The War Next Door
Tyvi 
9majordrugcartels.pdf
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug
Trafficking Organizations
Updated June 7, 2022
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports.congress.gov
R41576
Congressional Research Service
SUMMARY
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) significantly influence drug
trafficking in the United States and pose the greatest drug trafficking threat, according to
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) annual National Drug Threat
Assessment. These organizations control the market and movement of a wide range of
illicit drugs destined for the United States; for this reason, they are commonly referred to
as drug cartels and drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). These poly-criminal organizations also participate in
extortion, human smuggling, arms trafficking, and oil theft, among other crimes. Homicide rate increases in
Mexico are widely attributed to heightened DTO-related violence, often tied to territorial control over drug routes
and criminal influence.
Congress has tracked how Mexican TCOs affect security on the U.S.-Mexico border, perpetrate violence, and
contribute to the U.S. opioid crisis. A major concern is the organizations’ trafficking of cocaine, heroin,
methamphetamine, marijuana, and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Many analysts assess that Mexican TCOs’
role in the production and trafficking of synthetic opioids into the United States has significantly expanded since
2018. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 106,000 overdose deaths occurred
in the United States in 2021, more than 70% of which involved opioids, including fentanyl.
Evolution of Mexico’s Criminal Environment
The leadership and organizational structures of Mexican DTOs remain in flux. In 2006, four DTOs were
dominant: the Tijuana/Arellano Félix Organization (AFO), the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juárez/Vicente Carillo Fuentes
Organization (CFO), and the Gulf Cartel. Government operations to eliminate cartel leadership increased
instability among the groups and sparked greater violence. Over the next dozen years, Mexico’s larger and more
stable DTOs fragmented, creating at first seven and then nine major groups.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected in 2018, has advocated policies that focus on the root
causes of crime, but his government has not carried out counternarcotics operations consistently. Despite reform
promises, the president appears to rely on a policy of using the military and a military-led national guard to
address narcotics- and TCO-related concerns. He campaigned on addressing high levels of criminal impunity and
official corruption, long-standing problems in Mexico. However, more than halfway through López Obrador’s
six-year term, he arguably has achieved few of his anti-corruption and criminal justice aims.
Congressional Action
Many in the 117th Congress remain concerned about DTO-related violence in Mexico and its impact on border
security. Some Members have been evaluating the amounts and effectiveness of U.S. counternarcotics and
security assistance to Mexico and assessing the overall U.S.-Mexico security relationship. Additional concerns
focus on how DTO-related violence has imperiled some licit economic sectors, negatively affected U.S.-Mexico
trade, and contributed to the internal displacement and outmigration of Mexican citizens. Congress has engaged
regularly with these issues, holding hearings, appropriating funds to support Mexico’s anti-crime efforts, and
issuing directives and reporting requirements to U.S. agencies.
The Biden Administration and the government of President López Obrador are shaping a new bilateral security
program, the U.S.-Mexico Bicentennial Framework on Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities.
Introduced in fall 2021, the framework, as announced, seeks to address insecurity inside Mexico and the U.S.
opioid overdose crisis. Congress would play a role in overseeing the funding and effectiveness of this framework,
which would replace the Mérida Initiative as the primary bilateral partnership for U.S.-Mexico security
cooperation.
R41576
June 7, 2022
June S. Beittel Analyst in Latin American Affairs
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Congressional Concerns .................................................................................................................. 4
Mexico’s Criminal Landscape: Extreme Violence, Corruption, and Impunity ............................... 7
A Competition for Turf and the Geography of Violence ........................................................... 9 The Administration of President López Obrador and Security ............................................... 12 Crime Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic ..................................................................... 17
Illicit Drugs in Mexico and Components of Its Drug Supply Market ........................................... 18
Categories of Illicit Drugs ....................................................................................................... 19
Evolution of the Crime Groups ..................................................................................................... 22
Profiles of Nine Major Criminal Groups Operating in Mexico .............................................. 23 Tijuana/Arellano Félix Organization ................................................................................ 23 Sinaloa DTO ..................................................................................................................... 24 Juárez/Carrillo Fuentes Organization ................................................................................ 27 Gulf Cartel ........................................................................................................................ 28 Los Zetas and Cartel del Noreste ...................................................................................... 29 Beltrán Leyva Organization .............................................................................................. 30 La Familia Michoacana..................................................................................................... 31 Los Rojos .......................................................................................................................... 32 Cártel Jalisco Nuevo Generación ...................................................................................... 32
Fragmentation, Competition, and Diversification ................................................................... 34
Outlook .......................................................................................................................................... 35
Figures
Figure 1. Map of Mexico ................................................................................................................. 3
Figure 2. 2021 Mexican Cartel Territory and Conflict Zones ....................................................... 10
Figure 3. Cartel Territory by Areas of Dominance and Presence in 2021 ...................................... 11
Figure 4. Top 10 Cities for Most Homicide Victims in Mexico in 2020 ....................................... 17
Figure 5. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Seizures of Fentanyl and Methamphetamine ............. 21
Appendixes
Appendix. Government Efforts to Combat Drug Trafficking Organizations ................................ 37
Contacts
Author Information ........................................................................................................................ 39
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service 1
Introduction This report analyzes Mexico’s criminal landscape, including pervasive violence and corruption. It
also discusses categories of illicit drugs in Mexico and profiles nine major criminal organizations
in Mexico, as well as the phenomena of fragmentation and competition among these major drug
trafficking organizations (DTOs).1 An Appendix to the report summarizes the evolution of
Mexican governmental efforts to combat DTOs.
Mexico shares a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, and the two countries have
long-standing and close trade, cultural, and demographic ties. Mexico’s transnational criminal
organizations (TCOs) supply illicit drugs to the United States and engage in a wide variety of
other lucrative transnational criminal activities. TCOs’ illicit activities have contributed to a spike
in U.S. drug overdoses, have provided a push factor for migration out of Mexico, and may have
driven internal displacement.2 Mexican TCOs also contribute to high levels of violence and
corruption in Mexico. TCO-related violence in Mexico affects U.S. individual and commercial
interests as well as the stability of Mexico’s governing institutions. Despite years of effort,
including substantial U.S. assistance, Mexican TCOs and their violence remain difficult to
suppress. The TCOs’ evolution and activities have therefore remained of sustained concern to
U.S. policymakers. Over the past decade, Congress has held numerous hearings on U.S.
counternarcotics assistance and border security issues, which often highlight TCO-perpetrated
violence.
Both the total number of reported murders (intentional homicides) each year and the homicide
rate (per 100,000 persons) in Mexico have risen and then stayed at or near record levels in the
past five years. Many analysts attribute the biggest factor in Mexico’s current homicide level rise
to organized crime-style killings.3 According to an annual assessment by one Mexican think tank,
five Mexican cities topped the list of the 50 most violent cities globally in 2019.4 (For the top 10
most violent Mexican cities in 2020 and their homicide rates, see Figure 4.) This increase in
violence and the Mexican government’s response are of interest to some Members of Congress.
The increasing DTO-related violence has had political implications in Mexico. Political violence
leading up to Mexico’s mid-term elections in 2021—when reportedly more than 100 politicians
1 This report uses the terms drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), transnational criminal organization (TCOs), and
drug cartels interchangeably to refer to Mexican crime groups (unless otherwise delineated). For example, some crime
organizations evolve from more localized cartel fragments into full-blown TCOs, which commit drug trafficking and
other illicit crimes across international borders.
2 Mary Beth Sheridan, “The War Next Door: Conflict in Mexico Is Displacing Thousands,” Washington Post, April 11,
2022.
3 The government data published have changed over time. The government of President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012)
published tallies of “organized-crime-related” homicides until September 2011. The administration of President
Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) also issued such estimates but stopped in mid-2013 and switched to publishing data on
all intentional homicides. The Justice in Mexico project has identified an average (over many years) of homicides
linked to organized crime by assessing several sources. Of total homicides reported by the Mexican government,
between 25% and 50% of those killings likely were linked to organized crime. Laura Y. Calderón et al., Organized
Crime and Violence: 2021 Special Report, Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, October 2021.
(Hereinafter, Calderón et al., Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021).
4 El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal (Citizen’s Council for Public Safety and Criminal
Justice), “Boletín Ranking 2019 de las 50 Ciudades más Violentas del Mundo,” June 1, 2020. The council survey found
in 2019 that the five Mexican cities as the top of the list of the 50 most violent cities were Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez,
Uruapan, Irapuato, and Ciudad Obregon. In 2020, the council survey identified the top 6 of the 50 most violent cities in
the world in Mexico. Julian Resendiz, “Body Count from Drug Cartel Wars Earns Mexican Cities Label of ‘Most
Violent in the World,’” Border Report, April 21, 2021.
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were killed and many more were threatened—led some analysts to assert that Mexican cartels
have taken direct electoral interference to new levels.5 DTOs’ intimidation of Mexican politicians,
candidates, and their families through threats of violence or actual homicides has raised alarm
among many victims’ groups and other human rights organizations in Mexico, among Mexico’s
political and trade partners, and others.
Assassinations of journalists and media personnel have made Mexico one of the world’s most
dangerous countries in which to practice journalism.6 Between 2017 and 2020, a journalist was
murdered in Mexico nearly once a month on average. In the first five months of 2022, 11
journalists were murdered in Mexico.7 By contrast, nine Mexican journalists were killed in 2021,
according to the watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists.8 Most reporters and media
personnel who have been killed covered violent crime or public corruption in Mexico.9
Violence has spread from the border with the United States into Mexico’s interior. TCO-related
violence has flared in the Pacific states of Michoacán and Guerrero; in the central states of
Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Morelos, and Colima; and in the northern border states of Tamaulipas,
Chihuahua, and Baja California, where Mexico’s largest border cities are located (for map, see
Figure 1). Organized crime groups have splintered and diversified their criminal activities,
turning to extortion, kidnapping, oil theft, human smuggling, sex trafficking, retail drug sales, and
other illicit enterprises.
Flagrant violence in central Mexico, in the major Mexican cities along the U.S.-Mexico border,
and in the Pacific states in a region known as the Tierra Caliente (Hot Land) has remained high.
In April 2022, Mexico’s instability in the Tierra Caliente region was reported to be persistent and
worsening.10 In February 2022, after a crime group made a death threat to a U.S. inspector of
avocados in Michoacán (see Figure 1), the U.S. Department of Agriculture temporarily halted all
of Mexico’s U.S.-bound avocado exports to protect inspectors and reject attempted extortion by
Mexico’s criminal organizations.11 In March 2021, Head of U.S. Northern Command General
Glen VanHerck stated that 30%-35% of Mexico constitutes an “ungoverned space,” where TCOs
thrive.12
5 See, for instance, Eduardo Guerrero Gutiérrez, “La Operación Electoral del ‘Cártel de Sinaloa,’” El Financiero, June
21, 2021.
6 For background on Mexico, see CRS Report R42917, Mexico: Background and U.S. Relations, by Clare Ribando
Seelke. See also Juan Albarracín and Nicholas Barnes, “Criminal Violence in Latin America,” Latin American
Research Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (June 23, 2020), pp. 397-406.
7 Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul and Kevin Seiff, “Why Do Journalists in Mexico Keep Getting Killed?,” Washington Post,
May 10, 2022. The authors maintain more journalists have been killed in Mexico since the start of 2022 than in
Ukraine, a war zone.
8 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “45 Journalists Killed in 2021/Motive Confirmed or Unconfirmed,” accessed
on February 14, 2022. The CPJ considered the 2020 total to be nine journalists killed, with slightly over half of those
confirmed to be related to the journalist’s profession based upon an investigation.
9 Sandra Pellegrini and Adam Miller, “Journalists Under Attack in Mexico,” Armed Conflict Location and Event Data
Project, April 11, 2022, at https://acleddata.com/2022/04/11/journalists-under-attack-in-mexico/.
10 Falko Ernst, On the Front Lines in the Hot Land: Mexico’s Incessant Conflict, International Crisis Group (ICG),
April 26, 2022, at https://facesofconflict.crisisgroup.org/on-the-front-lines-of-the-hot-land-mexicos-incessant-conflict/.
11 Matt Rivers, “Why Avocado Shipments from Mexico to the U.S. were Stopped: A Death Threat to a Safety
Inspector,” CNN Business, February 16, 2022.
12 Glen VanHerck stated, “Counternarcotics, migration, human trafficking, they’re all symptoms of transnational
criminal organizations who are operating oftentimes in ungoverned areas—30 percent to 35 percent of Mexico—that is
creating some of the things we’re dealing with at the border.” General Glen VanHerck, Commander, NORAD and
USNORTHCOM, USNORTHCOM-USSOUTHCOM, Commander’s Joint Press Briefing Remarks, March 16, 2021.
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This heightened violence inside Mexico coincides with a transition to synthetic drug production
and trafficking, including both the synthetic opioid fentanyl and methamphetamine. Mexican
authorities reportedly seized nearly six times the amount of synthetic drugs in 2019 and 2020 than
were seized from 2016 to 2018. This rise in seizures has stoked renewed concerns among U.S.
policymakers about the effectiveness of Mexico’s anti-cartel and anti-fentanyl strategies.13
In March 2022, a large weapons seizure convinced some analysts of an accelerating “internal”
war within the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s oldest and most dominant TCO.14 Reportedly, police
found in safe houses in Sonora gear that included millions of rounds of high-powered
ammunition, what appeared to be fully automated machine guns, bulletproof vests, and other
weaponry. Police suspected this gear had been stashed for combat between cartel factions (see
below, “Sinaloa DTO” section), as well as for the ongoing power struggle with external
competitors.15
Figure 1. Map of Mexico
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS).
13 Economist, “Latin America’s Drug Gangs Have Had a Good Pandemic: A Resilient Industry Shrugs Off Supply-
Chain Problems,” December 29, 2021. The State Department’s 2022 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
(INCSR), Volume I, released on March 1, 2022, maintains that Mexican authorities seized some 1.3 metric tons of
fentanyl in 2020, a 596% increase over seizures made in 2019.
14 Parker Asmann, “What Does Massive Weapons Seizure Say About Sinaloa Cartel Feud in Mexico,” InSight Crime,
March 7, 2022.
15 Associated Press, “Mexico Finds 3 Million Rounds of Ammo in Biggest Bust So Far,” March 3, 2022.
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The State Department’s March 16, 2022, U.S. travel advisory for Mexico, which cautioned
against travel to Mexico due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic concerns, also
cautioned against travel to Mexico due to significant violent crime, such as homicide, kidnapping,
carjacking, and robbery. In an April 20, 2022, update, the State Department recommended that
U.S. citizens refrain from travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas.16 The
State Department also added an advisory for U.S. government employees not to travel to
Zacatecas State due to the state’s homicide rate doubling between 2020 and 2021, reportedly
based on a cartel turf war.17
Congressional Concerns Over the past decade, Congress has held numerous oversight hearings to address TCO-
perpetrated crime and violence. Topics have included whether Mexican TCOs should be
designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), TCO control of the U.S.-bound illicit drug
supply, U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, including U.S. counternarcotics assistance for Mexico,
and related border security concerns.
Some Members of Congress are concerned about persistently high levels of violence in Mexico
and the ineffectiveness of several efforts to curb that violence or prosecute offenders. In 2012,
after U.S. consulate staff and security personnel working in Mexico came under attack,
congressional concern spiked.18 Occasional use of car bombs, grenades, and rocket-propelled
grenade launchers—such as the one used to bring down a Mexican army helicopter in 2015—
continues to spark alarm among security analysts and policymakers.
Incidents such as the late-2019 massacre of dual U.S.-Mexican citizens near the U.S.-Mexico
border have prompted some Members of Congress to consider whether Mexican drug traffickers
may be adopting insurgent or terrorist techniques.19 In October 2019, following the murder of an
extended family that included young children in the Mexican border state of Sonora, some
Members of Congress questioned whether the U.S. Secretary of State should declare the Mexican
organizations to be FTOs. For example, the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act (H.R. 1700)
was introduced in the 116th Congress, as was the Identifying Drug Cartels as Terrorists Act of
2019 (H.R. 5509). The incident drew the attention of then-President Trump, who urged the
Mexican government to accept more U.S. assistance to vanquish the DTOs.20 In the 117th
16 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, “Mexico Travel Advisory,” April 20, 2022, at
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html. The advisory
concludes, “Violent crime—such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery—is widespread and common in
Mexico.” An added prohibition on U.S. government worker travel for Zacatecas is at https://mx.usembassy.gov/
security-alert-for-u-s-citizens-new-restrictions-on-u-s-government-employee-travel/.
17 Mexico Daily News, “U.S. Embassy Issues Security Alert for Zacatecas,” April 19, 2022.
18 In 2011, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed and another was wounded in a drug gang
shooting incident in San Luis Potosí, north of Mexico City. See BBC News, “U.S. Immigration Agent Shot Dead in
Mexico Attack,” February 16, 2011. In another incident, two U.S. officials traveling in an embassy vehicle were
wounded in an attack allegedly abetted by corrupt Mexican police. C. Archibold and Karla Zabludovsky, “Mexico
Detains 12 Officers in Attack on Americans in Embassy Vehicle,” New York Times, August 28, 2012.
19 See U.S. Congressman Chip Roy, “Reps. Chip Roy and Mark Green Request Drug Cartels Be Added to Terror List,”
press release, February 20, 2019, at https://roy.house.gov/media/press-releases/reps-chip-roy-and-mark-green-request-
drug-cartels-be-added-terror-list. See also U.S. Congressman Chip Roy, “Congressman Roy Introduces Legislation to
Designate Cartels as Terrorist Organizations,” press release, April 15, 2021, at https://roy.house.gov/media/press-
releases/congressman-roy-introduces-legislation-designate-cartels-terrorist.
20 David E. Sanger, Michael D. Shear, and Eric Schmitt, “Trump’s Pentagon Chief Quashed Idea to Send 250,000
Troops to the Border,” New York Times, updated November 9, 2021. In the memoir of former Secretary of Defense
Mark Esper, published in May 2022, Esper alleged that President Trump proposed firing missiles into Mexico to
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Congress, the Security First Act (H.R. 812) was introduced; it would, among its provisions,
require the U.S. Secretary of State to report to certain congressional committees on whether
certain Mexican cartels meet the criteria for designation as FTOs.21
When Congress has considered whether crime syndicates should be designated as FTOs, the
question arises whether the scale, purpose, and types of violence attributed to Mexican TCOs
have morphed into terrorism.22 The criminal groups do not appear to be politically or
ideologically motivated, which is one element of a widely recognized definition of terrorism. In
December 2021, the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism maintained there
was no credible evidence that international terrorist groups had bases in Mexico or “worked
directly with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States in
2020.”23
The primary harm to the United States identified by several security analysts and policymakers
caused by the TCOs is the organizations’ control of movement of illicit drugs. Since the early
1990s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has worked closely with Mexican
authorities to investigate and prosecute Mexican trafficking organizations. DEA now identifies
the TCOs’ expanded production and shipment of heroin, synthetic opioids, and methamphetamine
as the major criminal threat to the United States. In May 2022, in what was perceived as a blow to
U.S.-Mexico antidrug cooperation, Mexico denied DEA the landing rights for its aircraft to
conduct anti-narcotics operations inside Mexico. As a result, DEA withdrew its aircraft, limiting
its operational capacity.24
Current illicit drug production and trafficking trends correspond to the growing epidemic of
opioid-related deaths in the United States and continued high demand for other illicit drugs. This
demand was especially acute during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when U.S. demand
for illicit opioids and black market painkillers spiked.25
In addition, some Members of Congress are concerned about corruption and Mexico’s justice
system failures that lead to impunity and failed prosecutions, arguably allowing criminal power to
go unchecked.26 Cartel control of human smuggling related to irregular migration and the
remove the “drug labs.” This allegation, if true, does not appear to have been publicly discussed or considered by
Members of Congress. Maggie Haberman, “Trump Proposed Launching Missiles into Mexico to ‘Destroy the Drug
Labs,’ Esper Says,” New York Times, May 5, 2022.
21 For a discussion of some of the policy impacts from the TCO designation, see CRS Insight IN11205, Designating
Mexican Drug Cartels as Foreign Terrorists: Policy Implications, coordinated by Liana W. Rosen.
22 Ibid.
23 U.S. State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism 2020: Mexico, at https://www.state.gov/reports/country-
reports-on-terrorism-2020/.
24 Drazen Jorgic, “EXCLUSIVE-U.S. Anti-drugs Agency Pulls Plane from Mexico in Fresh Cooperation Blow,”
Reuters, May 11, 2022.
25 Steven Dudley et al., “Mexico’s Role in the Deadly Rise of Fentanyl,” Wilson Center Mexico Institute and InSight
Crime, February 2019. According to a report of the Stanford-Lancet Commission, in the United States, individuals who
had become addicted to prescription opioids first turned to heroin and. after illicit synthetic opioids flooded heroin
markets, many turned to synthetics, such as fentanyl. See Keith Humphreys et al., “Responding to the Opioid Crisis in
North America and Beyond: Recommendations of the Stanford–Lancet Commission,” Lancet, vol 399, February 5,
2022.
26 Judicial and policing deficiencies have allowed about a 95% impunity level for the resolution of crimes, on average.
For decades, roughly 90% of crimes in Mexico have gone unreported, while only 4%-6% of those reported crimes
reach conclusion or case closure. México Evalúa, Hallazgos 2020. Evaluación del Sistema de Justicia Penal en México,
8th ed., October 5, 2021; Juan Antonio Le Clercq, “Mexico: Measuring Impunity Through the 2020 Global Impunity
Index,” Global Americans, January 11, 2021; Animal Político, “To Murder in Mexico: Impunity Guaranteed,”
September 30, 2018.
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exploitation of migrants awaiting immigration hearings in Mexico’s violent border cities is of
concern to certain Members.
The U.S. Congress provides oversight on
U.S.-Mexico security cooperation.
Congress may continue to evaluate how
the Mexican government is combating the
illicit drug trade, addressing violence, and
monitoring the effects of drug trafficking
and violence on the security of both the
United States and Mexico. Section 7211 of
the FY2020 National Defense
Authorization Act (P.L. 116-92, §7211)
required unclassified and classified
reporting to Congress on foreign opioid
traffickers, such as Mexico’s TCOs. A
provision associated with FY2022 Defense
Department appropriations further directed
the Secretary of Defense, in cooperation
with the Secretary of State, to submit an
integrated security cooperation strategy for
Mexico.27 Pending legislation, such as the
Dark Web Interdiction Act (H.R. 7300 and
S. 3782), also would target fentanyl
traffickers in Mexico.28
The Bicentennial Framework for Security,
Public Health, and Safe Communities,
announced by the U.S. and Mexican
governments in October 2021 (see textbox), focuses on the growing problems of synthetic drugs,
prevention of transborder crime, and pursuit of criminal networks.29 In January 2022, an early
element of the new Bicentennial Framework appeared to be combating the illicit trafficking of
high-caliber arms used by crime groups in Mexico.30
27 See H.Rept. 117-88, the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying H.R. 4432, the Department of
Defense Appropriations Act, 2022. Defense Department appropriations for FY2022 ultimately were enacted as
Division C of H.R. 2471, the FY2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 117-103). The Joint Explanatory
Statement accompanying Division C of H.R. 2471 specifies that “[u]nless otherwise noted, the language set forth in
H.Rept. 117-88 carries the same weight as language included in this joint explanatory statement and should be
complied with unless specifically addressed to the contrary in this joint explanatory statement” (p. 1).
28 President Biden’s December 2021 Executive Order declared a national emergency with respect to international
trafficking of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl. For more, see CRS Insight IN11902, Illicit Fentanyl and Weapons of
Mass Destruction: International Controls and Policy Options, by Paul K. Kerr and Liana W. Rosen.
29 CRS Insight IN11859, New U.S.-Mexico Security Strategy: Issues for Congressional Consideration, by Clare
Ribando Seelke and Liana W. Rosen.
30 Sol Prendido, “Mexico and the U.S. Seek to Stop Ammunition and Firearms Trafficking Between the Two Countries,
Borderline Beat, January 28, 2022; Julian Resendiz, “Mexico Sending Agents to U.S. to Probe Gun Smuggling,
Foreign Minister Says,” ABC News, January 31, 2022.
The Mérida Initiative and Beyond
The Mérida Initiative was a U.S.-Mexican antidrug and rule-
of-law partnership lasting 13 years for which Congress
provided $3.3 billion through FY2021. Many analysts
observed the need for more reporting on Mérida Initiative
outcomes to help Congress oversee the funds it had
appropriated. The State Department has pointed to some
indicators of its success, such as improvements in
intelligence sharing and police cooperation that helped to
capture and extradite high-profile criminals. Escalating
violence in Mexico and drug overdose deaths in the United
States, and instances of police corruption at high levels, led
many observers to question the Initiative’s efficacy.
In 2019, President López Obrador announced he planned
to discontinue the Mérida Initiative. In December 2020, he
supported a change in the National Security Law approved
by Mexico’s Congress restricting the activities of U.S. law
enforcement officials working in Mexico, which was later
eased. In October 2021, the Biden and López Obrador
governments announced a new Bicentennial Framework for
Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities to replace
the Mérida Initiative. The new framework remained in
development in early 2022.
Sources: Carin Zissis, “ALMO and Biden Have Quietly Put
U.S.-Mexico Relations Back on Track,” World Politics Review,
December 6, 2021; and CRS Insight IN11859, New U.S.-
Mexico Security Strategy: Issues for Congressional Consideration,
by Clare Ribando Seelke and Liana W. Rosen
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Mexico’s Criminal Landscape: Extreme Violence,
Corruption, and Impunity The evolution of Mexico’s cartels into more influential transnational crime syndicates has
produced a higher intensity of violence, a broader range of criminality, and organizational
proliferation.31 While Mexico had comparatively larger and more stable DTOs prior to 2005, the
groups have fragmented into nine major groups, with potentially hundreds of smaller local crime
groups and mafias.
Some level of violence is a common feature of how the illicit drug trade operates in Mexico.
Traffickers may commit acts of violence to settle disputes and to serve as a credible threat of
future violence to coerce cooperation. Such violence may provide a semblance of order with
suppliers, creditors, and buyers, and it may intimidate potential rivals and government authorities
tasked with combating organized crime and drug trafficking. According to the U.S. State
Department’s 2021 annual human rights report, “organized crime groups were implicated in
numerous killings, acting with impunity and at times in collusion with corrupt federal, state, local
and security officials.”32 Some observers contend the scale and magnitude of drug-trafficking-
related violence in Mexico are significantly greater than the type and amount of violence
experienced in the United States due to TCO operations. Unlike in the United States, violence in
Mexico appears to be routinely directed toward government officials, political candidates, and the
media.33
Levels of violent crime in Mexico have risen and ebbed over the years but have been heightened
since the mid-2000s, followed by two spikes. Although tallies differ, homicides rose in 2007-2008
and appear to have increased through 2011. They plateaued during the first two years of the
administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), and began to decline before spiking
again in the last two years of the Peña Nieto administration, from 2016 through late 2018.34
During Peña Nieto’s six-year term, traffickers exercised significant territorial control in parts of
the country over drug trafficking routes and production hubs. Despite the early decline in
homicide rates, total homicides reportedly grew by 22% in 2016 and 23% in 2017, reaching a
record level, according to government data published by the Justice in Mexico program at the
University of San Diego.35 Government sources reported in 2018 that homicides exceeded
31 Mary Speck, “Great Expectations and Grim Realities in AMLO’s Mexico,” Prism, vol. 8, no. 1 (2019), pp. 69-81.
32 U.S. Department of State, 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mexico Country Report, April 12,
2022. (Hereinafter, Department of State, 2021 Human Rights Practices Report: Mexico.)
33 For a discussion comparing cartel violence in the United States and Mexico, see CRS Report R41075, Southwest
Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence, by Kristin Finklea. See also Calderón et al,
Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021; Justice in Mexico, “Violence Against Police in Guanajuato Highlights
Complex Security Situation,” April 21, 2021, at https://justiceinmexico.org/police-guanajuato-security/.
34 From Calderón et al, Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021:
There have been two large surges in the number of intentional homicides in Mexico in recent
decades. The first surge began with a steep increase in 2008, peaked in 2011, and was followed by
a relatively sharp decrease over the next few years. The second surge began in 2015, when SNSP
first began reporting the number of individual murder victims alongside the number of homicide
case investigations. Both the number of cases and victims reached record highs in 2018 and 2019.
In 2020 and into 2021, Mexico’s murder rate has remained at historically high levels, even amid the
significant social and economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
35 Ibid. and prior editions of the Justice in Mexico, University of San Diego, annual reports.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
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33,000, for a national rate of 27 per 100,000 persons.36 In 2019, Mexico saw more than 34,500
intentional homicides, for a national rate of 29 per 100,000.37 In 2020 and 2021, the homicide
levels remained at historic high levels.
Murders have continued at such high levels during the administration of President Andrés Manuel
López Obrador. At its midpoint, some observers estimated López Obrador’s term in office (2018-
2024) likely would be be the most violent in recent Mexican history.38 Through different analytic
approaches, some scholars assess between 40% and 65% of all homicides in Mexico are
organized crime-related. Thus, they attribute the biggest factor in Mexico’s growing homicide
rate to the power and violence of crime groups.39
The Mexican government and Mexican media outlets often tally casualty numbers (or homicides)
differently.40 Restricted government reporting and crime groups’ attempts to cover up the
numbers and identities of casualties also make precise reporting difficult. 41 Criminal actors
sometimes publicize their crimes in displays apparently intended to intimidate their rivals, the
public, and security forces, leaving signs reporting their acts of violence or broadcasting the acts
via the internet. Conversely, TCOs may seek to mask their crimes (removing all crime scene
evidence) or may structure the incidents to implicate a competitor cartel. In addition, some
shootouts are not reported due to media self-censorship or cartel threats against local journalists.
The large number of disappeared and missing persons, and the estimated 90% of crimes in
Mexico that go unreported, suggest deaths attributed to organized crime in Mexico may be far
higher than officially reported.42 Homicide victim tallies do not include thousands who have been
reported missing or disappeared or those found in unmarked graves. The cumulative total of
Mexico’s disappeared and missing reportedly exceeds 100,000 in 2022, with 90% of
disappearances reported to have taken place since 2007, according to the Mexican government.43
Some analysts maintain that enforced disappearances are a preferred cartel tactic to maintain
political control.44
36 Chris Dalby and Camilo Carranza, “InSight Crime’s 2018 Homicide Round-Up,” InSight Crime, January 22, 2019.
37 Testimony of Richard Glenn, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs, in U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Civilian
Security, and Trade, Assessing U.S. Security Assistance to Mexico, February 13, 2020.
38 Calderón et al., Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021.
39 The Justice in Mexico project has identified an average (over many years) of homicides linked to organized crime by
assessing several sources. Of total homicides reported by the Mexican government, between 25% and 50% of those
killings were likely linked to organized crime. Some analysts point to a higher percentage of murders linked to
organized crime, such as Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, “Violent Mexico: Participatory and Multipolar Violence
Associated with Organised Crime,” International Journal of Conflict and Violence, vol. 10, no. 1 (2016), p. 46; Julio
Ríos, “Violencia en México en Vías de Superar a las Victimas de Guerra Civil en Colombia,” University of
Guadalajara, November 29, 2020.
40 The Mexican news organizations Reforma and Milenio both keep a tally of “narco-executions.” For instance, in
2014, Reforma reported 6,400 such killings, the lowest it has reported since 2008, whereas Milenio reported 7,993
organized crime-related murders. Kimberly Heinle, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David A. Shirk, Drug Violence in
Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2015, University of San Diego, April 2016.
41 See for instance, Christopher Sherman, “Drug War Death Tolls a Guess Without Bodies,” Associated Press, March
26, 2013.
42 Mexico News Daily, “Tijuana Journalist Believed Killed over Stories About Drug Traffickers,” March 8, 2022.
43 Mary Beth Sheridan, “Mexico’s Plague of Disappearances Continues to Worsen,” Washington Post, July 14, 2020;
United Nations, “Mexico: Over 95,000 Registered as Disappeared, Impunity ‘Almost Absolute,’” U.N. News,
November 29, 2021; LatinNews Daily, “Mexico: Concerns as Disappearances Reach New Milestone,” May 17, 2022.
44 See, for instance, Ivan Briscoe and David Keseberg, “Only Connect: The Survival and Spread of Organized Crime in
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
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Official efforts to accurately count the missing or disappeared have been limited. In 2019, the
López Obrador government established a National Search Commission to assess the problem.45
The discovery of new mass graves continues.46 In the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, one vast mass
grave unearthed in 2017 contained some 250 skulls and other remains.47 According to the State
Department’s human rights report covering 2021, Mexico’s states with the highest reported
disappearances from the start of 2019 through June 2020 include many where the TCOs are most
active: Guanajuato, Jalisco, Mexico, Michoacán, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas,
Zacatecas, and Mexico City.48
Mexican government data about homicides have not been reported consistently or completely. In
some cases, data are incomplete due to what the president of the United Nations Committee on
Enforced Disappearances decried in November 2021 as Mexico’s “forensic crisis,” which she
attributed in part to an inadequate security strategy and poor investigations.49 According to a 2018
investigation by anti-corruption watchdog group Animal Político, many states in Mexico lack
equipment to investigate violent crime adequately, with a majority of states lacking biological
databases needed to identify unclaimed bodies.
According to the Switzerland-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, about 380,000
people were forcibly displaced in Mexico between 2009 and 2018 due to violence and organized
crime. In 2020, the center reported 9,700 newly displaced Mexicans. The U.S. State Department
noted 15 incidents of mass forced internal displacement (of at least 10 families or 50 individuals)
within the first seven months of 2021.50 Some Mexican government authorities have said the
number may exceed 1 million, but in such a count the definition of the causes for displacement is
broad and includes anyone who moved due to fear or threat of violence. Displaced Mexicans
often cite clashes between armed groups or with Mexican security forces, inter-gang violence,
and fear of future violence as reasons for leaving their homes and communities.51
A Competition for Turf and the Geography of Violence
The major feature of the current criminal landscape in Mexico, according to several observers
who monitor organized crime in Mexico, is the battle between an emergent Cartel Jalisco Nuevo
Generación (CJNG), whose primary business is synthetic drugs (both methamphetamine and
fentanyl), and Sinaloa Cartel, the historically dominant and most extensive crime organization.52
Latin America,” PRISM, vol. 8, no. 1 (2019). For context, see CRS In Focus IF11669, Human Rights Challenges in
Mexico: Addressing Enforced Disappearances, by Clare Ribando Seelke and Rachel L. Martin.
45 For more on the López Obrador administration’s security approach, see CRS Report R42917, Mexico: Background
and U.S. Relations, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
46 Mexico News Daily, “11 Bodies Found in Clandestine Graves in Sonora,” March 8, 2022.
47 Patrick J. McDonnell and Cecilia Sanchez, “A Mother Who Dug in a Mexican Mass Grave to Find the ‘Disappeared’
Finally Learns Her Son’s Fate,” Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2017; BBC News, “Mexico Violence: Skulls Found in a
New Veracruz Mass Grave,” March 20, 2017.
48 Department of State, Human Rights Practices Report: Mexico.
49 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, “Mexico: Prevention Must Be Central to National
Policy to Stop Enforced Disappearance, UN Committee Finds,” press release, April 12, 2022, at
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/mexico-prevention-must-be-central-national-policy-stop-enforced.
50 International Displacement Monitoring Centre, database accessed February 24, 2022, at https://www.internal-
displacement.org/countries/mexico; Department of State, 2021 Human Rights Practices Report: Mexico.
51 Juan Arvizo, “Crimen Displazó a 380 Mil Personas,” El Universal, July 24, 2019. See also Parker Asmann, “Is the
Impact of Violence in Mexico Similar to War Zones?” InSight Crime, October 23, 2017.
52 See, for instance, Sugeyry Romina Gándara, “Mexico Ablaze as Jalisco Cartel Seeks Criminal Hegemony,” InSight
Crime, January 5, 2022.
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(For more about CJNG’s split from Sinaloa, see “Cártel Jalisco Nuevo Generación,” below.)
According to some analysts, the structure is a reassertion of the “bipolarity” between two
significant crime networks in Mexico’s organized criminal environment that existed in earlier
parts of the 21st century.53
Figure 2 maps the territories dominated and disputed by major cartels from data gathered by
Latin America regional analyst James Bosworth from open sources and journalist interviews. The
figure shows five major competitors or large cartels: CJNG, Sinaloa, Juárez, Gulf, and Los Zetas,
each by their areas of dominance and contested areas. Local group challenges shown in central
and western Mexico come from cartel fragments or new offshoots of groups that are among the
nine organizations profiled in this report, such as La Familia Michoacana. For another way to
envision the TCO territories and conflicts, the political risk firm Stratfor Worldview (previously
Stratfor) provides a geographic mapping (see Figure 3) of Mexico’s 12 major cartels. This
depiction has evolved from a previous Stratfor conceptualization of cartel territories within
regional groupings.
Figure 2. 2021 Mexican Cartel Territory and Conflict Zones
Source: Created by CRS. Data provided by James Bosworth, Hxagon LLC
Notes: CJNG = Cartel Jalisco Nuevo Generación. Map data was compiled through open-source research and
interviews with journalists and analysts operating in Mexico. Only major organizations are shown. Updated as of
late 2021.
Many analysts contend that conflicts among rising splinter groups or cartel fragments are behind
some of Mexico’s most virulent violence. Smaller groups, according to some analysts, may be
less able to challenge the national government or engage in some types of transnational crimes,
including international drug trafficking. However, cartel splinter groups continue to fight to retain
the lucrative drug trafficking business, since it remains one of the most high-profit criminal
53 Nathan P. Jones et al., Mexico’s 2021 Dark Network Alliance Structure: An Exploratory Social Network Analysis of
Lantia Consultores’ Illicit Network Alliance and Subgroup Data, Center for the United States and Mexico, Baker
Institute for Policy Studies, April 22, 2022. (Hereinafter, Jones et al., Dark Network Alliance Structure.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
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activities. Some analysts report that the largest cartels have engaged in a “proxy war,” using
smaller groups to control drug supply chains.54
CJNG is intensely expansionist, using displays of extreme violence to intimidate. CJNG is widely
believed to be responsible for the June 2020 killing of a federal judge in Colima who had
supervised a case involving the son of the CJNG leader, Rubén “El Menchito” Oseguera, himself
reputedly a top cartel figure. The judge had ruled in favor of El Menchito’s 2020 extradition to
the United States and had delivered judgments in significant Sinaloa Cartel cases.
Figure 3. Cartel Territory by Areas of Dominance and Presence in 2021
(Stratfor Worldview)
Source: Rane: Worldview Powered by Stratfor, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2021,” August 6, 2021, at
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/tracking-mexicos-cartels-2021?app=old.
54 See, Economist, “Latin America’s Drug Gangs Have Had a Good Pandemic: A Resilient Industry Shrugs off Supply-
Chain Problems,” December 2021.
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A few weeks after the judge’s killing, Mexico City’s police chief and secretary of public security,
Omar García Harfuch, was ambushed in an armed attack that seriously wounded him and killed
two bodyguards and a bystander. García Harfuch, from his hospital bed, accused the CJNG of
launching the attack.55 As of late 2021, there had been no public reporting on the investigations of
the judge’s killing in Colima or the assassination attempt in Mexico City.56 Some judges
reportedly declined to accept organized crime cases, citing the Mexico City attack.57
In contrast to the experience in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, where the sequential
dismantling of the Medellín and Cali Cartels led to less overt violence, Mexico’s dismantling of
major DTOs has led to a fragmentation associated with widespread and brutal violence.58 A
kingpin strategy implemented by the Mexican government has largely incapacitated numerous
top- and mid-level leaders in all the major TCOs by means of arrest or killings in arrest efforts.
However, this strategy may spark succession struggles that reconfigure external alliances. In this
process, somewhat stable criminal groups are often replaced by ones that are more violent.
According to an analysis by the International Crisis Group, between 2009 and late 2020, “at least
543 armed groups operated in Mexico”; the analysis largely attributed this situation to the failures
of the kingpin strategy.59
The Administration of President López Obrador and Security
On December 1, 2018, President López Obrador, the populist leftist leader of the National
Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party, took office after winning 53% of the vote in the July
elections. The new president pledged to make Mexico a more just and peaceful society and
vowed to govern with austerity. He said he would not pursue a war against the TCOs but would
target the social conditions that allow criminal groups to thrive, a strategy he summarized as
“hugs, not bullets.”60 After three years holding office, as of January 2022, López Obrador has
avoided large-scale police actions against the cartels and U.S.-Mexico cooperation on law
enforcement has declined.61
In his first year, President López Obrador backed constitutional reforms to authorize continued
military involvement in public security for five years, despite a 2018 Mexican Supreme Court
55 Kevin Sieff, “Mexico’s Bold Jalisco Cartel Places Elite in Its Sights,” Washington Post, July 14, 2020 (hereinafter
Sieff, “Mexico’s Bold Jalisco Cartel”); Jacobo García, “Omar García Harfuch, the Mexican Police Chief Who
Survived Being Shot at 414 Times,” El País, June 21, 2021.
56 Twenty-five individuals were arrested in connection with the attack on Harfuch and some 80 bank accounts were
frozen. Ibid.
57 See, for instance, Gustavo Castillo García, “Va el ‘Narco’ por el Control Político y Territorial: Gertz,” La Jornada,
July 7, 2020.
58 In Colombia’s case, successfully targeting the huge and wealthy Medellín and Cali Cartels and dismantling them
meant that a number of smaller DTOs (cartelitos) replaced them. The smaller organizations have not behaved as
violently as the larger cartels, and thus the Colombian government was seen to have reduced violence in the drug trade.
However, there were critical factors in Colombia that were not present in Mexico, such as the presence of guerrilla
insurgents and paramilitaries that became deeply involved in the illegal drug business. Arguably, the Colombian cartels
of the 1980s and 1990s were structured and managed very differently than their contemporary Mexican counterparts.
59 International Crisis Group, Crime in Pieces: The Effects of Mexico’s ‘War on Drugs,’ Explained, Visual Explainer,
May 5, 2022, at https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/crime-pieces-effects-mexicos-%E2%80%9Cwar-
drugs%E2%80%9D-explained.
60 Gladys McCormick, “‘Abrazos no Balazos’—Evaluating AMLO’s Security Initiatives,” Center for Strategic and
International Studies, December 13, 2019, at https://www.csis.org/analysis/abrazos-no-
balazos%E2%80%94evaluating-amlos-security-initiatives.
61 Drazen Jorgic, “Mexico Shuts Elite Investigations Unit in Blow to U.S. Drugs Cooperation” Reuters, April 19, 2022.
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ruling that prolonged military involvement in domestic security violated the constitution. He
secured congressional approval to stand up a new National Guard (composed of former military,
federal police, and new recruits), ostensibly to combat crime. The creation of the National Guard
and the continuation of an active domestic role for the military alarmed many in the human rights
community, who had persuaded Mexico’s Congress to modify López Obrador’s proposal to try to
ensure the National Guard would be under civilian command. In 2019, the National Guard was
primarily assigned migration enforcement in response to Trump Administration demands for
Mexico to stem irregular migration. In 2020 and 2021, the National Guard could not certify some
90% of its force was fit for duty.62 López Obrador contends that Mexico’s National Guard was
unprepared to handle the violent tactics of the TCOs because the National Guard lacked training
to conduct such a difficult domestic security task. Critics note government investment in both
state and local law enforcement has declined since 2018.63
Some analysts also question López Obrador’s commitment to combat corruption in a way that
could help curb Mexico’s persistent organized crime-related violence.64 During his first three
years in office, López Obrador has said he pursued unconventional antidrug approaches, such as
legalization of some drugs such as cannabis, and targeted oil theft by attacking cartels that are
known to steal petroleum. However, several observers maintain the administration has not issued
an effective or comprehensive security policy to combat the TCOs.65 Stratfor Worldview
illustrates the cartels’ widespread activity and presence throughout much of Mexico’s territory in
2021 (see Figure 3)—and how little of the country has been spared from significant activity. (See
Appendix for an overview of prior government efforts to quell the cartels during Mexican
administrations since 2007.) Some analysts maintain that progress to implement an anti-
corruption system required by a 2017 constitutional reform has not materialized under the López
Obrador administration.66
Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection cited a decline in homicides in January and
February 2022, compared with those same months in the prior year, as evidence that President
López Obrador’s anti-crime and anti-corruption strategies were working.67 Some critics who
follow the homicide trends have questioned the methodology used to arrive at such a conclusion.
They contend that the first two months of the year’s decline in homicides in a limited number of
municipalities, reported by the Mexican government, do not constitute a significant decline.68
López Obrador has made headway on some stalled investigations, such as establishing a
62 Arturo Angel, “80% en Guardia Nacional Carece de Certificación Como Policía, Predominan en esta Fuerza
Militares y Marinos,” Animal Politico, July 7, 2020; Stratfor Worldview, “Three Years In, Lopez Obrador’s Cartel
Strategy Has Not Succeeded in Mexico,” September 13, 2021.
63 CRS In Focus IF10578, U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation: From the Mérida Initiative to the Bicentennial
Framework, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
64 Calderón et al., Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021; Gina Hinojosa and Maureen Meyer, The Future of
Mexico’s National Anti-Corruption System: The Anti-Corruption Fight under President López-Obrador, Washington
Office on Latin America, August 2019.
65 For more on the President Lopéz Obrador’s evolving approach, see CRS Insight IN11859, New U.S.-Mexico Security
Strategy: Issues for Congressional Consideration, by Clare Ribando Seelke and Liana W. Rosen, and CRS Report
R42917, Mexico: Background and U.S. Relations, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
66 See for additional background, see CRS In Focus IF10578, U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation: From the Mérida
Initiative to the Bicentennial Framework, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
67 Isabel González, “Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad Funciona y Así Se Pacifica al País: SSPC,” El Excelsior, March
17, 2022.
68 See, for example, James Bosworth and Lucy Hale, “Mexico - Q1 2022 Homicide Data,” Latin America Risk Report,
April 25, 2022; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Opinion, Crime & Anti-Crime Policies in Mexico in 2022: A Bleak Outlook,”
Mexico Today, January 21, 2022.
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commission to address a long-unsolved case from 2014 in which a drug cartel was suspected of
murdering 43 youth in Guerrero State with collusion from Mexican security authorities. In June
2020, arrest warrants were issued for more than 40 municipal officials in Guerrero in that case;
information released in March 2022 indicated the Mexican Navy was involved in a cover-up
concerning the students’ deaths. The government had alleged that a crime group had killed the
students.69
Corrupted by the Cartels: Mexican Police, Prison Wardens, and Public Officials
Police and other public officials in Mexico cooperating with the TCOs are rarely investigated. However, most
violent crimes such as homicide, whether committed by corrupt police officers or others, are never fully
prosecuted. Police corruption has been so thorough, some argue, that some law enforcement officials reportedly
carry out violent assignments from TCOs. Police are considered poorly paid compared with other occupations,
especially at the local level, and, as a result, could be susceptible to TCO pressure; some police officers may
occasionally moonlight for crime groups. Police security tests and purges have not rid the police of these types of
corruption, and the threat of TCOs undermining police and the rule of law continues.
The capture and escapes of the Sinaloa Cartel’s notorious longtime leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Leora
indicate the power of cartel influence in prisons. After El Chapo Guzmán escaped from a federal maximum-
security prison in 2015 (his second escape from a Mexican prison), scores of Mexican prison personnel were
arrested. The prison warden was fired. Guzmán was captured a third time and extradited to the United States. In
February 2019, he was convicted in federal court in New York for multiple counts of operating a continuing
criminal enterprise. Some of the trial’s most incendiary testimony alleged that senior Mexican government officials
took bribes from Guzmán. One prosecution witness alleged that then-President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018)
received a $100 million bribe from Guzmán, an allegation Peña Nieto disputed. Some observers maintain this
allegation was far-fetched. El Chapo is serving his life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
In December 2019, U.S. authorities arrested Genaro García Luna in Texas on a U.S. indictment for taking
multimillion-dollar bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel while holding top law enforcement positions. García Luna
headed Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005 (under President Vicente Fox of the National
Action Party, or PAN). Later, under President Felipe Calderón, also of PAN, Garcia Luna became secretary of
public security. García Luna left Mexico in 2012 and sought to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 2019,
President López Obrador claimed García Luna’s U.S. arrest revealed corruption in the prior Calderón
administration and demonstrated how an openly aggressive enforcement strategy had failed in combating Mexico’s
TCOs. In late 2020, U.S.-Mexico counternarcotics cooperation was buffeted by the U.S. arrest (and subsequent
release) of former Mexican Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos on drug and money-laundering charges and
by the Mexican Congress’s imposition of restrictions on U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation.
In 2020, under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which renders designees ineligible for U.S.
visas, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated former Nayarit Governor Roberto Sandoval Castañeda (2011-
2017, PRI Party) and his immediate family for corruption in misappropriating state assets and accepting bribes from
the CJNG and the Beltrán Leyva Organization. Some Members of the U.S. Congress have criticized the Mexican
attorney general for failing to go after corruption conscientiously and for selectively prosecuting only those in the
political opposition to the López Obrador government.
Sources: Steven Dudley, “The End of the Big Cartels: Why There Won’t Be Another Chapo,” InSight Crime,
March 18, 2019; James Bosworth and Lucy Hale, “Mexico-State Police Strike in Zacatecas,” Latin America Risk
Report, April 11, 2022; U.S. Department of Justice, “Former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Arrested for
Drug-Trafficking Conspiracy and Making False Statements,” press release, December 10, 2019; U.S. Department of
Justice, “Former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna Charged with Engaging in a Continuing
Criminal Enterprise,” press release, July 30, 2020; Joshua Goodman, “Democrats Blast Mexico’s President for
Assailing Judiciary,” Associated Press, April 7, 2022; CRS Report R46362, Foreign Officials Publicly Designated by the
U.S. Department of State on Corruption or Human Rights Grounds: A Chronology, by Liana W. Rosen and Michael A.
Weber; María Novoa, “The Wheels of Justice in Mexico Are Failing. What Can Be Done?,” Americas Quarterly, July
9, 2020.
69 Associated Press, “New Arrest Warrants Issued in Case of Mexico’s Missing 43,” June 30, 2020; Guardian, “Mexico
Armed Forces Knew the Fate of 43 Disappeared Students from Day One,” March 29, 2022.
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In 2021 and early 2022, several violent incidents occurred in tourist areas that traditionally have
low levels of violence, including on the coast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, known as the
Maya Riviera. In these incidents, some tourists were killed—usually unintentionally, or not
because tourists were the targets—on exclusive beachfront properties.70 The López Obrador
government dispatched National Guard convoys to the Cancún-area resorts numerous times
during 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 to curb TCO violence.71 This violence could affect the
Mexican economy’s vital tourism sector. In mid-February 2022, Quintana Roo’s governor
convened a meeting with U.S. and Canadian officials to identify crime groups in the state and
establish a joint anti-crime strategy.72 According to some reports, killers have employed jet skis to
approach victims and there is growing concern about cartels using weaponized drones to attack
police and rivals.73
During the six-year term of President Peña Nieto, Mexico fell 32 places in the watchdog group
Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI).74 Mexican respondents’
perceptions of corruption improved slightly in 2019 and in 2020, possibly due to the popularity of
President López Obrador. In 2021, however, Mexico’s overall CPI score stayed the same as in
2020. In the CPI’s measurement of perceptions of corruption for 2021, released in January 2022,
Mexico ranked in the bottom third regionally with a score of 31.75 Some critics maintain this
ranking shows “stagnation” on a critical area of the president’s platform to address corruption.76
According to Transparency International, “despite the president’s strong anti-corruption rhetoric,
major corruption cases in the country have gone unpunished.” Mexico’s score in the CPI partially
reflects that a growing number of scandals, some controversially involving money laundering and
the DTOs, has touched close associates of President López Obrador. The president has remained
popular despite the historically high levels of homicides, a situation that he frequently discounts.
López Obrador is also a frequent critic of the press in his daily morning briefings, especially of
investigations or reporting that denounces the administration or his family. He has been known to
label journalists during these morning briefings as enemies intent on defaming him and his anti-
corruption efforts. In early 2022, López Obrador’s continued attacks on the media (and other
corruption watchdogs) sparked international concern following the violent deaths of eleven
journalists. According to an investigation cited by media accounts, one reporter killed in January
was a crime scene photographer who was murdered by a drug cartel.77 Lourdes Madonado López,
70 David Marcial Pérez , “Extortion and Murder in the Riviera Maya: The Dark Side of Mexico’s Tourist Paradise,” El
País, February 8, 2022. See also U.S. Mission to Mexico, “Security Alert – US Consulate General Merida,” January 25,
2022.
71 Laura Gamba Fadul, “Mexico to Deploy 1,500 National Guard Troops to Cancun Resorts after Shooting,” January
18, 2021.
72 Mexico Daily News, “Quintana Roo to Host North American Security Summit,” February 15, 2022.
73 Scott Mistler-Ferguson,“Sicarios of the Sea-Gunmen Ride Jet Skis in Mexico,” InSight Crime, February 7, 2022;
InSight Crime, “Tepalcatepec, Mexico: A Staging Ground for Drone Warfare,” January 14, 2022.
74 See Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2018, January 29, 2018, at
https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018 and https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/cpi-2018-regional-analysis-
americas.
75 Scores are on a scale of 0 to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. The Americas Ranking, a subset
of the global scoring, includes Latin American and Caribbean countries, Canada, and the United States.
76 LatinNews, “Corruption Levels Stagnate, Casting Doubt over López Orbrador’s Key Pledge,” Security & Strategic
Review-March 2022, March 4, 2022.
77 LatinNews Daily, “Mexico: U.S.-Mexico Tensions Rise over Killings of Journalists,” February 24, 2022; San Diego
Union Tribune, “Killers of Tijuana Journalist Thought He Was Responsible for Report on Criminal Group, AG Says,”
March 7, 2022.
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a Tijuana reporter found dead in her car in mid-January, had previously petitioned President
López Obrador that she needed protection due to her dangerous work. Mexican authorities had
detained suspects in her case as of mid-February 2022.78
In February 2022, the Inter-American Press Association called for President López Obrador to
end his series of anti-journalist rants in the wake of a spate of journalist deaths since the
beginning of the year.79 José Miguel Vivanco, a longtime director at the global human rights
advocacy group Human Rights Watch, stated President López Obrador is someone who
“manipulates public opinion in a magisterial fashion,” and he characterized Mexico’s president as
“an authoritarian” who delegitimizes free press.80
A report by a law-focused organization assessing anti-corruption efforts in Latin America ranks
Mexico extremely low for implementation of what observers generally describe as a
comprehensive anti-corruption legal framework. In a March 2022 report, the authors maintained,
“Insufficient political will for its implementation (despite being one of the priorities of the current
president), inadequate economic and human resources for anti-corruption agencies, insufficient
judicial independence ... [result in] ... selective justice and impunity.”81
Crime also has increased in connection with recent migration developments between the United
States and Mexico. During the pandemic, a health policy known as Title 42 increased the number
of asylum seekers sent back to Mexico, mainly to border cities.82 A significant number of
migrants seeking asylum hearings reside in temporary shelters or provisional encampments in
Mexico’s northern border states of Baja California, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipas under the U.S.
Migrant Protection Protocols.83 These border states have homicide rates exceeding the national
average. Two of the U.S.-Mexico border cities with the highest incidence of violent crime were
Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez (the first- and second-most violent Mexican cities from 2018 to
2021).84 Migrants and border city residents were frequent victims of predatory crime, such as
kidnapping, robbery, and extortion, in addition to homicide. The turf battle between the Sinaloa
Cartel and the CJNG spawned chaotic violence from the Pacific border city of Tijuana to
Mexico’s east coast (see Figure 4).
78 Wendy Fry, “Remnants of the Arellano Felix Cartel Responsible for Tijuana Journalist Killings, Mexico Says,” San
Diego Union Tribune, April 28, 2022: CRS Report R45199, Violence Against Journalists in Mexico: In Brief,
coordinated by Clare Ribando Seelke.
79 Associated Press, “Press Group Calls on Mexican President to Stop Attacks,” February 14, 2022.
80 Michael Stott, “Crisis of US Democracy Emboldens Latin American Populists, Says Rights Chief,” Financial Times,
January 26, 2022.
81 Lawyers Council for Civil & Economic Rights, LAAA 2021/2022 Latin America Anti-Corruption Assessment, Cyrus
R. Vance Center for International Justice, March 16, 2022.
82 See CRS Infographic IG10031, U.S. Border Patrol Encounters at the Southwest Border: Titles 8 & 42.
83The Trump Administration’s Migration Protection Protocols allowed for persons seeking asylum in the United States
to be returned to Mexico to await their U.S. hearings; the protocols were reinstated at the end of 2021. See U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, “Court Ordered Reimplementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols,” updated
January 20, 2022.
84 Data provided by the University of San Diego’s Justice in Mexico project to CRS, January 2022.
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Figure 4. Top 10 Cities for Most Homicide Victims in Mexico in 2020
Sources: Created by CRS. Data from Laura Y. Calderón et al. (eds.), Organized Crime and Violence in Mexico,
2021 Special Report, October 2021, p. 14. This report tracked homicide data from the Mexican government’s
National Public Security System.
Note: Under each city name is the absolute number of homicides and the homicide rate per 100,000 people.
Crime Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic85
Fragmentation of Mexico’s TCOs continued during the first two years of the COVID-19
pandemic, possibly because of increased intra-cartel competition.86 However, the largest TCOs,
such as CJNG, managed to consolidate expansion across Mexico. As noted earlier, CJNG’s
willingness to attack Mexican government officials and its aggression in battling its primary
competitor, the Sinaloa Cartel, have forged its fierce reputation. In addition, police and other
security force personnel during engaged in fewer frontal attacks to curtail cartel violence during
the pandemic. Reasons for this include the Mexican security forces being required to conduct
curfew enforcement and other pandemic-related duties, as well as to participate in irregular
migration control; illness among security force members and police; and a decision by the López
Obrador government not to make engagement to counter the cartels a priority.87 Despite early
supply-chain disruptions, U.S.-bound illicit drug supplies appeared to revert to pre-pandemic
levels in 2021. Illicit fentanyl flows in particular appeared to thrive.
The economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the International Monetary
Fund, caused the Mexican economy to contract deeply in 2020. After a mild recovery in 2021,
Mexico experienced low growth (2.0%) in the first quarter of 2022.88 The full effects of the
pandemic’s economic and social disruption over the medium and longer terms on drug
trafficking, crime group recruitment, and violence in Mexico remain unknown. Its impacts on
85 For further background, see CRS Insight IN11535, Mexican Drug Trafficking and Cartel Operations amid COVID-
19, by June S. Beittel and Liana W. Rosen.
86 Jane Esberg, “More Than Cartels: Counting Mexico’s Crime Rings,” International Crisis Group, May 8, 2020, at
https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/mexico/more-cartels-counting-mexicos-crime-rings.
87 Ioan Grillo, “How Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Profiting from the Pandemic;” July 7, 2020; Eduardo Guerrero
Gutiérrez, “La Seguridad con AMLO: Balance Preelectoral,” El Financiero, April 11, 2021; Economist, “Latin
America’s Drug Gangs have had a Good Pandemic: A Resilient Industry Shrugs off Supply-Chain Problems,”
December 2021.
88 See LatinNews Daily, “In Brief: Mexico’s Private Sector Lowers 2022 Growth Forecast,” March 4, 2022;
International Monetary Fund, “Mexico, At a Glance,” at https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/MEX#ataglance.
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government revenues, security spending, and cartel adaptation to logistics and enforcement
challenges continue to evolve.89
In 2020, homicide levels remained elevated during Mexico’s comparatively brief pandemic
lockdown, but crimes of opportunity, such as robbery, appeared to decline.90 According to
homicide data by state released in 2022, murders (intentional homicides) stayed elevated, near
record levels throughout 2020 and 2021. The three most violent states in Mexico for 2020, using
the rate of homicides per 100,000 persons, were (1) Colima, (2) Baja California, and (3)
Guanajuato; in 2021, they were (1) Zacatecas, (2) Baja California, and (3) Colima, from data
published by Mexico’s National System of Public Security. In both 2020 and 2021, all these
states had homicide rates greater than 80 per 100,000 persons.
Some U.S. policymakers have expressed concerns about the extent of territory in Mexico not
under central government control. In such places, criminal groups and their fragments attempt to
seek dominance and secure impunity from government authorities.91 The CJNG, for instance, was
involved in violent clashes with rivals to control border crossings and smuggling routes into the
United States, according to observers tracking the TCO’s expansion.92 Sinaloa and CJNG
reportedly are competing to dominate the sport fishing and seafood production industries on both
the east and the west coast of Mexico.93
Illicit Drugs in Mexico and Components of Its Drug
Supply Market The major Mexican TCOs are polydrug traffickers, handling more than one type of drug,
although they may specialize in the production or trafficking of specific products. According to
the U.S. State Department’s 2022 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR),
Mexico is a significant source and transit country for heroin, marijuana, and synthetic drugs (such
as methamphetamine and fentanyl) destined for the United States. Mexico remains the main
trafficking route for U.S.-bound cocaine from the major supply countries of Colombia and, to a
lesser extent, Peru and Bolivia.94 DEA, in its National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA)
published in March 2021, maintains that traffickers and retail sellers of fentanyl and heroin
combine the drugs in various ways, such as pressing them into highly addictive and extremely
powerful counterfeit pills (appearing to be OxyContin or other prescription and over-the-counter
drugs).95 The DEA has said that fentanyl provided by Mexican traffickers to certain U.S. drug
89 Many analysts have made observations about the near-term impacts of the pandemic, but there is a diversity of
perspectives on the long-term effects on drug supply and other illicit criminal activity.
90 See robbery data on National System of Public Security (SESNSP), at https://www.gob.mx/sesnsp/acciones-y-
programas/victimas-nueva-metodologia?state=published; Calderón et al., Organized Crime and Violence, October
2021.
91See Ernst Falco, “On the Front Lines of the Hot Land: Mexico’s Incessant Conflict,” International Crisis Group: A
Visual Journey Through Latin America (series), April 26, 2022.
92 Luis Chaparro, “Mexico’s Powerful Jalisco Cartel Is Flexing Its Muscles at the Opposite Ends of Latin America,”
October 18, 2021; Sugery Romina Gándara, “Mexico Ablaze as Jalisco Cartel Seeks Criminal Hegemony,” InSight
Crime, January 5, 2022.
93 Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Organized Crime Is Taking over Mexican Fisheries,” Brookings Institution, February 21,
2022.
94 U.S. State Department, 2022 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), March 1, 2022. Hereinafter,
State Department, 2022 INCSR.
95 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Threat Assessment
(NDTA) 2020, March 2021. Hereinafter, DEA, NDTA 2020. For additional background, Celina B. Realuya, “The New
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service 19
markets may supplant “white powder” heroin. Still, 97% of heroin traced from U.S. seizures is
sourced from Mexico, according to the 2022 INCSR. Furthermore, the State Department report
maintains that addiction rates inside Mexico are rising, including the abuse of synthetic drugs.
The west coast state of Sinaloa, with its long coastline and difficult-to-access areas, is favorable
for drug cultivation and remains the heartland of Mexico’s drug trade. Marijuana and opium
poppy cultivation have flourished in the state for decades.96 It also has been the home of Mexico’s
most notorious and successful drug traffickers.
Categories of Illicit Drugs
Cocaine. Cocaine of Colombian origin supplies most of the U.S. market, and most of that supply
is trafficked through Mexico. Mexican drug traffickers are the primary wholesalers of U.S.
cocaine. The international influence of Mexico’s TCOs is growing. The ability of Mexico’s
cartels to transport Colombian cocaine in the 1990s was a major factor in their growth (for more,
see the Appendix). In April 2022, press reports noted Mexico’s cartels appeared to be a new
source of guns for Colombian insurgents and crime groups. Caches of weapons discovered by
Colombian authorities included high-powered assault weapons (that appeared to be U.S.-made)
provided to Colombia’s armed groups as payment for cocaine shipments. According to press
reports, Mexico’s largest cartels are starting to demand coca growers in Colombia plant hyper-
productive coca strains to increase their cocaine output.97
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, coca cultivation and
cocaine production in Colombia increased to a record 951 metric tons (MT) of pure cocaine in
2019 and exceeded 1,000 MT in 2020.98 Cutting cocaine with synthetic opioids (often
unbeknownst to users) reportedly has become commonplace and increases the danger of fatal
overdose. Mexican government seizures of cocaine in the first six months of 2021 increased by
90% compared with the same period in 2020.99
Heroin and Synthetically Produced Opioids. In its 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment,
DEA warned that Mexico’s crime organizations, aided by corruption and impunity, present an
acute threat to U.S. communities given their dominance in heroin and fentanyl exports. Mexico’s
heroin traffickers, which traditionally provided black or brown heroin to the western part of the
United States, began to change their opium processing methods in 2012 and 2013 to produce
white powder heroin, a purer and more potent product.
The DEA maintains that no other crime groups, foreign or domestic, have a reach comparable to
that of Mexican TCOs to distribute white powder heroin and fentanyl within the United States.
With Mexico being the leading source of fentanyl and fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills to the U.S.
market, DEA warns that Mexican TCOs have established clandestine laboratories “for the
synthesis of fentanyl.”100 The State Department maintains that Mexico has not succeeded in
Opium War: A National Emergency,” PRISM, vol. 8, no. 1 (2019).
96 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.
97 Reuters, “Pushing Productive Seeds, Mexican Cartels Reshape Colombia’s Drug Industry,” May 9, 2022; Luis Jaime
Acosta, “Mexican Cartels Swap Arms for Cocaine, fueling Colombia Violence,” Reuters, April 12, 2022.
98 White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), “Updated: ONDCP Releases Data on Coca
Cultivation and Potential Cocaine Production in the Andean Region,” July 16, 2021.
99 State Department, 2022 INCSR.
100 ONDCP, “New Annual Data Released by White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Shows Poppy
Cultivation and Potential Heroin Production Remain at Record-High Levels in Mexico,” press release, June 14, 2019.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service 20
sufficiently reducing the flow of dangerous drugs across the border. It cites Mexico’s failure to
deter TCOs or successfully prosecute them in court and the slowing of Mexico’s responses to
U.S. extradition requests for defendants on drug-related charges.101
Mexican heroin is with increasing frequency laced with fentanyl, according to DEA, and
Mexico’s potential production of pure heroin rose to 106 MT in 2018. Subsequently, Mexican
heroin production fell for three years through 2020, according to the State Department.102 The
extent of Mexico’s role in the production of fentanyl, which is 30-50 times more potent than
heroin, is less well understood than its role in fentanyl trafficking.103 What is known is that
seizures of fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and methamphetamine—the leading synthetic lab-
produced drugs entering the U.S. illicit drug market—have been steadily rising along the
Southwest border since 2017. (For U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizure data, see Figure
5.)
Illicit imports of fentanyl from Mexico involve Chinese-produced fentanyl or fentanyl precursors
sourced from China, but TCOs are reportedly seeking supplies from other sources, such as India.
Many analysts contend that synthetic drugs might gradually replace plant-sourced drugs in the
criminal market. Synthetic drug trafficking with distribution arranged over the internet via the
Dark Web or other social media is replacing buying drugs derived from plants, such as opium or
marijuana, and many Mexican farmers of opium crops have become unemployed as demand
declines.104 Several analysts predict a continuing decline in Mexico’s heroin exports as synthetics
continue to attract TCO interest and investment.
Methamphetamine. Mexican-produced methamphetamine has overtaken U.S. sources of the
drug, a more traditional source. Mexico’s illicit supply has expanded into new markets inside the
United States, allowing Mexican traffickers to control the U.S. wholesale market, according to
the DEA. The expansion of methamphetamine seizures inside Mexico, as reported in the 2022
INCSR, grew to 29 MT in the first six months of 2021.105 U.S. methamphetamine seizures at the
Southwest border increased almost fourfold between 2016 and 2021, as shown in Figure 5. The
purity and potency of methamphetamine has driven up methamphetamine overdose deaths in the
United States. In addition, demand for amphetamines, especially methamphetamine, has
increased inside Mexico, where use has doubled since 2017, according to the U.S. State
Department.106
Cannabis. According to the State Department’s 2022 INCSR, U.S. seizures of imported
marijuana began to decline in 2019. Authorities are projecting a continued decline in U.S.
demand for Mexican marijuana because drugs “other than marijuana” will likely dominate the
cross border traffic. This is partially due to legalized medical and nonmedical/recreational
101 State Department, 2022 INCSR.
102 For background on Mexico’s heroin and fentanyl exports, see CRS In Focus IF10400, Trends in Mexican Opioid
Trafficking and Implications for U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation, by Liana W. Rosen and Clare Ribando Seelke.
103 Steven Dudley, “The End of the Big Cartels: Why There Won’t Be Another El Chapo,” InSight Crime, March 18,
2019.
104 For more discussion, see Dudley, “The End of the Big Cartels”; testimony of Bryce Pardo, RAND Corporation, in
U.S. Congress, House Homeland Security on Intelligence and Counterterrorism, Subcommittee on Border Security,
Facilitation, and Operations, Homeland Security Implications of the Opioid Crisis, hearing, July 25, 2019; Claire Fetter,
“The U.S. Opioid Epidemic,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 12, 2022, at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-
opioid-epidemic.
105 Arthur DeBruyne, “An Invisible Fentanyl Crisis Emerging on Mexico’s Northern Border,” Pacific Standard,
February 6, 2019; State Department, 2022 INCSR.
106 State Department, 2022 INCSR.
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cannabis in many U.S. states and Canada, reducing its value as part of Mexican trafficking
organizations’ portfolio. Mexico’s Congress is continuing to consider legislation to legalize adult
use of cannabis.
A shift in the drug supply is underway, especially in terms of synthetic drugs displacing heroin
and cocaine, but its implications remain unclear.107 Some analysts are exploring why violence has
continued to rise in rural areas as Mexico’s drug trade moves away from plant-based drugs (e.g.,
marijuana and opium poppy) to laboratory-made synthetics, with less need to control farmers and
land.108 In the rural western state of Michoacán, for instance, crime groups have used explosive
devices, such as improvised explosive devices, to destroy army vehicles and drones to bomb
police infrastructure and rivals.109 These tactics expand beyond existing TCO tools ranging from
lengthy underground tunnels, use of cartel branded armed tanks, submersible crafts, ultralights,
and cryptocurrencies.110
Figure 5. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Seizures of
Fentanyl and Methamphetamine
(FY2016-FY2021)
Sources: CRS. For FY2019-FY2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Office of Field Operations “Drug
Seizure Statistics,” at https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics. For FY2016-FY2018, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection and Office of Field Operations, “CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2018,” at
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics-fy2018.
107 See Vanda Felbab-Brown, China and Synthetic Drugs Control: Fentanyl, Methamphetamines, and Precursors,
Brookings Institution, March 2022.
108 For background, see U.S. Senate et al., Commission on Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, Final Report,
February 2022, pp. xi, 19-20.
109 Scott Mistler-Ferguson, “Tepalcatepec, Mexico: A Staging Ground for Drone Warfare,” InSight Crime, January 14,
2022.
110 See, for instance, “Drug Smuggling Tunnel with Rail System Uncovered on US-Mexico Border,” Associated Press,
May 16, 2022, at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/16/california-drug-smuggling-tunnel-us-mexcio-
border; Sol Prendido, “Pimp My Ride, The Cartel Tanks of Mexico,” Borderland Beat, May 8, 2022.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
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Evolution of the Crime Groups The TCOs have been in constant flux since the middle of the 20th century.111 This section focuses
on the nine TCOs that are currently most prominent (and about which the most information is
available). For several years, DEA identified the following seven organizations as dominant:
Sinaloa, Los Zetas, Tijuana/ Arellano Félix Organization (AFO), Juárez/ Carrillo Fuentes
Organization (CFO), Beltrán Leyva, Gulf, and La Familia Michoacana. In some sense, these
seven might be viewed as the “traditional” DTOs.
Many analysts suggest those seven “traditional” groups have fragmented. The current wave of
splintering of the large DTOs into competing factions and gangs of different sizes started in 2008.
Reconfiguration of the major DTOs—preceding the contemporary fragmentation—was common.
For example, the Gulf Cartel, based in northeastern Mexico, had a long history of dominance at
the end of the 20th century, with the height of its power in the early 2000s. However, the Gulf
Cartel’s enforcers—Los Zetas, who were organized from highly trained Mexican military
deserters—split in 2010 to form a separate DTO and turned against their former employers,
engaging in a particularly violent competition for territory.112 As discussed below, the Gulf Cartel
now lacks its former power and reach.
In the past decade, as many criminal groups and their splinters proliferated, groups expanded the
range and diversity of the criminal businesses they pursued, often forming powerful poly-crime
syndicates. Some crime groups specialize in one illegal business. Other crime groups target licit
businesses to hide their criminal earnings and launder their profits. Many groups in their
territories extort businesses in agriculture, mining, seafood, and timber and provide security from
other criminal groups. Their evolving status illuminates the fluidity of all the crime groups in
Mexico as they face new challenges from competition and changing drug market dynamics. Some
analysts maintain the true scale and impact of the fracturing of organized crime in Mexico
remains unknown and contend that making effective policy requires maximum comprehension of
the character of these changes.113 One analyst assessed in 2015 that the smaller organizations are
“less able to threaten the state and less endowed with impunity.”114
The emergence of new crime groups, ranging from TCOs with their international reach to small
domestic mafias, has made the crime situation in Mexico diffuse and arguably has made it more
difficult to suppress or eradicate violence. The older, large DTOs tended to be hierarchical, often
bound by familial ties and led by hard-to-capture cartel kingpins. Those DTOs have been replaced
by flatter, more nimble organizations that tend to be loosely networked and to outsource certain
aspects of trafficking. The various smaller organizations or splinter groups also have resisted
norms that might limit violence. Rivalries among a greater number of organized crime “players”
111 See Patrick Corcoran, “How Mexico’s Underworld Became Violent,” InSight Crime, April 2, 2013. According to
this article, constant organizational flux, which continues today, characterizes violence in Mexico. Patrick Corcoran,
“Mexico Government Report Points to Ongoing Criminal Fragmentation,” InSight Crime, April 14, 2015; Jane Esberg,
“More Than Cartels: Counting Mexico’s Crime Rings,” International Crisis Group, May 8, 2020.
112 George W. Grayson, The Evolution of Los Zetas in Mexico and Central America: Sadism as an Instrument of Cartel
Warfare (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2014).
113 Jane Esberg, “More Than Cartels: Counting Mexico’s Crime Rings,” International Crisis Group, May 8, 2020.
Esberg notes when small cartels disappear due to their special, localized niche or their intimidation of media to prevent
public notice of their presence, they may become unseen and yet play “a large role in Mexico’s rising rates of violence
and hold sway over many people’s lives.”
114 Patrick Corcoran, “Mexico Government Report Points to Ongoing Criminal Fragmentation,” InSight Crime, April
14, 2015.
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have led to chaotic violence and criminal impunity equivalent, according to some observers, to
“open war zones.”115
Open-source research about the traditional DTOs and their successors, as mentioned above, is
more available than information about smaller factions. No steady, open-source information is
available about most of the 200-400 current criminal groups. It is difficult to ascertain these
groups’ longevity or assess which qualify as major actors. The enduring major organizations and
their successors are still operating, at times either cooperating or in internecine conflict with one
another.
Profiles of Nine Major Criminal Groups Operating in Mexico
The major cartels operating in Mexico today are arranged below in terms of roughly when the
organization rose to prominence. The identification of each as a “major” crime group or DTO
draws from the 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment published by DEA in March 2021.
Tijuana/Arellano Félix Organization
The Tijuana/Arellano Félix Organization (AFO) historically has controlled the important drug
smuggling route between Baja California (Mexico) and Southern California.116 The cartel is based
in the border city of Tijuana. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, a former police officer from Sinaloa,
created a network of paramount drug traffickers that involved the Arellano Félix family, including
Rafael Caro Quintero, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and El Chapo Guzmán. The seven “Arellano
Félix” brothers and four sisters inherited the AFO from their uncle, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo,
after his arrest in 1989 for the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.117
The AFO was once one of two dominant criminal groups in Mexico, infamous for brutal control
of the drug trade in Tijuana in the 1990s and early 2000s.118 The other was the Juárez Cartel, also
known as the Carrillo Fuentes Organization. The Mexican government and U.S. authorities took
vigorous enforcement action against the AFO in the early 2000s, which saw the arrests or killings
of the five brothers involved in the drug trade, the last of whom was captured in 2008.
In 2008, the AFO split into two competing factions when Eduardo Teodoro “El Teo” García
Simental, an AFO lieutenant, broke from Fernando “El Ingeniero” Sánchez Arellano (the nephew
of the Arellano Félix brothers who had taken over the group’s management). García Simental
formed another faction of the AFO, reportedly allied with the Sinaloa Cartel.119 Tijuana became
one of the most violent cities in Mexico, as other criminal groups sought to gain control of the
115 See commentary in James Frederick, “Mexico’s Journalists Speak Truth to Power, And Lose Their Lives for It,”
National Public Radio, September 4, 2021. See also Mary Beth Sheridan, “The War Next Door: Conflict in Mexico is
Displacing Thousands,” Washington Post, April 11, 2022.
116 John Bailey, “Drug Trafficking Organizations and Democratic Governance,” in The Politics of Crime in Mexico:
Democratic Governance in a Security Trap (Boulder: FirstForum Press, 2014), p. 121 (hereinafter Bailey, “Drug
Trafficking Organizations”).
117 Special Agent Camarena was an undercover DEA agent working in Mexico who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed
in 1985. The Guadalajara-based Félix Gallardo network broke up in the wake of a U.S.-led investigation of its role in
the murder.
118 Mark Stevenson, “Mexico Arrests Suspected Drug Trafficker Named in U.S. Indictment,” Associated Press,
October 24, 2013.
119 Steven Dudley, “Who Controls Tijuana?,” InSight Crime, May 3, 2011. Sánchez Arellano took control in 2006 after
the arrest of his uncle, Javier Arellano Félix.
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profitable plaza (or trafficking route) between Tijuana and San Diego, CA, filling a power
vacuum left by the arrests of the AFO’s key leaders.
Some observers suggested the arrest of García Simental enabled the Sinaloa Cartel to gain control
of the Tijuana-San Diego smuggling corridor.120 Despite its weakened state, the AFO appeared to
maintain control of the route through an agreement between Sánchez Arellano and Sinaloa’s
leadership, with Sinaloa and other criminal groups paying a fee to use the plaza.121 DEA
identified a nephew of the Arellano Félix brothers, Sánchez Arellano, as one of the six most
influential traffickers in the region in 2013.122 Following his arrest in 2014, Sánchez Arellano’s
mother, Enedina Arellano Félix, reportedly took over. It remains unclear if the AFO retains
enough power through its trafficking and other crimes to continue to operate as a “tollgate”
cartel.123 Some analysts assess that the 2019 resurgence of violence in Tijuana and the spiking
homicide rate in the nearby state of Southern Baja California are linked to the CJNG forging an
alliance with remnants of the AFO (in direct competition with the Sinaloa DTO).
Tijuana was the city with the highest number of homicides in the country from 2018 to 2021. Due
to the strategically important Baja California trafficking corridor, Tijuana’s importance to crime
organizations has grown. This arguably may empower the group or groups that control the key
trafficking route, and the related law enforcement corruption, to facilitate cross-border smuggling.
AFO may yet serve as either a useful ally or a significant obstacle to other trafficking groups.
Mexican law enforcement has focused on Tijuana cartel splinter groups, known collectively as
AFO holdouts. The holdouts appear to be playing a role in the Tijuana drug market, and these
residual cells reportedly have been linked to homicides taking place in the Tijuana drug
distribution area. Some analysts maintain that AFO also may be involved in a simmering Sinaloa
Cartel internal conflict between two factions: the sons of El Chapo and the faction that is loyal to
El Chapo’s former co-leader and partner, “El Mayo,” described below.124
Sinaloa DTO
Sinaloa, considered Mexico’s most enduring criminal organization, comprises a network of
smaller organizations. The U.S. Treasury Department designated each of Sinaloa’s major leaders
a kingpin in the early 2000s. At the top of the hierarchy was El Chapo Guzmán, listed in 2001;
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, listed in 2002; and Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza Moreno,
listed in 2003. In April 2009, then-President Barack Obama designated the Sinaloa Cartel as a
drug kingpin entity pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (P.L. 106-120).125
120 E. Eduardo Castillo and Elliot Spagat, “Mexico Arrests Leader of Tijuana Drug Cartel,” Associated Press, June 24,
2014 (hereinafter, Castillo and Spagat, “Mexico Arrests Leader”).
121 Stratfor Worldview, “Mexico Security Memo: Torreon Leader Arrested, Violence in Tijuana,” April 24, 2013, at
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/mexico-security-memo-torreon-leader-arrested-violence-tijuana#axzz37Bb5rDDg. In
2013, Nathan Jones at the Baker Institute for Public Policy asserted that the Sinaloa-AFO agreement allows those allied
with the Sinaloa DTO, such as the CJNG, or otherwise not affiliated with Los Zetas, to use the plaza. For more
information, see Nathan P. Jones, “Explaining the Slight Uptick in Violence in Tijuana,” Baker Institute, September
2013.
122 Castillo and Spagat, “Mexico Arrests Leader.”
123 A “tollgate” cartel takes a fee for providing access to a trafficking route; the fee permits entry through an area under
its control for the shipment of contraband and sometimes legal goods. Mexican political analyst Eduardo Guerrero-
Gutiérrez of the Mexican firm Lantia Consulting defines a toll-collector cartel or DTO as one that derives much of the
organization’s income from charging fees to other DTOs using its transportation points across the U.S.-Mexican
border.
124 Justice in Mexico, “Remnants of Arellano-Félix Organization Attracting Renewed Interest in Baja California,”
March 11, 2021, at https://justiceinmexico.org/remnants-afo-baja-california/.
125 Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, P.L. 106-120. At the same time, President Barack Obama identified
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Frequently regarded as the most powerful drug trafficking syndicate in the Western Hemisphere,
the Sinaloa Cartel was an expansive network at its apex. By some estimates, Sinaloa had grown to
control 40%-60% of Mexico’s drug trade by 2012 and had annual earnings estimated to be as
high as $3 billion.126 DEA has long identified the Sinaloa Cartel as the primary trafficker of drugs
to the United States. In 2020, DEA estimated the Sinaloa Cartel, active in 15 of 32 Mexican
states, remained the Mexican crime organization with the largest international footprint.127
Sinaloa leaders successfully corrupted public officials from the local to the national level inside
Mexico.128 The cartel’s operations spanned more than 50 countries, according to several analysts
and journalists.129
The corruption of top officials—especially in Mexico but also in Central America and
Colombia—is the modus operandi of Sinaloa, which arguably was disinclined toward violence
initially in favor of bribery to avoid greater state repression.130 In 2008, a federation dominated by
the Sinaloa Cartel (which included the Beltrán Leyva Organization and the Juárez Cartel) broke
apart, leading to a battle among the former partners that sparked one of the most violent periods
in recent Mexican history.
The United States has attempted to dismantle Sinaloa’s operations by targeting individuals and
financial entities associated with the cartel since its designation as a kingpin in 2009. The Sinaloa
Cartel’s most visible longtime leader, El Chapo Guzmán, escaped twice from Mexican prisons—
in 2001 and again in 2015. The July 2015 escape, after his rearrest the year prior, was a major
embarrassment to the Peña Nieto administration, and that incident may have convinced the
Mexican government to extradite Guzmán rather than try him in Mexico after his recapture. After
Guzmán’s trusted deputy El Azul Esparragoza Moreno died (unconfirmed) in 2014, El Mayo
Zambada continued his leadership role, at least for a major faction.131 However, Sinaloa may
operate with a more horizontal leadership structure than previously thought. Some observers
dispute the extent to which Guzmán made key strategic decisions for Sinaloa. They contend that
El Chapo was a figurehead whose arrest had little impact on Sinaloa’s functioning, as he had
ceded operational tasks to El Mayo and Esparragoza long before his arrest.132
two other Mexican DTOs as kingpins: La Familia Michoacana and Los Zetas. The kingpin designation is one of two
major programs by the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposing sanctions on drug traffickers. Congress enacted the
program sanctioning individuals and entities globally in 1999.
126 For several years, cartel leader El Chapo Guzmán was ranked in Forbes Magazine’s listing of self-made billionaires.
Patrick Radden Keefe, “Cocaine Incorporated,” New York Times, June 15, 2012; Patrick Radden Keefe, “The Hunt for
El Chapo,” New Yorker, April 28, 2014.
127 DEA, NDTA 2020.
128 Patrick Radden Keefe, “Cocaine Incorporated,” New York Times, June 15, 2012, at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/
06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html.
129 InSight Crime, “Sinaloa Cartel,” last updated May 4, 2021; Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino, “Inside the Sinaloa
Cartel’s Move Toward Europe,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, December 15, 2020.
130 See, for example, description of the Sinaloa Cartel in Reynell Badillo and Victor J. Mijares, “Politicized Crime:
Causes for the Discursive Politicisation of Organized Crime in Latin America,” Global Crime, vol. 22, no. 4 (2021),
pp. 312-335.
131 Kyra Gurney, “Sinaloa Cartel Leader ‘El Azul’ Dead? ‘El Mayo’ Now in Control?,” InSight Crime, June 9, 2014.
Juan José Esparragoza Moreno supposedly died of a heart attack while recovering from injuries sustained in a car
accident.
132 Sinaloa operatives control certain territories, making up a decentralized network of bosses who conduct illicit
activities through alliances with each other and local gangs. Local gangs throughout the region specialize in specific
services for which they are they contracted by the Sinaloa criminal network. Excélsior, “Revelan Estructura y
Enemigos de ‘El Chapo’,” March 26, 2014; Bailey, “Drug Trafficking Organizations,” p. 119.
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In January 2017, the Mexican government extradited Guzmán to the United States. He was
indicted in New York’s Eastern District Federal Court in Brooklyn and tried from November
2018 to February 2019. His lawyers maintained he was not the head of the Sinaloa enterprise.133
Nevertheless, a federal jury convicted him in February 2019 on 26 drug-related charges,
including a murder conspiracy charge.134 A U.S. district judge in July 2019 sentenced him to a life
term in prison, with the addition of 30 years, and ordered him to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture.135
Since El Chapo’s most recent imprisonment, the Sinaloa Cartel reportedly has broken into four
key factions. One is led by El Mayo; another by the brother of El Chapo, Aurelio “El Guano”
Guzmán Loera; a third by a cofounder of the founding mega-syndicate, the Guadalajara Cartel;
and a fourth by El Chapo’s four sons, known collectively as “Los Chapitos.”136 In October 2019,
Mexican security forces seized a son of Guzmán, until the Sinaloa Cartel quickly reacted with
overwhelming force that brought chaos to Sinaloa State’s capital, Culiacán. This reaction
prompted police and military authorities (based on high-level governmental direction) to release
him.
The Sinaloa Cartel appeared to face many challenges in 2020 and 2021. Sinaloa’s rivals inside
and outside the group saw a formidable drug empire built on the proceeds from trafficking South
American cocaine and smuggling methamphetamine, marijuana, fentanyl, and heroin into the
United States, and they arguably sought to supersede the once-hegemonic criminal syndicate.
Some analysts have warned that Sinaloa remains powerful given its dominance internationally, its
infiltration of the upper reaches of the Mexican government, and its resilient “networked alliance”
structure.137 Other analysts maintain that Sinaloa is in decline, citing its breakup into battling
factions and its conflict with CJNG. Numerous authorities consider CJNG to be the most
expansive cartel (although not necessarily the most powerful) inside Mexico (see Figure 3).138
Friction between two factions—Los Chapitos and the faction under El Mayo—was intense during
2021.139 The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned El Mayo in December 2021, and the
State Department announced a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his arrest or
conviction. El Chapo’s sons also are sanctioned as specially designated narcotics traffickers and
are indicted on federal drug charges; the State Department has offered a reward of up to $5
million for each son.140 DEA estimated in the 2020 NDTA that the Sinaloa Cartel demonstrated
the greatest capacity to manufacture fentanyl in hidden laboratories; therefore, DEA estimates it is
a major driver of fentanyl trafficked to the United States.
133 Alan Feuer, “El Chapo May Not Have Been Leader of Drug Cartel, Lawyers Say,” New York Times, June 26, 2018.
134 DEA, “Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, Sinaloa Cartel Leader, Sentenced to Life in Prison Plus 30 Years,” press
release, July 17, 2019.
135 Ibid.
136 Vanda Felbab-Brown, “How the Sinaloa Cartel Rules,” Mexico Today, April 4, 2022.
137 For more background on alliance structure analysis, see, Jones et al., Dark Network Alliance Structure.
138 See also, InSight Crime, “Territorial Presence of the CJNG,” May 2020; Victoria Dittmar, “Why the Jalisco Cartel
Does Not Dominate Mexico’s Criminal Landscape,” June 11, 2020. Published prior to CJNG’s activities during the
COVID-19 pandemic, this article may not capture CJNG’s present status.
139 See, for instance, ‘The Fuse Is Already Lit’: Officials Expect Full-Blown War to Replace Aging Sinaloa Cartel
Kingpin ‘El Mayo,’” Mexico Daily News, December 30, 2021; Sinaloa Cartel, Profile Update, InSight Crime, May 4,
2021.
140 U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Uses New Sanctions Authority to Combat Global Illicit Drug Trade,”
press release, December 15, 2021.
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Juárez/Carrillo Fuentes Organization
Based in the border city of Ciudad Juárez in the central northern state of Chihuahua, the once-
powerful Juárez Cartel controlled the smuggling corridor between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso,
Texas, in the 1980s and 1990s.141 By some accounts, the Juárez Cartel controlled at least half of
all Mexican narcotics trafficking under the leadership of its founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Amado’s brother, took over the leadership of the cartel when Amado
died during plastic surgery in 1997 and reportedly led the Juárez organization until his arrest in
October 2014.
In 2008, the Juárez Cartel broke from the Sinaloa federation, with which it had been allied since
2002.142 The ensuing rivalry between the Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels helped turn Ciudad Juárez
into one of the most violent cities in the world. Reportedly, of Mexicans displaced by drug-related
violence inside Mexico between 2006 and 2010, more than 10% came from Ciudad Juárez, which
had less than 1% of Mexico’s population. As a result, the border city experienced a significant
decline in its population due to individuals and families fleeing violence.143
Traditionally a major trafficker of both marijuana and cocaine, the Juárez Cartel also controlled
opium cultivation and heroin production, according to the DEA. Between 2012 and 2013,
violence dropped considerably, which some analysts attributed to both police actions and former
President Calderón’s socioeconomic program Todos Somos Juárez, or We Are All Juárez.144 Some
analysts posited Sinaloa won its battle to dominate the city as a drug trafficking route, leading to
its relatively peaceful and unchallenged control for some years, despite the Juárez Cartel’s
continued presence in the surrounding state.145
However, the transit route between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, TX, has experienced regular
violence with the rise in killings on the Mexican side of the border since 2016 (see Figure 4).
Some observers consider the violence largely a proxy battle for control between Sinaloa and
CJNG, whereas others contend the Juárez Cartel split and began fighting for its own control of
Ciudad Juárez and the state of Chihuahua.146 Although not as expansive as other Mexican cartels,
Juárez and its powerful affiliate, La Linea, retain wide influence in the border state of Chihuahua.
141 Bailey, “Drug Trafficking Organizations,” p. 121.
142 Some analysts trace the origins of the split to a personal feud between El Chapo Guzmán of the Sinaloa DTO and
former ally Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. In 2004, Guzmán allegedly ordered the killing of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, one 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.
143 For an in-depth narrative of the conflict in Juárez and its aftermath, see Steven Dudley, “Juárez: After the War,”
InSight Crime, February 13, 2013. For a discussion of out-migration from the city due to drug-related violence, see
Viridiana Rios Contreras, “The Role of Drug-Related Violence and Extortion in Promoting Mexican Migration:
Unexpected Consequences of a Drug War,” Latin America Research Review, vol. 49, no. 3 (2014).
144 Calderón launched Todos Somos Juárez and sent the Mexican military into Ciudad Juárez in an effort to drive out
DTO proxies and operatives. “Calderón Defiende la Estrategia en Ciudad Juárez en Publicación de Harvard,” CNN
Mexico, February 17, 2013.
145 See Steven Dudley, “How Juárez’s Police, Politicians Picked Winners of Drug War,” InSight Crime, February 13,
2013.
146 Associated Press, “El Chapo’s Sons vs. ‘El Mencho’: Mexico Sees Rising Cartel Bloodshed,” March 19, 2020. See
also Victoria Dittmar, “The Three Criminal Fronts Sparking Violence in Sonora, Mexico,” InSight Crime, January 7,
2022.
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This position on the border facilitates drug smuggling of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and
marijuana from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, according to the 2020 NDTA.147
Gulf Cartel
Based in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, with operations in other Mexican states on
the Gulf side of Mexico, the Gulf Cartel was a transnational smuggling operation with agents in
Central and South America.148 The Gulf Cartel was the main competitor challenging Sinaloa for
trafficking routes in the early 2000s, but it now battles its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas,
and Zeta Cartel splinter groups over territory in northeastern Mexico.
The Gulf Cartel reportedly has split into several competing gangs. Some analysts no longer
consider it a whole entity, and one argued in 2018 that it had become so fragmented that its
original factions were fighting.149 Notorious Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén reportedly
corrupted the elite Mexican military forces known as Los Zetas to become his hired assassins.
Gulf remained one of the most powerful Mexican DTOs until Mexican authorities arrested
Cárdenas in 2003, though he continued to run his drug enterprise from prison until his extradition
to the United States in 2007.150
Tensions between the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas culminated in their split in 2010. Antonio “Tony
Tormenta” Cárdenas Guillén, Osiel’s brother, was killed that year, and leadership of the Gulf
Cartel went to a high-level Gulf lieutenant, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, also known as “El
Coss,” until his arrest in 2012.
Mexican federal forces identified and targeted a dozen Gulf and Zeta bosses they believed
responsible for the wave of violence in Tamaulipas in 2014.151 An analyst said in 2014 that the
structures of both the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas were decimated by the federal action, do not
communicate with each other, and take on new names.152
From 2014 through 2016, Tamaulipas state reported daily kidnappings, daytime shootings, and
burned-down bars and restaurants in towns and cities in many parts of the state, such as the port
city of Tampico. Fragmented cells of the Gulf Cartel and of Los Zetas have expanded into other
criminal operations, such as fuel theft, kidnapping, and widespread extortion. In the 2020 NDTA,
the DEA maintained that the Gulf Cartel, which traditionally focused on the cocaine and
marijuana trade but now specializes in heroin and cocaine, has its “power base” in Tamaulipas
and the central state of Zacatecas, and may have alliances in some states with CJNG.153 Factional
fights continue, however, and the Mexican Army continues its efforts to take out Gulf leaders.154
147 2020 NDTA, March 2021.
148 Bailey, “Drug Trafficking Organizations,” p. 120.
149 Scott Stewart, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2018,” Stratfor Worldview, February 1, 2018.
150 George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2010).
151 Jorge Monroy, “Caen Tres Lideres de Los Zetas y Cartel de Golfo,” El Economista, June 18, 2014. In June 2014,
Mexican marines captured three of those identified.
152 CRS interview with Eduardo Guerrero, June 2014. “Balkanization,” or decentralization of the structure of the
organization, does not necessarily indicate that a criminal group is weak but simply indicates that the group lacks a
strong central leadership. Reportedly, Tamaulipas news outlets became among the most threatened by DTO cells, so
they were reluctant to report on criminal violence, its sources, and its consequences.
153 2020 NDTA, March 2021.
154 Santiago Caicedo, “State Police: Mexican Gulf Cartel Leader among those Killed in Deadly Matamoros Shooting,”
KRGV, Channel 5 News, October 23, 2021.
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Los Zetas and Cartel del Noreste
Los Zetas originally consisted of about 30 former elite airborne special forces members of the
Mexican army who defected to the Gulf Cartel and became its hired assassins.155 Although Zeta
members are part of a prominent transnational criminal syndicate, their main skillset is not drug
smuggling but organized violence. They evolved to form an organization of their own lucrative
illicit activities such as fuel theft, extortion, human smuggling, piracy, arms smuggling, and
kidnapping.156
Los Zetas held a significant presence in several Mexican states on the Gulf side of the country
and extended their reach to Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) and some Pacific states in the beginning
years of the second decade of the 2000s. They also operated in Central and South America. More
aggressive than other groups, Los Zetas maintained control of territory by publicly displaying and
posting on social media mutilated bodies to intimidate Mexican security forces, the local
citizenry, and rival organizations. Sometimes smaller gangs and organizations use the “Zeta”
name or brand to tap into the benefits of the Zeta reputation.157
Unlike many other TCOs in Mexico, Los Zetas have appeared less inclined to attempt to win
local populations’ support in the territory in which they operate. They are linked to a number of
massacres, such as the 2011 firebombing of a casino in Monterrey that killed 53 people and the
2011 torture and mass execution of 193 migrants who were traveling through northern Mexico by
bus.158 Los Zetas are known to kill those who cannot pay extortion fees or who refuse to work for
them, often targeting migrants.159
In 2012, Mexican marines killed longtime Zeta leader Heriberto Lazcano (alias “El Lazca”), a
cofounder of Los Zetas, in a shootout in the northern state of Coahuila.160 The capture of his
successor, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (alias “Z-40”), in 2013 by Mexican federal authorities
was a second blow to the group. Some analysts date the beginning of Los Zetas’ loss of coherence
as a single cartel to Lazcano’s killing. According to Mexico’s former attorney general, federal
government efforts against the cartels through April 2015 hit Los Zetas particularly hard,
removing more than 30 leaders.161
Los Zetas are known for their dominance in various criminal activities, such as fuel smuggling.
They siphoned off billions of dollars of oil annually from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex),
Mexico’s state oil company.162 In 2017, the Atlantic Council released a report estimating that Los
155 Ioan Grillo, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, 1st ed. (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), pp.
96-98.
156 Bailey, “Drug Trafficking Organizations,” p. 120; CRS interview with Alejandro Hope, July 2014.
157 George Grayson, The Evolution of Los Zetas in Mexico and Central America: Sadism as an Instrument of Cartel
Warfare (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College Press, 2014), p. 9.
158 Ibid.
159 According to Grayson’s book, Los Zetas also are believed to kill members of law enforcement officials’ families in
revenge for action taken against the organization, reportedly even targeting families of fallen military men.
160 Will Grant, “Heriberto Lazcano: The Fall of a Mexican Drug Lord,” BBC News, October 13, 2012.
161 Southernpulse.info, “Los Zetas Are the Criminal Organization Hardest Hit by the Mexican Government,” May 13,
2015.
162 Reuters, “Mexico Fuel Theft Crackdown Sparks Shortages, Puts Government on Defensive,” January 7, 2019.
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Zetas controlled about 40% of the market in stolen oil.163 By early 2018, oil theft was costing the
government oil company more than $1.6 billion annually.164
One author reviewed the history of Los Zetas and its split into major factions.165 This evolution
influenced the organization’s once-coherent prospects, so that its power declined from the peak of
its dominance in 2011 and 2012.166 A prominent faction is Cartel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel), a
rebranded version of the traditional core of Los Zetas. One scholar characterized how Los Zetas
as succeeding in spinning off powerful franchises or cells after leadership decapitation.167
According to the 2020 NDTA, Los Zetas and Cartel del Noreste continue to traffic a range of
drugs, including heroin and cocaine, through distribution hubs in Laredo, Dallas, and New
Orleans.168 According to one analyst, the Zetas “model” of extreme violence to achieve
dominance continues to be widely emulated.169 Press reports in March 2022 indicated that gunfire
in Nuevo Laredo resulted from the arrest of a Cartel del Noreste leader, and that during the
violence U.S. consulate buildings were hit.170
Beltrán Leyva Organization
Before 2008, the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) was part of the Sinaloa federation and
controlled access to the U.S. border in Mexico’s Sonora State. The Beltrán Leyva brothers
developed close ties with Sinaloa head El Chapo Guzmán and his family, along with other
Sinaloa-based top leadership. The January 2008 arrest of BLO’s leader, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva,
through intelligence reportedly provided by Guzmán triggered BLO’s split from the Sinaloa
Cartel.171 The two organizations have remained bitter rivals since.
BLO suffered a series of setbacks at the hands of the Mexican security forces, beginning with the
2009 killing of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, followed closely by the arrest of Carlos Beltrán Levya. In
2010, the organization broke up when the remaining brother, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, took the
remnants of BLO and rebranded it as the South Pacific (Pacifico Sur) Cartel. Another top
lieutenant, Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal, took a faction loyal to him and formed the
Independent Cartel of Acapulco, which he led until his arrest in 2010.172 The South Pacific Cartel
163 Ian M. Ralby, Downstream Oil Theft: Global Modalities, Trends, and Remedies, Atlantic Council, January 2017.
164 Markets Insider, “Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Stealing Oil Again,” July 17, 2021.
165 Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 2017).
166 Ibid.
167 Ibid.
168 DEA, NDTA 2020.
169 Steven Dudley, “The Zetas’ Model of Organized Crime is Leaving Mexico in Ruins,” InSight Crime, August 30,
2021.
170 Associated Press, “Mexican Border Shootings Close US Crossing After Capo Arrest,” March 15, 2022.
171 See InSight Crime profile, “Beltrán Leyva Organization.” The profile suggests that Guzmán gave authorities
information on Alfredo Beltrán Leyva to secure the release of Guzmán’s son from prison.
172 Edgar Valdez is an American-born smuggler from Laredo, TX, and allegedly started his career in the United States
dealing marijuana. His nickname is “La Barbie” due to his fair hair and eyes. Nicholas Casey and José de Córdoba,
“Alleged Drug Kingpin Is Arrested in Mexico,” Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2010. La Barbie, a former Beltrán
Leyva Organization operative and Sinaloa Cartel ally, was arrested in Mexico in 2010 and was extradited to the United
States in 2015. After initially pleading not guilty, he eventually reached a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors and in June
2018 was sentenced to nearly 50 years in prison. Parker Asmann, “Was Mexico Cartel Enforcer ‘La Barbie’ a U.S.
Informant?” InSight Crime, June 15, 2020, at https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mexico-la-barbie-informant/.
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appeared to retake the name Beltrán Leyva Organization and achieved renewed prominence under
Hector Beltrán Leyva’s leadership until his arrest in 2014.
BLO splinter organizations have arisen since 2010, such as the Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos
(see Los Rojos section, below), among at least five others with roots in BLO. The Guerreros
Unidos traffics cocaine as far north as Chicago but reportedly operates primarily in the central
and Pacific states of Guerrero, México, and Morelos. The Guerreros Unidos, according to
authorities in the Peña Nieto government, murdered 43 Mexican teacher trainees in Ayotzinapa,
who were handed to them by local authorities in Guerrero, and then burned their bodies.173
Like other TCOs, BLO was believed to have infiltrated the upper levels of the Mexican
government for at least part of its history, but whatever reach it once had likely declined
significantly after Mexican authorities arrested many of its leaders. According to the NDTA
published annually by DEA, BLO splinter factions rely on loose alliances with the CJNG, the
Juárez Cartel, and elements of Los Zetas to move drugs across the border. Those drugs include
heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana.174
La Familia Michoacana
Based originally in the Pacific state of Michoacán, La Familia Michoacana (LFM) traces its roots
to the 1980s. Formerly aligned with Los Zetas before the group split from the Gulf Cartel, LFM
announced its intent to operate independently from Los Zetas in 2006, declaring that LFM’s
mission was to protect Michoacán from drug traffickers, including its new enemies, Los Zetas.175
From 2006 to 2010, LFM acquired notoriety for its use of extreme, symbolic violence, military
tactics gleaned from Los Zetas and a pseudo-ideological or religious justification for its
existence.176 LFM members reportedly donated food, medical care, schools, and other social
services to benefit the poor in rural communities to project a populist “Robin Hood” image.
By 2010, however, LFM played a less prominent role. In November 2010, LFM reportedly called
for a truce with the Mexican government and announced it would disband.177 A month later,
spiritual leader and cofounder Nazario “El Más Loco” Moreno González was reportedly killed,
although authorities claimed his body was stolen.178 The body was never recovered, and Moreno
González reappeared in another shootout with Mexican federal police in 2014, after which his
death was officially confirmed.179 Moreno González had been nurturing the development of a new
criminal organization that emerged in early 2011, calling itself the Knights Templar and claiming
to be a successor of LFM.180
173 According to the profile of Guerreros Unidos on the InSight Crime website, an alleged leader of the group is the
brother-in-law of the former mayor of Iguala, the town where the 43 students disappeared in 2014 and likely died.
174 2020 NDTA, March 2021.
175 Nexos, Alejandro Suverza, “El Evangelio Según La Familia,” January 1, 2009. For more on its early history, see
InSight Crime’s profile on La Familia Michoacana (LFM).
176 In 2006, LFM gained notoriety when it rolled five severed heads allegedly of rival criminals across a discotheque
dance floor in Uruapan. LFM was known for leaving signs (narcomantas) on corpses and at crime scenes that referred
to LFM actions as “divine justice.” William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” New Yorker, May 31, 2010.
177 Stratfor Worldview, “Mexican Drug Wars: Bloodiest Year to Date,” December 20, 2010.
178 Dudley Althaus, “Ghost of ‘The Craziest One’ Is Alive in Mexico,” InSight Crime, June 11, 2013.
179 Mark Stevenson and E. Eduardo Castillo, “Mexico Cartel Leader Thrived by Playing Dead,” Associated Press,
March 10, 2014.
180 The Knights Templar was purported to be founded and led by Servando “La Tuta” Gómez, a former schoolteacher
and a lieutenant to Moreno Gonzáles. However, after Moreno González’s faked demise, taking advantage of his death
in the eyes of Mexican authorities, Moreno González and Gómez founded the Knights Templar together in the wake of
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Though officially disbanded, LFM remained in operation, even after the 2011 arrest of leader José
de Jesús Méndez Vargas (alias “El Chango”), who allegedly took over after Moreno González’s
disappearance.181 Remaining cells of LFM reportedly remain active in trafficking, kidnapping,
and extortion in Guerrero and Mexico States, especially in the working-class suburbs around
Mexico City.182 Observers report that LFM was largely driven out of Michoacán by the Knights
Templar, although a group calling itself the New Family Michoacán (La Nueva Familia
Michoacana) reportedly has been active in parts of Guerrero and Michoacán.
LFM has specialized in methamphetamine production and smuggling, along with some
trafficking of other synthetic drugs. It has also been known to traffic marijuana and cocaine and to
tax and regulate heroin production. DEA maintains that, in some cases, LFM has developed ties
to the CJNG. According to a study of alliances in the current Mexican crime landscape conducted
by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Policy Studies, LFM derivative groups and others of the
Tierra Caliente region have alliances with either of the center poles of the two major TCOs,
CJNG or Sinaloa, which the study described as dense and complex.183
Los Rojos
As noted above, Los Rojos split from the Beltran Leyva Organization in 2010. Los Rojos has
operated primarily in Guerrero and has relied heavily on kidnapping and extortion for revenue as
well as trafficking cocaine, although some analysts have disputed the scope of its drug trade
involvement. In early 2022, a Mexican judge handed down a 48-year sentence to eight Los Rojos
gang members for kidnapping and forced disappearances (breaking laws regarding burials and
exhumations).184 DEA maintains that Los Rojos operates in Guerrero, Morelos, and other
Mexican states. Although this cartel is identified as a major TCO in DEA’s annual NDTA
published in March 2021, some analysts contend it is not a significant drug trafficking
organization.
Cártel Jalisco Nuevo Generación
Originally known as the Zeta Killers, the CJNG made its first appearance in 2011 with a roadside
display of the bodies of 35 alleged members of Los Zetas. The group is based in Jalisco State
with operations in central Mexico, including the states of Colima, Michoacán, México, Guerrero,
and Guanajuato.185 It has grown into a dominant force in the states of the Tierra Caliente,
including parts of Guerrero, Michoacán, and the state of Mexico. The CJNG has early roots in the
Milenio Cartel, which was active before 2010 in the Tierra Caliente region.186
The CJNG reportedly served as an enforcement group for the Sinaloa cartel until the summer of
2013.187 Analysts and Mexican authorities have suggested the split between Sinaloa and the
a dispute with LFM leader José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, who stayed with LFM. See Falko A. Ernst, “Seeking a Place
in History—Nazario Moreno’s Narco Messiah,” InSight Crime, March 13, 2014.
181 Adriana Gómez Licón, “Mexico Nabs Leader of Cult-Like La Familia Cartel,” Associated Press, June 21, 2011.
182 CRS interview with Dudley Althaus, June 2014.
183 For more background, see Jones et al., Dark Network Alliance Structure.
184 Marguerite Cawley, “Murder Spike in Guerrero, Mexico Points to Criminal Power Struggle,” InSight Crime, May
30, 2014; Associated Press, “Mexico Nabs Drug Gang Leader in State of Guerrero,” May 17, 2014; “Judge Hands Out
48-Year Prison Term to 8 Members of Los Rojos Cartel,” February 22, 2022.
185 El Siglo de Torreón, “Se Pelean el Estado de México 4 Carteles,” March 2, 2014; CRS interview with Dudley
Althaus, 2014.
186 Stratfor Worldview, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2017,” February 3, 2017.
187 Reportedly, the CJNG’s leadership was originally composed of former associates of slain Sinaloa DTO leader
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CJNG is one of the many indications of a general fragmentation of crime groups in Mexico. The
Mexican military delivered a blow to the CJNG with the July 2013 capture of its leader’s deputy,
Victor Hugo “El Tornado” Delgado Renteria. He was replaced by the current leader, Nemesio
Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho. In January 2014, the Mexican government arrested El
Mencho’s son, Rubén “El Menchito” Oseguera, believed to be the CJNG’s second-in-command.
However, El Menchito, who was released by Mexican judges twice, was rearrested by Mexican
authorities and later extradited to the United States in February 2020.188
In 2015, the Mexican government declared the CJNG one of the most dangerous cartels in the
country. In 2016, the U.S. Department of the Treasury echoed the Mexican government when it
described the group as one of the world’s “most prolific and violent drug trafficking
organizations.”189 According to some analysts, the CJNG has operations throughout the Americas,
Asia, and Europe. The group is allegedly responsible for distributing cocaine and
methamphetamine with its significant international reach, which was described as early as 2016
as “10,000 kilometers of the Pacific coast in a route that extends from the Southern Cone to the
border of the United States and Canada.”190
The CJNG built its dominance internationally first through extending its presence through a rapid
expansion inside Mexico. In 2016, many analysts maintained the CJNG controlled a territory
equivalent to almost half of Mexico. The group has battled Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel factions in
Tabasco, Veracruz, and Guanajuato, as well as the Sinaloa federation in the Baja Peninsula and
Chihuahua.191 The CJNG’s ambitious expansion campaign was characterized by high levels of
violence, particularly in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana.192 The DTO also has been linked to several
mass graves in southwestern Mexico and was responsible for shooting down a Mexican army
helicopter in 2015, the first successful takedown of a military asset of its kind in Mexico.193
The CJNG’s battle to dominate the key ports on both the Pacific and the Gulf Coasts have
allowed it to consolidate important components of the global narcotics supply chain. In particular,
the CJNG maintains reported control over the ports of Veracruz, Manzanillo, and Lázaro
Cárdenas, which has given the group access to precursor chemicals that flow into Mexico from
China and other parts of Latin America.194 As a result, according to some analysts, the CJNG has
pursued an aggressive growth strategy underwritten by U.S. demand for Mexican
methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl.195 According to reporting in 2022, the CJNG, whose
base of operations is Jalisco State, “holds” the coastal tourist city of Puerto Vallarta, an important
Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, who operated his Sinaloa faction in Jalisco until he was killed by security forces in July
2010.
188 Juan Carlos Huerta Vázquez, “‘El Menchito’, un Desafío para la PGR,” Proceso, January 15, 2016; Andrew
Denney, “’El Menchito,’ Son of Feared Mexican Drug Kingpin, Extradited to U.S.,” New York Post, February 1, 2020.
189 U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions Individuals Supporting Powerful Mexico-Based Drug
Cartels,” press release, October 27, 2016.
190 Luis Alonso Pérez, “Mexico’s Jalisco Cartel—New Generation: From Extinction to World Domination,” InSight
Crime and Animal Político, December 26, 2016.
191 Stratfor Worldview, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2017,” February 3, 2017.
192 Deborah Bonello, “After Decade-Long Drug War, Mexico Needs New Ideas,” InSight Crime 2016 GameChangers:
Tracking the Evolution of Organized Crime in the Americas, January 4, 2017 (hereinafter Bonello, “After Decade-Long
Drug War”).
193 Angel Rabasa et al., Counterwork: Countering the Expansion of Transnational Criminal Networks, RAND
Corporation, 2017.
194 Stratfor Worldview, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2017,” February 3, 2017.
195 Bonello, “After Decade-Long Drug War.”
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node of its synthetic drug trafficking operations and source of revenues from extortion, money
laundering, and human trafficking.196 In addition, the CJNG and other DTOs are frequently
reported to be imposing “extortion rackets” on legal agricultural products, such as limes and
avocados.197
Despite leadership losses, the CJNG has extended its geographic reach and maintained its own
cohesion while exploiting the infighting among factions of the Sinaloa organization. It is
considered an extremely powerful cartel, with a presence in 27 of 32 Mexican states in 2020. Its
reputation for extreme and intimidating violence continues. The previously described daylight
ambush of Mexico City Chief of Police Omar García Harfuch in late June 2020 was preceded by
publicized threats that targeted him and the Jalisco State governor.198 Press reports indicate the
CJNG’s attacks on Jalisco public officials exceeded 100 murders, with victims including
lawmakers; federal, state, and local police; soldiers; and, allegedly, Jalisco’s minister of tourism.
DEA considers the CJNG a top U.S. threat and Mexico’s best-armed criminal group. It has
offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho, who is believed
to be hiding in the mountains of Jalisco, Michoacán, and Colima. He is a former police officer
who once served time for heroin trafficking in California. The CJNG was the target of a major
DEA operation in March 2020, which resulted in some 600 arrests.199 While searching for El
Mencho in late 2021, Mexican authorities arrested his wife, Rosalinda González Valencia; the
arrest was presumed to be an indication of continued efforts to maintain pressure on the CJNG
leader by the López Obrador government. She is under investigation for her role in money
laundering.
Fragmentation, Competition, and Diversification
TCOs are more fragmented and more competitive than in the past 10-20 years. Analysts disagree
about the extent of cartel fragmentation and about whether the smaller organizations will be
easier to dismantle. In response to the Calderón government’s strong anti-drug efforts,
fragmentation that began in 2010 and accelerated in 2011 brought new actors into the criminal
environment, such as Los Zetas and the Knights Templar. By 2018, an array of smaller
organizations was active, and some of the once-small groups, such as the CJNG, had filled the
space left after other criminal groups had been disrupted by arrests, deaths, and internal
dynamics.
As noted above, several flagrant incidents of violence involving the DTOs in Sinaloa State, the
Tierra Caliente region, and the Mexican border states (such as in late 2019) were committed by
fragments of formerly cohesive criminal groups. Some gangs and small DTOs burn brightly for a
few years and then disappear. The ephemeral lifespan of some DTOs can unsettle the power
196 Scott Mistler-Ferguson, “Booming Mexico Resort Town of Puerto Vallarta Is Hostage to CJNG,” InSight Crime,
February 22, 2022.
197 Emily Green, “A Drug Cartel War Is Making Lime Prices Skyrocket,” VICE, January 31, 2022; Mark Stevenson,
“Mexico’s Avocados Face Fallout from Violence, Deforestation,” Associated Press, February 16, 2022; María Luisa
Paúl, “United States Lifts Mexican Avocado Ban—Averting What Could Have Been a Costly Crisis,” Washington
Post, February 18, 2022.
198 Marco Fragoso, “Omar García Harfuch Revela que Sabía de su Atentado Meses Atrás,” 24 Horas, March 30, 2022,
at https://www.24-horas.mx/2022/03/30/omar-garcia-harfuch-revela-que-sabia-de-su-atentado-meses-atras-2/.
199 Juan Montes and José de Córdoba, “Cartel Becomes Top Mexico Threat,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2020; Sieff,
“Mexico’s Bold Jalisco Cartel.” See also U.S. Department of Justice, “DEA-Led Operation Nets More Than 600
Arrests Targeting Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación,” press release, March 11, 2020.
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Congressional Research Service 35
balance and equilibrium among remaining DTOs. These shifts reorder allegiances and influence
the stability of the criminal environment.
Some analysts contend that the diversification of the DTOs’ criminal repertoire, and their
evolution into poly-crime outfits, may be evidence of organizational vitality and growth. Other
analysts maintain that diversification signals that U.S. and Mexican drug enforcement measures
are cutting into profits from drug trafficking, or that the diversification efforts are a response to
shifting U.S. drug consumption patterns. Changes in the illegal drug markets in the United States
and Canada from marijuana legalization; increased demand for opioids, especially synthetic
opioids; and changing patterns of use of methamphetamine and other drugs have contributed to
the DTOs’ continuing evolution.200 The cartels’ broad reach and control of large territories inside
Mexico, as well as their production of illicit drugs, has been termed “alarming” by the U.S. State
Department.201
Outlook Successive Mexican governments have sought to diminish the extent and character of the DTOs’
activity from a national security threat to a law-and-order problem. If this is accomplished,
domestic security enforcement responsibilities may be returned from the military to Mexican law
enforcement. President López Obrador continued the militarized security strategy of the two
Mexican administrations before him. He authorized the Mexican armed forces to continue their
role in domestic law enforcement through the remainder of his tenure. The National Guard, which
President López Obrador began deploying in mid-2019, has had fewer abuse allegations than the
military under the prior Peña Nieto government, but the militarized strategy to combat the TCOs
has not effectively weakened the crime groups.202
The continued revelation of high-level corruption linked to the crime groups and their apparent
control of Mexican territory demonstrates that the TCOs are more deeply entrenched than ever.
Moreover, in 2022, U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation remains weaker than during the
previous 15 years.203 The López Obrador government faces some allegations of DTO-related
corruption of public officials, its party’s politicians, and members of the nation’s police forces.
The growing diversity of cartel criminality, the continuing high global demands for narcotics, and
weak cooperation between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement all point to a continued TCO
threat to both the United States and Mexico.
Despite DEA activities becoming more limited inside Mexico, the DEA has offered rewards of up
to $45 million for information about the top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.204 On May 11-12, 2022,
200 Morris Panner, “Latin American Organized Crime’s New Business Model,” ReVista, vol. 11, no. 2 (winter 2012).
The author comments, “the business is moving away from monolithic cartels toward a series of mercury-like mini-
cartels. Whether diversification is a growth strategy or a survival strategy in the face of shifting narcotics consumption
patterns, it is clear that organized crime is pursuing a larger, more extensive agenda.” U.S. Senate, et al., Commission
on Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, Final Report, February 2022.
201 State Department, 2022 INCSR.
202 Testimony of Maureen Meyer, in U.S. Congress, House Committee of Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on the
Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, and Trade, Strengthening Security and Rule of Law in Mexico, hearings, 116th
Cong., 2nd sess., January 15, 2020; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Crime and Anti-Crime Policies in Mexico in 2022: A Bleak
Outlook,” Brookings (blog), January 29, 2022.
203 Air Force General Glen D. VanHerck, Commander, U.S. Northern Command; Navy Admiral Craig S. Fuller,
Commander, U.S. Southern Command, USNORTHCOM-USSOUTHCOM Joint Press Briefing, March 16, 2021; Mary
Beth Sheridan, “The War Next Door: Conflict in Mexico is Displacing Thousands,” Washington Post, April 11, 2022.
204 Telemundo, “DEA Launches New Reward Campaign Targeting Cartel Leaders,” May 11, 2022.
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the Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs traveled
to Mexico to work with Mexican authorities to restore and strengthen joint efforts to reduce the
flow of dangerous narcotics, including fentanyl, from Mexico and to improve border security.205
Many analysts have questioned the utility of the kingpin strategy, or a high-value targeting
approach to enforcement, to combat the TCOs or reduce TCO-perpetrated violence.206 The
kingpin strategy has often been encouraged by the U.S. government and has been adopted by
Mexican officials in different administrations. López Obrador initially rejected (but then
sporadically embraced) a kingpin strategy.207 Some analysts endorse a modified strategy that
would target the middle operational layer of each major criminal group to handicap the groups’
regeneration capacity.208
Structural factors plaguing Mexico’s struggle for security and stability include persistent criminal
impunity, entrenched corruption, and consistent demand for illegal drugs by U.S. and European
drug users. The demise of the traditional kingpins, who had long associations, often familial, and
were understood to have ruled their cartel armies in a hierarchical fashion from a central position,
has led to smaller, highly fractured, competitive, and often ultra-violent groups.209 Two causes of
the current violence may be erosion of Sinaloa Cartel’s dominance and the heightened
competition to profit from increasing production and distribution of heroin, synthetic opioids, and
methamphetamine. Some observers remain convinced of the capacity of both the Sinaloa
organization and its primary competitor, the CJNG, to retain significant power by backing their
well-established bribery and corruption networks with their demonstrated capacity for violence.210
205 U.S. Department of State, “Assistant Secretary Robinson’s Travel to Mexico,” media note, May 10, 2022.
206 See Latin America Daily Briefing, “The Failures of the Kingpin Strategy in Mexico,” May 5, 2022; Calderón et al,
Organized Crime and Violence, October 2021; Council on Foreign Relations, “Mexico’s Long War: Drugs, Crime, and
the Cartels,” last updated February 26, 2021.
207 Mary Beth Sheridan, “Violent Criminal Groups Are Eroding Mexico’s Authority and Claiming More Territory,”
Washington Post, October 29, 2020.
208 See, for example, Vanda Felbab-Brown, AMLO’s Security Policy: Creative Ideas, Tough Reality, Brookings
Institution, March 2019.
209 Patrick Corcoran, “Why Are More People Being Killed in Mexico in 2019?,” InSight Crime, August 8, 2019.
210 Vanda Felbab-Brown, “How the Sinaloa Cartel Rules,” Mexico Today, April 4, 2022.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service 37
Appendix. Government Efforts to Combat Drug
Trafficking Organizations The relationship of Mexico’s drug traffickers to the government and to one another is rapidly
evolving, and any snapshot (such as the one provided in this report) must be continually adjusted
to current realities. In the early 20th century, Mexico was a source of marijuana and heroin
trafficked to the United States; by the 1940s, Mexican drug smugglers were notorious in the
United States. The growth and entrenchment in Mexico of drug trafficking networks occurred
during a period of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed
the country for 71 years. During that period, the government was centralized and hierarchical. To
a large degree, the PRI government tolerated and protected some drug production and trafficking
in certain regions of the country, even though it did not generally tolerate crime.211
Other transformations of the drug trade took place during the 1980s and early 1990s. As
Colombian drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) were forcibly broken up, Mexican traffickers
gradually took over the highly profitable traffic in cocaine to the United States. Intense U.S.
government enforcement efforts led to the shutdown of the Caribbean trafficking route used by
the Colombians. Colombian DTOs subcontracted the trafficking of Andean cocaine to the
Mexican DTOs, which they paid in cocaine rather than cash. These already-strong Mexican
organizations gradually took over the cocaine trafficking business, evolving from being couriers
for the Colombians to being the wholesalers they are today.
Numerous accounts maintain that for many years the Mexican government largely pursued a
policy to accommodate the DTOs. Under this framework, arrests and eradication of drug crops
took place, but with widespread corruption; a system “characterized by a working relationship
between Mexican authorities and drug lords” prevailed through the 1990s.212 Mexico is a
longtime recipient of U.S. counterdrug assistance, but cooperation was limited between the mid-
1980s and the mid-2000s due to U.S. distrust of Mexican officials and Mexican sensitivity about
U.S. involvement in the country’s internal affairs.
As Mexican political power decentralized and the push toward democratic pluralism began, the
system’s stability started to fray in the 1990s, first at the local level and then nationally, with the
election of National Action Party candidate Vicente Fox as president in 2000.213 The process of
democratization upended the equilibrium that had developed between state actors (such as the
Federal Security Directorate, which oversaw domestic security from 1947 to 1985) and organized
crime. No longer were certain officials able to ensure drug traffickers’ impunity to the same
degree and to regulate competition among Mexican DTOs for drug trafficking routes. To a large
extent, DTO violence directed at the government appears to be an attempt to reestablish impunity,
whereas the inter-cartel violence seems to be an attempt to establish dominance over specific drug
trafficking routes. The intra-DTO violence (or violence inside the organizations) reflects a
reaction to suspected betrayals and the competition to succeed killed or arrested leaders.
211 Luis Astorga and David A. Shirk, Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies, University of
California-San Diego, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, working paper 10-01, 2010, p. 5.
212 Francisco E. González, “Mexico’s Drug Wars Get Brutal,” Current History, February 2009.
213 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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As Mexico’s DTOs rose to dominate the U.S. drug markets in the 1990s, the business became
even more lucrative. This shift raised the financial stakes, which encouraged the use of violence
in Mexico to protect and promote market share. The violent struggles among DTOs is now over
strategic routes and warehouses where drugs are consolidated before entering the United States,
reflecting these higher stakes.
The number of homicides and Mexico’s homicide rate began to grow substantially in 2007 and
remain at elevated levels. In Mexico, the sharp rise in absolute numbers of deaths in the past 14
years is unprecedented, even compared with other Latin American countries with high rates of
crime and homicides.214 This increase not reversed during the years of bilateral efforts under the
Mérida Initiative, according to several observers.215
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) initiated an aggressive campaign against
criminal groups, especially the large DTOs. He made it a central administration policy that he
sustained throughout his term in office. His government sent several thousand Mexican military
troops and federal police to combat the organizations in “hot spots” around the country. His
government made some dramatic arrests, but few of the captured kingpins were convicted.
President Calderón and President Bush developed much closer U.S.-Mexican security
cooperation and launched the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral anticrime assistance program, in 2008.
The initiative initially focused on providing Mexico with hardware, such as planes, scanners, and
other equipment, to combat the DTOs. The Mexican government significantly increased
extraditions to the United States, with a majority of the suspects wanted by the U.S. government
on drug trafficking and related charges. The number of extraditions grew through 2012 and
remained steady during President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term (2012-2018).
A consequence of the militarized strategy used in successive Mexican administrations was an
increase in accusations of human rights violations by the Mexican military, which was largely
untrained in domestic policing. According to a press investigation of published Mexican
government statistics, Mexican armed forces injured or killed some 3,900 individuals in domestic
operations between 2007 and 2014. Significantly, the military’s role in injuries and killings
ceased to be made public after 2014, according to the account.216 Few incidents of suspected
police and security force torture are reported in Mexico (less than 10%), according to several
estimates, in large part because of a belief that nothing will be done. Impunity for Mexico’s
military and police is likely to follow an established pattern of high levels of impunity for most
crimes.
Peña Nieto pledged a new direction in his security policy, with a focus on reducing criminal
violence that affected civilians and businesses rather than on removing the leaders of the large
DTOs.217 Ultimately, that promise was not kept. Peña Nieto’s attorney general, Jesús Murillo
Karam, said in 2012 that Mexico faced challenges from some 60-80 crime groups, a proliferation
he attributed to his predecessor Calderón’s kingpin strategy.218 However, despite Peña Nieto’s
214 This finding appears in several annual reports from the University of San Diego’s Justice in Mexico program.
215 Mary Beth Sheridan, “Facing Stunning Levels of Deaths, U.S. and Mexico Revamp Strained Security Cooperation,”
Washington Post, October 8, 2021.
216 Steve Fisher and Patrick J. McDonnell, “Mexico Sent in the Army to Fight the Drug War. Many Question the Toll
on Society and the Army Itself,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2018.
217 The Peña Nieto government’s emphasis on crime prevention, which received significant attention early in his term,
ended prematurely due to budget cutbacks. See, See CRS In Focus IF10578, U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation: From
the Mérida Initiative to the Bicentennial Framework, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
218 Patrick Corcoran, “Mexico Has 80 Drug Cartels: Attorney General,” InSight Crime, December 20, 2012.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service 39
pledge to alter his approach, continuity largely prevailed. The Peña Nieto government
recentralized control over security and continued the strategy of taking down top drug kingpins,
adopting Calderón’s list of top trafficker targets, updating it as needed.219 The resulting
fragmentation appears to have continued to splinter Mexico’s criminal groups with attendant
violence and instability.220
Following some reorganization, Peña Nieto continued to cooperate with the United States under
the Mérida Initiative However, the focus on crime prevention, which received significant
attention early in Peña Nieto’s term, ended prematurely due to budget cutbacks.221
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018. He made broad promises to fight
corruption, reduce violence, and promote socioeconomic programs.222 With the onset of economic
and fiscal shocks due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many observers
questioned whether López Obrador’s social goals were attainable.223 He announced he would
shift away from the Mérida Initiative and joined the Biden Administration in a new security
approach, the Bicentennial Framework, which remains under development in 2022.
Author Information
June S. Beittel
Analyst in Latin American Affairs
Acknowledgments
Research Librarian Carla Davis-Castro provided invaluable research for this report.
219 Vanda Felbab-Brown, Changing the Game or Dropping the Ball? Mexico’s Security and Anti-Crime Strategy Under
President Peña Nieto, Brookings Institution, November 2014. Velbab-Brown maintains that the government of Peña
Nieto “largely slipped into many of the same policies of President Felipe Calderón.”
220 Scott Stewart, “Tracking Mexico’s Cartels in 2019,” Stratfor Worldview, January 29, 2019.
221 With the sharp oil price declines in 2014 onward, the administration was forced to impose budget austerity
measures, including on aspects of security. See CRS In Focus IF10578, U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation: From the
Mérida Initiative to the Bicentennial Framework, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
222 For more background, see CRS Report R42917, Mexico: Background and U.S. Relations, by Clare Ribando Seelke
and Joshua Klein; Laura Weiss, “Can AMLO End Mexico’s Drug War?,” World Politics Review, May 16, 2019.
223 Nathaniel Parish Flannery, “Is Mexico’s López Obrador Latin America’s Newest Autocrat?,” Forbes, April 19,
2021; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Crime and Anti-crime Policies in Mexico in 2022: A Bleak Outlook,” Mexico Today,
January 21, 2022, at https://mexicotoday.com/2022/01/21/opinion-crime-anti-crime-policies-in-mexico-in-2022-a-
bleak-outlook/; Ryan C. Berg, “The Bicentennial Framework for Security Cooperation: New Approach or Shuffling the
Pillars of Mérida?, Center for Strategic & International Studies, October 29, 2021.
Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations
Congressional Research Service R41576 · VERSION 46 · UPDATED 40
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