Questions and answers on drug-related violence in Mexico
the use of troops? Human rights groups caution against using the military to enforce law and order. Their main concern is a lack of accountability. Others say that President Calderon’s extensive deployment of the army leaves him with few options in the future. They argue that if the army loses the battle, or gets so close to the drug cartels that it is itself corrupted, then there is nothing left between the cartels and the government.
How serious is corruption within the police? Very. One reason why the government has deployed the army so extensively is that it feels the police cannot be trusted. Drug cartels with massive resources at their disposal have repeatedly managed to infiltrate the underpaid police, from the grassroots level to the very top. Efforts are under way to rebuild the entire structure of the Mexican police force, but the process is expected to take years.
Reference is often made to Mexico’s powerful cartels, who are they? The cartels control the trafficking of drugs from South America to the United States, a business that is worth an estimated $13 billion a year. Their power grew as the United States stepped up anti-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and Florida. A U.S. state department report estimated that as much as 90 percent of all cocaine consumed in the United States comes via Mexico.
The Mexican Attorney General’s Office, in a report in March 2009 that named the twenty-four top drug lords, listed six main cartels, indicating that the gangs had splintered. They tend to be known after the places where their operations began or after their founders: They are:
- Sinaloa cartel, reportedly led by Mexico’s most-wanted man Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. For the second year running, he was on the 2010 Forbes list of the world’s billionaires with his fortune estimated at $1 billion
- Beltran Leyva cartel, which split from the Sinaloa gang. Its head was killed in December 2009
- Gulf cartel. Los Zetas, once seen as the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel, are now described as powerful figures within the organization. They are deserters from the Mexican army special forces
- Tijuana cartel or Arellano Felix cartel — this gang split with rival drug leader Teodoro Garcia Simental reportedly allying himself with the Sinaloa gang
- Carrillo Fuentes cartel based in Ciudad Juarez
- La Familia based in Michoacan
To what extent is the violence spilling over the US-Mexican border? Most of the violence remains firmly on the Mexican side of the border, but there is some evidence of increasingly violent attacks on U.S. border patrol agents by drug traffickers. There has also been a reported rise in drug-related shootings and kidnappings in some U.S. cities and towns, especially in the south-west.
A U.S. Congress report in 2008 drew on evidence from intelligence sources suggesting that Mexican cartels had forged closer links with established drug gangs inside the United States.
What is the U.S. response to the drug-trafficking and violence? In March 2009 the U.S. government announced that the number of immigration, customs, and anti-drug agents and gun law enforcement officers would be increased. One of the key aims was to disrupt the illegal flow of weapons and drug profits from the United States to Mexico — a key demand of the Mexican government.
Mexico and the United States, as well as Central American nations, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic form part of the Merida Initiative.
This is a $400 million scheme to assist Mexico’s efforts to take on the drugs trade, by helping to provide equipment and training to support law enforcement operations.