Thread: ‘Only Two Cartels Are Left in Mexico', and hundreds of criminal cells

‘Only Two Cartels Are Left in Mexico,’ Government Official Claims

By Gabriela Gorbea and Andrea Noel
June 11, 2015 | 1:06 pm

Only two major cartels remain operating in Mexico, according to a top Mexican law-enforcement official, but an estimated hundreds of smaller splinter groups have developed into criminal cells that affect the lives of untold numbers of citizens.

Speaking at an international anti-drug trafficking conference on Tuesday in Colombia, Mexico's chief criminal investigator told the Mexican newsmagazine Proceso that the two main drug-trafficking groups in the country are now the Sinaloa Cartel and the relatively newer Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Tomas Zeron, head of criminal investigations for Mexico's attorney general, also said authorities have identified only three cartel capos still heading these organizations: Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Fausto "El Chapo Isidro" Meza, for the Sinaloa Cartel; and Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera, a little-known figure who is believed to be in charge of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

"These are the cartels I have identified as working and functioning [in Mexico]," Zeron said in Cartagena on June 9, adding that "hundreds" of independent cells are also active.

The statements were the most frank assessment made in years by a high-ranking Mexican official about the criminal landscape of the country.

But Zeron's claims contradicted information released only a month ago by Mexico's attorney general's office, which told the newspaper El Universal in May that nine cartels are active threats in Mexico, and said at least 45 criminal cells operate throughout the country.

Related: Gun Battle in Mexico Leaves At Least 39 Dead, in Significant Single Toll in Drug War Violence

The US-backed campaign to dismantle the leadership structures of these groups have produced several high-profile arrests in the last year, such as the February capture of the Knights Templar boss Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, and the February 2014 capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, former capo of the Sinaloa cartel.

Mexico's government has also captured or killed top leaders of the Zetas, Gulf, Beltran Leyva, Juarez, and Tijuana groups in recent years.

The Zetas 'have reached a point of near disintegration.'

A side-effect of taking out cartel bosses is a snowballing splintering of groups breaking off from once stable criminal organizations to stake claims of rackets such as extortion, kidnapping, and drug production and distribution, experts say.

Mexico's government blames the country's persistent violence on "internal power struggles" between competing cartel factions, dismissing the idea that innocent civilians are mostly caught in the crossfire.

The rest "are cells that are seeking power in order to survive, and right now that's being reflected as homicides between themselves," Zeron said.

All that is left of the infamous Gulf Cartel, Zeron went on, is "the hit men, who once executed their enemies, but are now becoming leaders," and the Tijuana and Juarez cartels "have been taken over by Sinaloa."

As for the Zetas — known as one of the most innovative and technologically advanced in the country — they "have reached a point of near disintegration," Zeron said.

Related: Where Mexico's Drug War Was Born: A Timeline of the Security Crisis in Michoacan

[IMG]https://news-images.vice.com/images/2015/06/11/there-are-only-two-cartels-left-in-mexico-government-official-claims-body-image-1434052441.jpg?resize=1000:*[/IMG]

A burning vehicle blocks a road accessing the municipality of Paracuaro, Michoacan, January 10, 2014. (Photo by Ulises Ruiz Basurto/EPA)

More than 120,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since former President Felipe Calderon sent Mexican soldiers to the state of Michoacan to combat entrenched trafficking groups there.

In the first three months of 2015, 8,845 violent murders were reported in Mexico, according to official figures, and more than 33,000 homicides were counted nationwide in 2014. In early January, Mexico's statistics institute said 67.9 percent of the population believe they are unsafe in their cities or communities.

The Mexican government, however, has not released official figures on homicides directly linked to organized crime in 2014. The only data available comes from media reports, researchers, and human rights observers. Some of these groups say organized-crime violence is diminishing.

"Between one third and half of all homicides in Mexico in 2014 were attributed to organized crime groups, which may signal a slight reduction in the proportion of such homicides," said a 2015 report on drug violence in Mexico from the University of San Diego.

Zeron called the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, considered one of the fastest growing and most powerfulin Mexico, a "red flag." Since its formation just five years ago, the cartel has been terrorizing the western part of the country as it makes gains across Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Colima states.

In late April, the New Generation cartel launched a series of violent coordinated attacks across Jalisco and four other states, in response to a government operation to capture "El Mencho," the cartel's leader. The Jalisco cartel downed a military helicopter on May 1. The group is also now reportedly entering Baja California and its border hub of Tijuana.

According to the 2015 report "Drug Violence in Mexico," drug-related homicides have decreased in conflict border states like Chihuahua, but continued to be a problem across the country, increasing in states like Veracruz, Michoacan, Sonora, and Guerrero.

Kidnapping and extortion remain at high levels.
Increasing violence against news reporters has also been cited by observers such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, which ranked Mexico on the seventh spot internationally of its "Global Impunity Index." When journalists in Mexico are killed, the group noted, the murderers usually remain unpunished.

Related: Mexicans Are Losing Mobile Service During Drug-War Shootouts
Follow @VICENews on Twitter for continuing coverage of Mexico's drug war

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Is this truth of any sort, or just propaganda?

Originally Posted by kevinssdad

Is this truth of any sort, or just propaganda?

I can neither confirm nor deny this claim.

Only two drug cartels left in Mexico and all others have splintered, top official says

Published June 12, 2015 Fox News Latino

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It’s been over eight years since former Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared an offensive on the country’s drug trafficking organizations that left over an estimated 100,000 people dead on both sides.

In the coinciding years, a slew of drug cartels have risen to prominence to fill power vacuums left following the death or capture of their counterparts. But now, according to a high-ranking Mexican official, there are two cartels operating in the country: the stalwart Sinaloa cartel and the newer Jalisco-New Generation cartel.

Tomás Zerón, the director of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) within Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR), said in an interview with Mexican newspaper Proceso that these two crime groups are the only two "operating and functioning" in Mexico, as the death and capture of other high-ranking cartel figures have severely splinted or completely disintegrated various other drug-trafficking organizations.

While the Sinaloa cartel has not been immune to attacks from the Mexican government – Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the most wanted drug trafficker in the world, was arrested in 2014 – the cartel has maintained a more organized, almost corporate structure that has kept it running even as one or another of its leaders is either arrested or killed.

The Jalisco-New Generation cartel is one of the new breeds of organized crime groups cropping up across Mexico in the wake of the government's war against the old guard of cartels – the Zetas, the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, to name the largest.

New Generation, which formed in 2010 following the splintering of the Milenio Cartel, was first established with the express purpose of countering the Zetas, Now, it has begun targeting Mexican security forces and many observers say that this dicey tactic could lead to its quick demise.

"This is not a smart tactic," Christopher Wilson, the deputy director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, told Fox News Latino. "It’s a hallmark of a quick burner. In Jalisco, this is not a place where you push the military and they will just roll over."

Zerón added that only three major cartel bosses now remain in Mexico, and two of them – Ismael Zambada, alias "El Mayo," and Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, alias "Chapo Isidro" – are leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. The third, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," leads the Jalisco-New Generation cartel.

In the interview, the director also warns that despite the fact that there are allegedly only two major cartels operating in Mexico now, there are various other splinter groups that have cropped in the wake of the demise of groups such as Gulf, Juárez, Tijuana, Knights Templar, and the Beltrán Leyva organization.

"Dismantling them was a necessary step, but that does not end the problem of insecurity," said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "The next part is more complicated. There are still small groups, remnants, which will be extorting, robbing and perhaps even producing methamphetamine."

The breakdown of the big groups has in turn led to a diversification of revenue sources for these small groups – from human trafficking to extortion – as well as a spike in violent crime as they battle with each other for control of small markets and turf.

"These are cells that are trying to seek power for survival, and that’s why right now we are seeing the homicides among them," Zerón said.

Also, despite the arrests and breakdown of cartels, little has stopped the flow of drugs into the U.S. Seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border have fluctuated since 2010, when 2.7 million pounds were seized overall, to a high of 3.1 million in 2011 and down to 2.3 million pounds in 2014, according to U.S. government figures, the only way to estimate flows of drugs.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/new...plintered-top/

These are the last 2 major drug cartels left in Mexico 8 years into the country's drug war

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Members of the Jalisco New Generation Drug Cartel
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After more than eight years of widespread violence spanning two Mexican presidential administrations, the country's drug war has led to the consolidation of just two remaining major cartels and the splintering and degradation of the country's other drug trafficking organizations, Fox News Latino reports citing Mexico's Attorney General's Office.

Throughout the drug war, which began in December of 2006 when the recently elected Mexican president Felipe Calderon deployed federal troops to Michoacan to fight the state's once-powerful drug cartel, Mexico has pursued a "kingpin strategy" of targeting the gangs' high-level leadership. This approach has produced a series of major arrests. But it's also led to the violent fragmentation of cartels that were once relatively unified and stable.

Now, Mexico has a swarm of smaller regional drug traffickers, with just two big cartels left.

Only the Sinaloa Cartel and the recently established Jalisco New Generation Drug Cartel (CJNG) are still "operating and functioning" within Mexico according to an interview with Tomas Zeron, the director of the Criminal Investigation Agency in Mexico's Attorney General's Office, in the Mexican newspaper Proceso that was translated by Fox.

The other cartels throughout the country have splintered into smaller competing gangs or have been swallowed up by the Sinaloa and the CJNG.

The Sinaloa Cartel is the single largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western hemisphere. It's flourished during the drug war due to its non-hierarchical organization structure — the cartel is more like a confederacy of groups that are connected through blood, marriage, and regional relationships. Decisions are ultimately made through board-of-directors-type mechanisms and not by a single leader.

This operational flexibility has allowed the Sinaloa to continue to thrive despite several setbacks including the arrest of Chapo Guzman, the group's central architect.

The CJNG, meanwhile, splintered away from the Sinaloa in 2010. It's experienced a meteoric rise ever since.

According to Insight Crime, the CJNG rose to power since 2010 thanks to a convergence of factors. The group's origins within the Sinaloa offered them business connections and practical knowledge of Mexico's illicit drug market. And the relative stability of Jalisco state enabled the group to expand and consolidate without having to engage in costly turf battles to establish initial control. The relative weakness of cartels in neighboring states also allowed the CJNG to expand outwards without much resistance.

The CJNG has proven willing to directly attack the Mexican military and police, sometimes in broad daylight. In April, the group killed 15 elite police officers in an ambush outside of the western city of Guadalajara in one of the drug war's deadliest single incidents for the Mexican government.

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The kingpin strategy has led to a number of highly touted arrests which have decapitated the other Mexican cartels. But this strategy has largely led to an increase in unrest and violence throughout Mexico.

At least 60,000 people are estimated to have been killed between 2006 and 2012 as a result of the drug war as cartels, vigilante groups, and the Mexican army and police have battled one another.

The overwhelming majority of these deaths haven't been adequately investigated by the Mexican authorities, contributing to an atmosphere of lawlessness in many parts of the country. The UN Human Rights Council estimates that only 1-2% of homicides committed between 2006 and 2012 were investigated to conviction. Approximately 70% 0f these crimes were in some way drug related.

This violence is closely linked to the overall breakdown of order throughout Mexico and the proliferation of smaller gangs out of the ruins of much larger former cartels. The new gangs have started to compete with each other for turf, while the Sinaloa and the CJNG have tried to take advantage of the larger chaos to spread and solidify their hold on profitable stretches of territory.

"These are cells that are trying to seek power for survival, and that’s why right now we are seeing the homicides among them," Zeron told Proceso.

SEE ALSO: Mexico's drug war is getting even worse

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