of success, without understanding the
consequences of the policy, and without having the tools necessary to win.173 Elements of the
government’s strategy in the Beyond Mérida program that are designed to reduce the violence,
167 Tim Johnson, “Poll: Mexico’s Cartels are Winning the Drug War,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 29, 2011.
168 Pew Research Center, “Crime and Drug Cartels Top Concerns in Mexico,” Press Release, August 31, 2011. The
study can be accessed at http://pewglobal.org/files/2011/08/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Mexico-Report-FINAL-August-31-
2011.pdf
169 Ibid. See also, Sara Miller Llana, "In Drug War, Mexico Warms to the U.S.," Christian Science Monitor: Daily
News Briefing, September 2, 2011.
170 Candace Vallantin, “Mexicans Campaign to End Drug War; Renowned Poet Puts Down his Pen to Focus on a
Caravan For Peace,” Toronto Star, June 7, 2011.
171 Maureen Meyer, Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez: An Analysis of Human Rights Violations by the Military in
Mexico, Washington Office on Latin America, September 2010.
172 In Mexico, the President is limited to one six-year term by the Constitution.
173 See, for example, Jorge G. Castaneda, "What's Spanish for Quagmire?," Foreign Policy, January/February 2010.
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such as institutionalizing the rule of law, reforming the justice system, and completing economic
and social development programs to combat crime, all have a longer timeframe.174 It may take
years or decades to build effective, efficient legal institutions in Mexico that resist threats and
bribery. Yet policy analysts believe these institutions are necessary before the DTOs can be
reduced from a national security threat to a law and order problem.
Some observers in Mexico are advocating anti-violence programs modeled on successful
strategies used in other Latin American cities, such as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Guayaquil in
Ecuador, or from programs in the United States.175 A very new development is significantly
increased sharing of intelligence at the federal level by the United States with Mexico, which
reflects greater U.S. confidence in Mexican law enforcement capacity and integrity. This
development again raises the possibility that identifying and targeting DTO leaders for
apprehension and investigation and successfully removing them can work to lower the violence.
However, if the long-established pattern of ineffectual attacks and prosecution of DTO leaders
continues, the intense violence is likely to endure. If a near-term solution to the violence is not
adopted, there could be public pressure in Mexico to resort to the policies of accommodation that
worked in the past. Alternatively, some communities may take matters into their own hands and
resort to vigilante justice, as some have already.176 The direction of Mexico’s antidrug policy will
likely be a key issue in the next presidential election.
As noted above, U.S.-Mexico security cooperation has increased significantly with the
implementation of the Mérida Initiative, an Administration program that Congress began funding
in 2008. The new Beyond Mérida strategy in Mexico is increasingly focused on the challenges of
bringing violence under control. The increased use of intelligence-based security operations that
has led to successes in taking down the top DTO leaders is now being expanded to disrupt the
capacity of the entire organization—not just top leadership and their hired killers, but those that
handle the money and acquire the guns.177
The goal of the Mexican government’s present drug strategy is to reduce the extent and character
of the DTOs’ activity from a national security threat to a law and order problem and to transfer
responsibility from military forces back to the police. While the DTOs have used terrorist tactics,
they do not use them to the degree or with the same intentions as did narco traffickers in
Colombia.178 Mexico’s challenge remains largely an organized crime or mafia problem, and the
most important tools for managing it include long-term institutional reform and the replacement
of a culture of illegality with one of rule of law and legality.
174 The United States and Mexico are recognizing that reduction in violence must be a key goal of the Beyond Mérida
strategy. For more on the Beyond Mérida strategy, see CRS Report R41349, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The
Mérida Initiative and Beyond.
175 Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez, “Cómo Reducir La Violencia en México,” Nexos en Línea,” November 3, 2010.
Guerrero cites the Boston program “Operation Ceasefire” and the Tri-Agency Resource Gang Enforcement Team
(TARGET) of Orange County, California, as two examples of effective programs to reduce violence by applying the
principle of concentrating enforcement efforts and reducing violence through credibly communicating to violent
offenders that they will be prosecuted.
176 Nick Miroff and William Booth, "In Mexico, a Legal Breakdown Invites Brutal Justice," Washington Post,
December 9, 2010.
177 For more on the Mérida Initiative and Beyond Mérida, see CRS Report R41349, U.S.-Mexican Security
Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond , by Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea.
178 Ken Ellingwood, "Is Mexico a New Colombia? Mexicans May Have Cause to Bristle at U.S. Comparison," Chicago
Tribune, September 26, 2010. Also see Appendix.
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Appendix. Comparing Mexico and Colombia
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the upsurge in violence in Mexico to the situation in
Colombia 20 years ago in her remarks before the Council of Foreign Relations in September
2010.179 The comparison to Colombia was quickly disavowed by the Mexican government (and
reportedly by President Obama), but broadened the debate about the seriousness of the threat
posed to Mexico’s national security and democracy.
Some analysts employ the Colombia comparison to argue that the successes of Plan Colombia180
offer appropriate prescriptions for Mexico. Other observers counter that Colombia two decades
ago faced a very different challenge than Mexico faces today. The government of Colombia
confronted an insurgency of armed guerrillas who were attempting to overthrow the Colombian
government, while simultaneously facing a campaign of violence by its drug trafficking
organizations. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other armed groups in
the country had the goal of replacing the Colombian state, which is significantly different from
the goal of the DTOs of Mexico, which want impunity to traffic drugs and engage in other illicit
activities for profit. While the FARC and other insurgents turned to drug trafficking to help
finance their cause, their goal was to overthrow the sovereign state. At the height of their power,
the FARC and other insurgents controlled more than a third of the country’s municipalities.181 The
degree to which some of Mexico’s municipalities are influenced by the DTOs is hard to
determine. In Mexico, the goal of the traffickers is to corrupt the police and government at all
levels to allow them to pursue illicit profits, but it is not to take control of the apparatus of the
state. Thus, it remains a problem of criminality rather than a battle with insurgents or terrorists.
On the other hand, because some of the characteristics of the violence in Mexico—political
assassinations, car bombs, extreme violence, and the increased killing of innocent bystanders—
are similar to the tactics of political insurgents, some analysts have asserted that the violence goes
beyond conventional organized crime behavior. These observers maintain that the violence is
highly organized and exceptionally brutal, and therefore it is qualitatively different from criminal
violence.182 Some policy analysts have described the Mexican criminal organizations as a
“criminal insurgency.”183 John P. Sullivan at the Center for Advanced Studies in Terrorism
describes how the response to the government’s enforcement crackdown led to the evolution of
the conflict and violence: “In Mexico, when faced with a crackdown, the cartels chose to battle
179 “A Conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 8,
2010. Transcript available at
http://www.cfr.org/publication/22896/conversation_with_us_secretary_of_state_hillary_rodham_clinton.html.
180 Plan Colombia is a U.S.-supported counterdrug and counterterrorism program that has operated for more than a
decade in Colombia. For more background, see CRS Report RL32250, Colombia: Issues for Congress, by June S.
Beittel.
181 U.S. General Accounting Office, Drug Control: Challenges in Implementing Plan Colombia, Statement of Jess T.
Ford, Director, International Affairs and Trade, GAO-01-76T, October 12, 2000.
182 For example, there have been near simultaneous actions against Mexico’s military or police forces, coordinated
attacks on different cities, cartel roadblocks throughout cities like Monterrey to prevent responders from reaching
firefights or other hot spots, and kidnappings by cartel forces dressed in Mexican police or military uniforms or in close
simulations of the official uniforms.
183 For other analysts using the terminology of “criminal insurgency” see Bob Killebrew and Jennifer Bernal, Crime
Wars: Gangs, Cartels and U.S. National Security, Center for a New American Security, September 2010.
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each other and the government to maintain a stake in the game. A high level of violence,
impunity, and a criminal insurgency were thus an unintended side effect.”184
From another perspective, Professor Phil Williams argues that the violence is that of traditional
organized crime, but taken to new depths or levels of intensity. He suggests that the Mexican drug
trafficking-related violence grows out of a “perfect storm” of conditions. The situation in Mexico
has precedents and parallels with the growth of criminal organizations in Italy, Russia, Albania,
and elsewhere. In addition, there is a feature of “anomie” to Mexico’s violence—the homicidal
violence has become a feature of everyday life leading to “a degeneration of rules and norms and
the emergence of forms of behavior unconstrained by standard notions of what is acceptable.”185
The Mexican DTOs do not have an ideology other than a ruthless pursuit of profit, but their
corruption and intimidation have challenged the state’s monopoly on the use of force and rule of
law. In Mexico, the police and court system, historically weak and undercut by corruption, are not
equipped, organized or managed to combat the drug organizations. Most arrests are never
prosecuted. However, there have been many arrests, and suspects are usually displayed to the
news media. Arrests have only a 1% to 2 % chance of leading to a conviction or time served.186
The violent response of the DTOs to the Calderón government’s antidrug campaign, similar to
what was seen in smaller municipalities throughout Colombia, has intimidated local, state, and
federal authorities. DTO profits, like those made by local FARC commanders in Colombia, are
shared with government officials at all levels. Unlike the Colombian FARC, the Mexican
traffickers do not seek to replace the government and provide services, but they are committed to
manipulating it with bribery and violence to continue their illegal activities without interference.
Some observers argue that parts of the Mexican state have been “captured” similar to the control
insurgents once had over large parts of Colombia. These analysts maintain that some states or
localities in Mexico are under DTO control.187 For example, in Michoacán, the LFM organization
controls many local businesses through extortion (taxing businesses or charging them for security
services). According to one estimate, approximately 85% of legitimate businesses in Michoacán
have some type of relationship with the LFM.188 Another study concerning DTO presence in
Mexican local governments was released in late August 2010. That study, entitled “Municipal
Government and Organized Crime,” prepared for a committee of the Mexican Senate, reportedly
found that 195 Mexican municipalities (8% of the total) are completely under control of
organized crime, while another 1,536 (63% of the total) are “infiltrated” by organized crime. The
study concludes that a majority of Mexican municipalities had organized crime elements capable
of controlling the illicit businesses of retail drug trafficking, cultivation and trafficking of drugs,
184 John P. Sullivan, "Counter-supply and Counter-violence Approaches to Narcotics Trafficking," Small Wars &
Insurgencies, vol. 21, no. 1 (March 12, 2010), p. 186.
185 Williams, op. cit.
186 “Study: 98.5% of Crimes Go Unpunished in Mexico,” Latin America Herald Tribune, November 14, 2010; William
Booth, “In Mexico, Made-for-TV Confessions,” August 31, 2011. The latter article cites a report by Mexico’s National
Autonomous University which found that “only 5% of all crimes go before a judge.” See also, Guillermo Zepeda,
Indice de Incidencia Delictiva y Violencia 2009, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC), Mexico City, August
2009.
187 For example, see William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” The New Yorker, May 31, 2010.
188 Ibid.
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Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
kidnapping, and extortion.189 The study found that criminal structures operate with logistical
support from corrupt municipal police and politicians.190
Some analysts contend that Colombia's experience provides valuable lessons for Mexico.191 The
increasing training provided by Colombian security forces to Mexico’s army and police in recent
years demonstrates that there are operational lessons that Mexican authorities value.192 Others
maintain that Mexico’s situation is distinctly complex which limits the relevance of Colombia as
a model. Clearly, there are many lessons learned from studying the U.S. supported successes and
failures in Colombia, but their application to Mexico is limited by the countries’ very different
histories and circumstances.
Author Contact Information
June S. Beittel
Analyst in Latin American Affairs
jbeittel@crs.loc.gov, 7-7613
189 “Measuring the Extent of Drug Cartel Control in Mexico,” LatinNews Daily, September 15, 2010. Ricardo Ravelo,
"Los Cárteles Imponen Su Ley," Proceso, October 24, 2010.
190 Ibid.
191 For example, Robert C. Bonner, "The New Cocaine Cowboys," Foreign Affairs, vol. 89 (July/August 2010). Bonner
looks to an earlier era for lessons from Colombia, but asserts that: “Virtually all the key lessons learned from the defeat
of the Colombian cartels in the 1990s are applicable to the current battle against the Mexican cartels.”
192 Juan Forero, "Colombia Stepping Up Anti-Drug Training of Mexico's Army, Police," Washington Post, January 22,
2011.
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