Mexico drug war

Mexico drug war

Transfer of a former high-ranking member of the cartel (May 2020)

date	Since December 2006
place	Mexico , as well as in the border region of the neighboring countries USA (there in Texas , Arizona , New Mexico and California ), El Salvador , Nicaragua , Belize and Guatemala
output	Open

Parties to the conflict
Mexico mexican armed forces National Guard Mexican Federal Police Citizen militias (auto defensas) Supported by: Mérida initiative Policía Nacional de Colombia Australian Federal Police	Major drug cartels Sinaloa cartel Golf cartel Los metros CJNG Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel del Noreste Juarez cartel Los Viagras Cártel de Nueva Plaza Cártel del Sur	weakened or dissolved cartels: Tijuana cartel Los Zetas Los Ciclones Guerreros Unidos Mara Salvatrucha La Familia Michoacana Milenio Cartel (2006–2012) Beltrán-Leyva Cartel (2008-2014) Independent. Acapulco Cartel (2010-2014) Los Caballeros Templarios (2011-2017)
Commander
Mexico Presidents (Terms of Office) Andrés Manuel López Obrador (since 2018) Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) Felipe Calderón (2006–2012)	Drug bosses (fleeting or unclear) Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (fleeting) Ismael Zambada García (fleetingly) Rafael Caro Quintero (fleeting) Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (fleetingly) Homero Cárdenas Guillén (unclear) Érick Valencia Salazar (fleeting)	Drug lords (arrested or dead) José Antonio Yépez Ortiz (until arrest, 2020) El Chapo (until arrest, 2018) Héctor Beltrán Leyva (until arrest, 2014) Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (until arrest, 2014) Nazario Moreno González † (until 2014) Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza † (until the end of 2013) Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (until arrest, 2013) Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez (until arrest, 2012) Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano † (until 2012) Ignacio Coronel † (until 2010) Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén † (until 2010) Marcos Arturo Beltrán-Leyva † (until 2009) Omar Treviño Morales (until arrest) Martín Arzola Ortega (until arrest) Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano (until arrest)

The drug war in Mexico is an armed conflict between the state, the Mexican people and drug cartels . The latter also fight among themselves. In some parts of Mexico, the cartels have effectively suspended the state's monopoly of force.

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research has classified it as an internal war since 2010 . In 2011, 50,000 members of the Mexican armed forces and 35,000 of the Mexican federal police fought an estimated 300,000 members of the - mutually hostile - Mexican drug cartels and their paramilitary units. On the part of the state, successes have been recorded time and again, in particular through the arrests of leaders. However, successors or splits from the drug cartels continued violence and business.

The main cause of the war is the profitable demand for illicit drugs , particularly in the United States. Historically, the deep involvement of crime and the Mexican state is also associated with the 71-year rule (1929 to 2000) of the PRI party , whose functionaries arranged themselves and shared in the profits.

The poverty in Latin America is causing many Mexicans and Spanish-speaking foreigners to put themselves at the service of wealthy criminal organizations . In view of their relative lack of prospects, young people are drawn to the openly displayed wealth of the Narcos (see also Narco State ). Those use modern weapons as well as encryption and surveillance systems. In the killing of rivals, the drug cartels use the “ new media” or the Internet to demonstrate their power through violence . In total there are over 200 criminal, armed groups in the civil war (as of 2020), whose business areas are not limited to drug trafficking, but which, like the mafiosi, diversify their business areas and sources of income .

The war cost the lives of between 200,000 and 250,000 people from 2006, when the military was systematically deployed domestically, to June 2018. More than 27,000 of those murdered reached no more than 19 years of age.

The bloodiest years so far were 2018 with 29,000 to 36,000 deaths and 2019 with around 35,000 deaths. At the same time (as of June 2020) over 73,000 people are missing . There were over 9,000 new cases in 2019 alone.

Corruption is a major problem on the state side , including in the judiciary and administration. Offenses on the part of the state, including arbitrary executions by the police, often go unpunished . Repeats form vigilante groups , want to replace the state security forces. Also comes lynching before heaped, especially in rural areas and in the outskirts of the cities. The resolution rate of crimes committed by the cartels is extremely low, and many are not even reported to the police.

Since Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office at the end of 2018, demilitarization and anti-corruption measures have been designed to help contain the war.

Development of the conflict

Emergence

In the 1980s, the Mexican smugglers, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, became more and more important in the drug business and thus replaced the Colombian cartels (Cali, Medellin) in ever larger areas. While the business was largely monopolized during the time of Félix, after his arrest in 1989 it split into individual cartels (Tijuana, Sinaloa, Sonora, Juárez, Golf).

Violent conflicts between the individual drug cartels therefore already existed in the 1990s and the early 2000s. For example, during Vicente Fox's six-year tenure (2000 to 2006), around 9,000 people were killed in drug-related clashes. The Mexican government remained passive for a long time. This only changed with the election of Felipe Calderón as president, who made the fight against organized drug crime in Mexico one of his main goals for his 2006 to 2012 term. On 11 December 2006 he sent 6500 military personnel in the state of Michoacan . They fought real street battles with the criminals without a declared winner emerging from it. This act is widely viewed as the start of the drug war between the Mexican state and the drug cartels.

Parties to the conflict

police

The Mexican police include the police forces of the municipalities, cities and states as well as the central federal police . Most of the police officers (over 425,000) work for the communities; the municipal police are often poorly paid and poorly trained. The Federal Police consists of around 34,500 police officers. Because each state and each municipality has its own corps, there are over 2000 units. The unification of the police, aimed at by President Calderón, met with opposition from local authorities and state governors in parliament.

The municipal police corps is particularly vulnerable to corruption . There are repeated cases in which municipal police officers themselves were involved in crimes, for example by kidnapping people and handing them over to the drug cartels. As a measure in the state of Guerrero, the weapons of local police forces in more than a dozen locations, including those of the Acapulco city ​​police , were confiscated from 2014 to 2018 and partially ousted by the military.

But the federal police are also considered corruptible. In August 2010, for example, the release of around 4,700 federal police officers was announced because they had not proven to be trustworthy. According to estimates from 2010, 5 to 15 percent of the security forces are expected to cooperate with the cartels.

military

The Mexican armed forces , which are divided into the areas of army and navy , are subordinate to the Mexican Ministry of Defense . In 2011, more than 50,000 of the approximately 200,000 military personnel were active against drug cartels.

Citizen militias

Starting in 2013, more and more autonomously organized self-defense groups (span. Grupos de autodefensas ) were formed, which fought the drug cartel Los Caballeros Templarios , particularly in the states of Guerrero and Michoacan . These armed militias took care of public safety themselves and claim to only defend themselves against blackmail, kidnapping and violent crimes by criminal organizations. Within a year, the number of citizen militias rose sharply. Almost half of the 32 states had self-defense groups, according to 2013 reports.

Drug cartels

The organized crime landscape in Mexico is confusing and subject to constant change in the drug war. With the drug cartels that emerged in the 1990s, there are well-known and influential organizations that have been able to hold their own up to the present day. These include the Sinaloa cartel , the golf cartel , and the Juárez cartel . But the opposite also happened with the Tijuana cartel . In the course of the war, many gangs formed , which in turn entered into cooperation with other criminal groups or the large cartels, from which new organizations such as the CJNG were formed. Other gangs that formed in the course of the war were again dissolved or eliminated, such as the Beltrán-Leyva cartel or the Los Caballeros Templarios . It sometimes happened that groups worked together before they quarreled and fought (e.g. La Resistencia with the CJNG).

According to the International Crisis Group, there are (as of 2020) over 200 armed groups in Mexico (excluding citizen militias).

Drug Cartel Action - Business Areas and Sources of Income

The operative procedure of the drug cartels differs depending on the grouping. However, they all share the strategy of using extreme force against their opponents. An important part are so-called "Casas de Seguridad" ("Safe Houses"), in which abductees, drugs and weapons are guarded. These houses are often luxury homes in good neighborhoods. There, torture and executions carried out. Often the victims are buried in such houses. Such houses are also located in the countryside, where smuggling routes are easy to control, and are usually located at geographically and strategically important points.

The extortion of protection money ("Narcocuota") has only been common for a few years. It is believed that the Los Zetas group started doing this in 2007. The other groups emulated the Zetas. In many places in Mexico today, every retail or wholesale business pays protection money - whether it is drug trafficking or not.

Another source of income for the cartels is the kidnapping of Central American migrants who are on their way to the United States to extort ransom from relatives already living in the United States . These migrants often travel on freight trains where they can easily be ambushed. Many of these people are believed to be among the unidentifiable deaths of the drug war found in mass graves in many different locations in Mexico. Many of these migrants are also forced to work in drug cartels, many women into prostitution in border towns such as Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez .

One of the largest business areas is stolen or illegally mined raw materials . The infiltrated trade in iron ore , crude oil , natural gas and fuel accounts for a large part of Mexico's gross domestic product. The trade in food such as avocados is also one of the sources of income for drug cartels. According to the International Crisis Group , the cartels in the Mexican state of Guerrero particularly benefit from gold mines , in Michoacán from iron ore, while in Michoacán and Jalisco the trade in avocodas is partially controlled. Gasoline smuggling is booming in the state of Guanajuato .

The Mexican drug cartels also use Latin American gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha or Mara 18 . These gangs are now working increasingly for the Mexican cartels and are responsible for the distribution of drugs and control ( bribes ) of certain urban areas, as well as for the exploitation of migrants who travel from Central America via Mexico to the USA. This is primarily the case in southeastern Mexico and Central American states such as El Salvador , Guatemala and Honduras , where these gangs have dominated organized crime and have been widespread for decades.

Victim

Fatalities and missing persons

Dead (attributed to the drug war) - Murder rate in Mexico
year	number
2006 (after December 11th)	62
2007	2,826-12,484
2008	6,837-14,595
2009	9,724 - 17,882
2010	15,273-22,943
2011	12,903-25,353
2012	18,061-24,115
2013	10.094-20.337
2014	7,993-17,366
2015	8,423 - 17,889
2016	10,967 - 22,567
2017	12,500 - 25,339
2018	approx. 33,300
2019	34,600 - 35,000
2020	17,982 (1st half year)

In January 2011, based on a new calculation, the government of Mexico published the number of fatalities in the drug war from 2006 to 2010 (see table). According to this, a total of 47,515 fatalities were to be mourned in connection with the drug war by the end of 2011. Almost half of all deaths were counted in the states of Chihuahua , Sinaloa, and Guerrero ; the five cities hardest hit were Juárez , Culiacán , Tijuana , Chihuahua and Acapulco . For 2011, the government gives the number of 12,903 deaths. The statistics contradict the statements of journalists, according to which the number of deaths is about twice as high. Many of the victims were beheaded. In 2011 alone, 453 decapitated bodies were found. After Acapulco was the most dangerous city in Mexico according to the murder rate from 2011 to 2016 and thus in some of those years also the world, Tijuana took over this position in 2018.

Over 73,000 people (June 2020) are missing . There were over 9,000 new cases in 2019 alone. Because the prosecution is in fact often unsuccessful and therefore there is general mistrust of the Mexican police in the population, the bereaved began to organize among themselves in order to search for missing relatives themselves.

Experts assume that successful state power operations are no longer followed by equivalent countermeasures by the drug cartels. Instead, they are increasingly starting to fight each other in order to secure the remaining resources and structures (for example, the dwindling smuggling routes). A total of around 121,000 people were arrested by March 2010.

Officials and politicians

The number of killed members of the military, police officers, public prosecutors and other people working in the judiciary was given as 1000 until March 2010.

From December 2006 to June 2011, 32 mayors were killed in assassinations. 130 politicians died before the Mexican elections in 2018.

As of July 2012, 2,888 soldiers, members of the Navy, police officers and secret agents had been killed by then. 45 percent of the victims were community cops.

Media representatives

Civilians are also often killed. Numerous journalists were threatened with death, kidnapped or murdered by members of the drug cartels. In fact, this leads to massive restrictions on the freedom of the press . According to the Mexican journalist protection organization "Artículo 19", 131 media workers have been killed since 2000. According to Reporters Without Borders , Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. The best-known example is the journalist María Elisabeth Macías Castro , who was beheaded in September 2011 . The often mutilated corpse was deposited by the perpetrators on a busy main road in the border town of Nuevo Laredo.

refugees

According to a 2011 survey by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center , 230,000 people had fled the drug war violence. The targets are the USA or less dangerous regions of Mexico.

Mexican military at the beginning of the war on a street patrol (2007)

Chronology of extraordinary events

This chronology does not claim to be complete.

Areas of influence of cartels in Mexico (2008)

2008

• On September 15, the 198th Independence Day of Mexico, several civilians were killed in a hand grenade attack in the market square of Morelia . Three Los Zetas members were arrested and suspected of having carried out the attack.
• After a shooting on October 26, police arrested Eduardo Arellano Felix , a leading member of the powerful Arellano cartel. The US authorities put a $ 5 million bounty on him after he succeeded his brother Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, who was arrested in 2006.
• On November 4, the Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and 13 other people were killed in a plane crash in Mexico City. Although an assassination attempt by a drug cartel was suspected, the turbulence of an aircraft flying ahead was later seen as the cause of the accident.

2009

• Wikileaks published a dispatch from the US Embassy in which it was mentioned that the then Mexican Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández , proposed that efforts in the drug war should be concentrated in three major cities, including Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana , in order to achieve rapid results can. He expressed serious concern about the possibility of "losing" certain regions, which would damage Mexico's international reputation, reduce foreign investment and create the impression of a helpless government.
• On December 16, Marcos Arturo Beltrán-Leyva , one of the country's leading drug traffickers, was tracked down and killed by soldiers in a luxury residence in Cuernavaca, in the south of the country. The blow to Beltrán-Leyva, known as the "boss of the bosses," was seen as one of the most important achievements of 2009 for President Calderón in his war on drug-related crime. Then his brother Héctor and Valdez claimed the leadership position.

Map of all states of Mexico (red: violent conflicts) (2010)

2010

• A massacre by members of a drug cartel on January 31 at a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez left 17 dead, most of them under the age of 18. The crime against the youth was apparently based on a mix-up. President Calderón's visit of condolence to the victims' families on February 14, 2010 caused unrest in the event hall.
• Rodolfo Torre (46), the most promising candidate in the gubernatorial elections in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas , was ambushed together with his advisors near Ciudad Victoria airport on June 28 and was shot dead. Calderón called on the political class and civil society for a national dialogue. All political forces in the country should provide a common and united response to those who attack the democratic life and peace of Mexicans.
• In late July, it became known that a prison director had released several inmates overnight and armed them with weapons so that they could murder rival gangs. Overall, the nocturnal prisoners are said to be responsible for 35 deaths in three raids in Torreón .
• On July 30th, Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel , No. 3 of the powerful Sinaloa cartel , was killed by Mexican military personnel.
• On August 24th, the bodies of 72 migrants from Brazil , Ecuador , Honduras and El Salvador were discovered in a hacienda ( San Fernando massacre ).
• On August 30th, Edgar Valdez Villareal, one of the most wanted criminals in Mexico, was arrested.
• On September 2, the army attacked a Zetas training camp on the border with the United States, killing 27 members. Until then, it was the most casualty skirmish for a drug cartel in the drug war.
• On September 12, Sergio Villareal was arrested by the Beltrán-Leyva cartel in Puebla . For his arrest, the authorities had offered a reward of two million dollars (1.6 million euros).
• On September 25th, the security forces in the western Mexican state of Jalisco arrested the criminal Margarito Soto Reyes, aka "El Tigre". According to the authorities, he belonged to the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel and was responsible for smuggling half a ton of different drugs into the United States every month.
• On September 26, José Ángel Fernández de Lara, a leader of the Los Zetas, was arrested in Cancún .
• On October 6, a bill for police reform went to the Senate. Many of the two thousand departments are to be dissolved. Each state should only have one police administration, which is subordinate to the governor.
• On October 18, during an operation by the military and police, 105 tons of marijuana (134 tons according to other reports) were confiscated and eleven suspects were arrested. Two people were injured. The drugs are worth 335 million US dollars, the equivalent of 240 million euros, on the Mexican black market. However, the value of the drugs in the US market is four times as high.
• In December, 141 inmates fled a prison in Nuevo Laredo .

• On December 19, the government of Guatemala declared a state of emergency in the province of Alta Verapaz . The reason she cited was the open takeover of power by the Los Zetas , who had been using the region as a corridor for drug trafficking since at least 2009 .
• At the end of the year, the Zetas threatened to kill all citizens of Ciudad Mier . The residents then fled and left a ghost town.

2011

• In April, Narcos attacked a federal police convoy on the western highway from Mexico City to Guadalajara with assault rifles and grenade launchers. The authorities had to withdraw because of the overwhelming power.
• From May 5th to 9th, a silent march against the drug war organized by Javier Sicilia took place from the city of Cuernavaca to Zocalo Square in Mexico City. More than 85,000 Mexicans took part.
• On May 15 , 27 or 29 bodies were found in Guatemala , in the Peten province on the border with Mexico. The Guatemalan authorities suspected Los Zetas to be the culprit . Due to the massacre, President Alvaro Colom declared a one-day state of emergency on May 27th for the Peten province. This gave the police more powers.
• On May 26, according to government information, members of the Sinaloa cartel in Ruiz fought an hour-long gun battle with members of the Zetas on the main road from Tepic to Mazatlán . 29 people, some of them wearing riot suits and protective vests, were killed, some out of cars. The police confiscated 14 vehicles, including two armored vehicles, as well as rifles, ammunition and hand grenades.
• In May, 2,500 residents of Apatzingán and the surrounding area fled the violence in the drug war. Drugs cartel members blocked a street in the city for two days. The government asked residents to leave the city and about 40 schools were closed.
• On July 29, Jose Antonio Acosta Hernández , one of the leaders of the La Línea group working for the Juárez cartel , was arrested. According to the indictment, he is responsible for over 1,500 murders.
• On the night of August 11, Oscar García Montoya was arrested in Tlalpan , Mexico City . According to prosecutors, he was the leader of the Mano con Ojos (Hand with Eyes) group, which has been charged with over 900 murders.

Casino Royale was destroyed five days after the attack on August 30, 2011

• In an arson attack on the Casino Royale in Monterrey on August 25, armed men broke into the casino and at least 52 people died in the fire. According to the government, a cartel is said to have been responsible.
• On September 20 , 35 tortured bodies were unloaded from two pickup trucks in Veracruz, right next to a conference hotel that was being used by the attorneys general at the time. The dead are believed to have been members of the Zetas, which was later confirmed by police. Threats to the group were found at the scene. The attorney general identified the perpetrators as members of the Sinaloa cartel.
• On September 22nd, the police found another 14 bodies with threats to the Zetas.
• On September 24th, a group called Mata Zetas (" the Zeta killers ") took responsibility for the bodies found on the 20th and 22nd. Their group was formed to punish the Zetas and to break their rule.
• On October 6, Veracruz police found a total of 32 dead in three private houses. Local media assumed that the Mata Zetas were responsible.
• In October, after a wave of kidnappings and extortions in the Linares region , all police forces in the city (more than 100 in total) were arrested to investigate possible involvement in the proceedings.
• On October 13th, number three of the Zetas, Carlos Oliva Castillo, was arrested in Saltillo , Coahuila state . According to the prosecutor, Castillo was believed to have been responsible for the Zetas' activities in the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas . He is also said to have ordered the arson attack on Casino Royale.
• In November, 16 cremated bodies were found in Culiacán and the remains of 26 people were found in the city of Guadalajara .
• In December, a total of 226 prisoners fled two prisons in northern Mexico.
• In December, the United States Senate approved a 2012 budget of $ 249 million for the Merida Initiative , significantly less than in previous years.

2012

• On February 19, 44 people were killed in fighting at the prison in Apodaca, Monterrey . According to police, these fights likely stemmed from rivalries between the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.
• On May 13, 49 decapitated and mutilated bodies carrying a threatening message from the Zetas were discovered near Cadereyta de Jiménez on Highway 40 between Monterrey and Reynosa .
• On June 4, gunmen stormed a drug rehab clinic in Torreón and shot around. They killed 11 people and injured at least nine others.
• On June 7, 14 dismembered bodies were found in a parked pickup truck in a small town in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Along with the dead, they found a warning to the second man in the Zetas, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales .
• On July 13, reports from anonymous callers led to the discovery of six decapitated bodies in the village of Jojutla and three heads in the neighboring village of Ixtla (both villages are in the state of Morelos ).
• On the same day, drug investigators discovered a 220-meter smuggler's tunnel on the border with the United States. This led from a shop in San Luis (Arizona) to a factory in San Luis Rio Colorado .
• Marines arrested Mario Cárdenas Guillén , a leader of the golf cartel, in Altamira on September 3 .
• On September 12, Marines arrested Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez , a leader of the Gulf cartel, and other cartel members in Tamaulipas, near the border with the United States.
• On September 17, 132 prisoners escaped from a prison in Piedras Negras using a 1.20 meter wide and 297 meter long tunnel .
• After the murder of Jaime Serrano , a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the state of Mexico , and rumors of impending fighting between drug cartels, around 700 soldiers and federal police officers moved into 45 neighborhoods of Nezahualcóyotl , a suburb of Mexico City , on September 20 .
• In late September, Attorney General Marisela Morales confirmed rumors of internal fighting among the Zetas. Accordingly, there should be a dispute between the leader Heriberto Lazcano and the second man Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales .
• On December 18, 11 inmates and six guards died in a mass escape from Gómez Palacio detention center in Durango state . The inmates tried to escape through several tunnels and over a wall and had firearms.

2013

• On January 31, 14 musicians and four helpers from the band Kombo Kolombia were presumably kidnapped by members of a drug cartel in Hidalgo (Nuevo Leon). The police found their bodies in a well three days later. A man escaped and alerted the police.
• On the morning of March 26th, hundreds of armed men (reports range between 600 and 2000) occupied the small town of Tierra Colorada and the surrounding areas. They arrested the police chief Oscar Ulises Valles , eleven police officers and six civilians, whom they accused of membership in organized crime. The armed members of a vigilante group ( policías comunitarios ) reacted to the killing of one of their commanders the day before. They held the region for almost 24 hours under their control and gave the people set after negotiations with regional mayors and the prosecutor of the State of Guerrero , Martha Elva Garzón , the authorities. Then they left.
• At the end of May, army and police units under the command of General Alberto Reyes Vaca entered several cities in Michoacan state . Marco Ugarte, a reporter for the Associated Press , said the people were cheering.
• Two guards were killed in an attack on June 9th on the prison in La Unión by a group called the Knights Templar (a split from La Familia Michoacana ).
• Drug cartels killed around 7,000 people in the first seven months of the year.
• Mario Armando Ramírez Treviño , a leader of the golf cartel, was arrested on August 17 in Ciudad Río Bravo .
• On August 17 and 18, 16 bodies of alleged torture victims were found in Michoacán.
• On August 17 and 18, eight people were killed in an exchange of fire in Guerrero.
• A man masked as a clown shot dead the leader of the Tijuana cartel , Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix , on October 18, 2013 at a children's party in Cabo San Lucas . Then there was a shootout and a large-scale police operation. The murdered man was nicknamed " El Pelón " (The Bald Head) and was the oldest of the Arellano Félix brothers .
• At the end of October, 300 gunmen tried to bring Apatzingán under their control. Presumably in response, alleged members of the Los Caballeros Templarios cartel attacked several power plants and gas stations. As a result, 400,000 people were without electricity.
• On November 4th, the Navy took control of the port of Lázaro Cárdenas . 50 city police officers were temporarily detained on suspicion of cooperation with the cartels and the customs officers were also replaced.
• On November 16, after an exchange of fire, around 400 members of a self-defense militia took control of the Tancitaro community in Michoacán . According to the police, three people were killed and two others were injured.

2014

• On January 12th, a citizens' militia entered the small town of Nueva Italia in Michoacán. The Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong calls for the disarmament of these self-defense troops and sends state security forces to the region.
• On February 22nd, Joaquín Guzman ("El Chapo") was captured by Mexican navy soldiers.
• On September 26th, there was a mass kidnapping in Iguala, in which 6 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college were shot dead by the community police and 43 were arrested. Since then, you have been one of the tens of thousands missing in the country.

2015

• In early May 2015, a Mexican military helicopter was shot down.
• On May 20, 2015, a federal police patrol was attacked near Michoacán. The attackers flee to a 112 hectare farm nearby. There are 40 guards armed with large-caliber weapons. After hours of firefight with the federal police, at least 37 attackers were dead, two federal police officers were shot and parts of the farm were on fire. Other weapons, including a grenade launcher, and drugs were found on the farm. A runway at the ranch may have been used for drug smuggling. Presumably it was a base of the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel .

2016

• On January 8, 2016, Joaquín Guzman ("El Chapo") was caught again by marines after more than half a year on the run . Five people died in the arrest and one soldier was injured.
• On September 9, 2016, a police helicopter was shot down with a rocket launcher. 8 police officers die, one survives the attack.
• Acapulco was the most dangerous city in Mexico in terms of killing rates from 2011 to 2016 inclusive, and in some of those years also in the world.

2017

• In early March 2017, mass graves with the remains of victims were found in the east of the state of Veracruz . It is the 125th mass grave in the region since August 2016.
• On May 2, 2017, soldiers arrested Dámaso López Núñez, the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
• October 2017 was the bloodiest month since the conflict began, with 2,764 murders

2018

• More than 120 local politicians were murdered in the 2018 presidential election campaign in Mexico.
• With a homicide rate of 138.30 per 100,000 inhabitants, the city of Tijuana was the most dangerous city in the world in 2018 and Acapulco was the second most dangerous city in the world with a homicide rate of 110.50 per 100,000 inhabitants.

2019

• The first half of 2019, with officially 14,603 murders counted, was a new high.
• With 34,600 - 35,000 murders, 2019 as a whole reached a new high for the year. More than 3800 of them were women.
• In the city of Ciudad Juárez alone, around 1,300 women took advantage of counseling services in the local women's institute in 2019. (→  Femicide by Ciudad Juárez )
• In the city of Culiacán , Ovidio Guzmán López , a son of El Chapo , is released after provisional arrest by a unit of around 30 including soldiers from the Mexican military and the National Guard because of subsequent shelling by an excess of members of the Sinaloa cartel . The cartel's show of force lasted about six hours, during which 20 to 30 inmates of a detention center were freed.

2020

• With 337 murders of women in April 2020, it was a monthly high since public statistics began (in 2015) on feminicides in Mexico.
• From January to June 2020 inclusive, 17,982 murders were counted in Mexico, according to the Obrador government . That was an average of 99 murders a day.

Identity of the dead

According to observations made by a data analyst researching the murders, the motives for the murder are different. Among the fatalities are members of cartels as well as people who are only murdered because of a relationship or other relationship to cartel members.

In 2020 the Los Viagras cartel let the warring CJNG cartel know that it would also murder the children and women of the CJNG members in the future.

Violence as a means of demonstrating power

After killing relatives and relationship partners of warring cartel members, the perpetrators often leave messages ( narcomensajes ), threatening them with further acts or mocking the warring cartel members.

In addition, the gangs and cartels put their photo and video material of killings on the Internet. In addition to executions , cartels also published recordings in which members of other drug cartels are burned alive and tortured to death in other ways. Also was cannibalism reported in killings.

Balance sheet for the term of office of President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012)

The Mexican government under President Felipe Calderón focused on arresting drug cartel leaders. This so-called Kingpin Strategy was developed by the DEA in 1992 to combat drug cartels. In March 2009, the Mexican Attorney General ( Procurador General de la Republica ) published a list of the 37 most wanted drug lords in Mexico . 16 of them were arrested by Mexican security forces (Navy, Army, Federal Police) between 2009 and 2012 and six others were killed.

The prevention of the production, trafficking or smuggling of illegal drugs was not a priority - in contrast to the War on Drugs in the 1970s ( Operation Condor ) until the late 1990s. The shift in control strategy was also related to the fact that the Mexican drug cartels are estimated to generate more than 60% of their revenues from criminal activities other than drug trafficking (e.g. extortion).

From 2010, President Calderón no longer relied solely on security measures. The Mexican state should now also invest in education, health and social work. This should strengthen civil society and give young people better prospects. The "Juárez Intervention Plan" (named after the city of Ciudad Juárez ) should cost the equivalent of a total of 200 million euros and was considered a pilot project.

The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote:

“Experts consider this paradigm shift to be overdue, but for experts like Edgardo Buscaglia, Calderón's new policy still does not go far enough. 'You only have a chance of winning the war if you get to their assets and possessions,' says the organized crime expert and professor at ITAM University in Mexico City. But at the point the government does nothing, because politics and the judiciary up to high instances have been infiltrated by organized crime. "

Effects

Effects on the USA

Drug and weapon smuggling

In April 2009, during his first state visit to Mexico , US President Barack Obama stated that the US need for drugs was helping the drug cartels to stay in business. The war will be fought with firearms that were not acquired in Mexico but in the United States. The US authorities assume that the majority of drugs smuggled into the US are smuggled into the US via Mexico. Some of it is grown ( marijuana ) or produced ( methamphetamine ) in Mexico . Most importantly, Mexico is a transit country for cocaine from Colombia and other South American countries: an estimated 90% of all cocaine sold in the US is transferred through Mexico and smuggled into the US. The proceeds from drug smuggling in the USA are said to amount to between 18 and 39 billion dollars annually for the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

Some of the proceeds are used to legitimately acquire weapons through straw men of the drug cartels in the USA and then illegally smuggled them into Mexico. According to an investigation by the US Government Accountability Office, 87% of all weapons confiscated in Mexico over the past five years are said to have been purchased in the US. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a federal police agency subordinate to the United States Department of Justice , is trying to stop this smuggling of arms, in part with covert operations such as the failed Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 and 2010.

Merida Agreement (2008)

→ Main article : Mérida initiative

The focus of military operations is in the northern states ( Baja California , Sonora , Chihuahua , Coahuila and Tamaulipas ) on the border with the USA. Because the drug war is increasingly threatening to spill over into the USA, the USA will support the Mexican government with 1.6 billion dollars over the next three years - based on the so-called Merida Agreement approved by the US Congress in 2008 . In addition, they intend to provide assistance in the form of military equipment, training and support from their intelligence agencies. In order to help neighboring Mexico in the fight against the powerful drug lords, the American government under Barack Obama wants to contribute 80 million dollars to the purchase of Black Hawk helicopters . With these military helicopters, the Mexican police should be given the opportunity to step up against the rival drug lords. With this measure, which had already been announced by US President Obama, the US also wants to protect its own citizens, as many of the drugs are smuggled across the border and thus get into the US population.

Impact on Guatemala

The Mexican drug cartels have dominated cocaine smuggling in Central America since the 1990s, but especially in the neighboring state of Guatemala . With the drug war in Mexico, the competition between the drug cartels has expanded to neighboring Central American states, where they are less disrupted by the state than in Mexico. Since 2007 Los Zetas have been fighting over the drug corridors in Guatemala, which were formerly ruled by the Sinaloa cartel and the Gulf cartel . Los Zetas have apparently (as of 2012) firmly established in Guatemala. For various reasons (lack of resources, corruption, inefficiency of the legal system, poverty in the country), the police and the judiciary are powerless to face this development.

Ex-General Otto Pérez Molina , President of the Republic of Guatemala from 2012 to 2015 , believes that the consumption and production of drugs should be legalized within certain limits.

reception

• Elmer Mendoza : Balas de plata . 2008. ( Silver . Translated from the Spanish by Matthias Strobel. Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-46187-7 ).
• Arturo Perez-Reverte : La Reina del Sur , 2002 ( Queen of the South . Translated from the Spanish by Angelica Ammar. 2003, ISBN 978-3-548-60433-6 ).
• Juan Pablo Villalobos : Fiesta en la madriguera . 2010. ( Fiesta in the robber's cave . Translated from the Spanish by Carsten Regling. Berlin 2011).
• Don Winslow , The Power of the Dog . 2005. ( Days of the Dead . Translated from the English by Chris Hirte. Berlin 2010).
• Don Winslow: Time of Wrath . The book served as a template for the film Savages (2012) (Director: Oliver Stone )
• Don Winslow: The Cartel (The Power of the dog II). 2015. ( The cartel (novel) . Translated from the English by Chris Hirte. Munich 2015).
• Matthew Heineman: Cartel Land , award-winning documentary from 2015.

literature

• Sandro Benini: Drugs, War, Mexico. The most dangerous place in the world. Realtime Verlag, 2013.
• Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Ed.): Looking for a successful strategy - Mexico debates the “drug war” . August 16, 2010. pdf
• Malcolm Beith: The Last Narco . 2010. ( El Chapo. The hunt for Mexico's most powerful drug baron. Translated from English by Gunter Blank and Simone Salitter. 2011)
• June S. Beittel: Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence. Edited by Congressional Research Service, US: CRS Report R41576, September 7, 2011. pdf ; CRS Report R41576, April 15, 2013. pdf
• Isaac Campos: Degeneration and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs , in: Mexican Studies / Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 379-408.
• Heinrich Böll Foundation (Ed.): Drugs, Dollars, Democracy. Drug Trafficking Challenges in Mexico and Brazil. Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86928-002-8 . pdf
• Ioan Grillo: “El Narco. The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels ". Bloomsbury, 2011.
• Jeanette Erazo Heufelder : Drug Corridor Mexico . Transit, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88747-259-7 .
• Karl-Dieter Hoffmann: Mexico's “War on Drugs” and the Mérida Initiative . GIGA Focus, number 4, 2008. pdf
• Anne Huffschmid: Mexico - the land and freedom. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2010.
• Anne Huffschmid, Wolf-Dieter Vogel (eds.): NarcoZones - Unbounded Markets and Violence in Latin America , Association A, Berlin 2012.
• Viridiana Rios, David A. Shirk: Drug Violence in Mexico. Data and Analysis Through 2010. Edited by the Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego, February 2011. pdf
• Roberto Saviano : Zero Zero Zero. How cocaine rules the world. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2014. ISBN 978-3-446-24497-9 .
• Stratfor (Ed.): Mexican Drug Wars: Bloodiest Year do Date. December 10, 2010.
• Tiffany Siegert: “Mexico in the drug war. Actors and Structures ", AVM Munich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86924-157-9 .

Web links

Commons : Drug War in Mexico  - Pictures, Videos and Audio Files Collection

• the dossier: No victory in sight , September 15, 2010.
• Mexico drug war. In: Spiegel Online (article and background).
• Alex Gertschen: Before the surrender. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 16, 2010.
• Anne Huffschmid: Drug War in Mexico: Body Parts by Post In: the daily newspaper , September 1, 2010.
• Sebastian Schoepp: We fight them head-on. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 9, 2010 (interview with Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano ).
• Alex Gertschen, Ciudad Juarez: Armando Rodríguez didn't sleep, he was dead. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , 23 September 2010.
• Frank Priess: Looking for a successful strategy - Mexico debates the “drug war” Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, August 16, 2010.
• Wolf-Dieter Vogel: Even more have to die. In: the daily newspaper . October 22, 2010, accessed on October 22, 2010 (interview with Edgardo Buscaglia, lawyer and economist). 
• Juan Villoro: Letter from Mexico City. In: Le Monde Diplomatique . September 10, 2010, accessed August 17, 2011 (Background Analysis of the Drug War). 
• The big intoxication - the global drug war

Individual evidence

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139. ↑ spiegel.de August 1, 2013: Uruguay: Parliament votes in favor of legalizing marijuana , September 15: Marijuana in Uruguay: America's drug testing laboratory