An Historical Overview
by Adam Waters

Drug cartels have existed in Mexico for many years, but they did not become the powerful, violent organizations prevalent today until the 1990s. During that decade, the United States government focused the majority of its drug enforcement efforts on dismantling Colombian cartels through such programs as Plan Colombia. The U.S. policy in Colombia did produce some measurable results. The infamous Medellin and Cali cartels were toppled, but the victory was short-lived as Colombian drug manufacturers turned to new and safer transit routes through Mexico where enforcement policy was practically non-existent. Thus began the rise of organized and profitable drug trafficking in the region.

Throughout the nineties, three major cartels emerged in Mexico: Gulf, Sinaloa, and Juarez. The rapid increase in the quantity of drugs (mainly marijuana and cocaine) transported through Mexico resulted in huge profits for these cartels. For example, it is estimated that the Sinaloa Cartel generates revenues of approximately $USD 3 billion each year.[1] Money transformed the cartels from loosely associated groups of traffickers to fully-fledged criminal organizations with operations beyond narcotics. Cartels began to hire private armies of enforcers to protect their market shares through any means necessary, becoming increasingly violent as the decade progressed and competition became more fierce. More recently, Mexican cartels have also begun to develop relationships with American street gangs and traffickers so as to ensure a steady distribution of their product throughout the United States.

The dominance of the three big cartels began to be challenged in the 2000s by powerful emerging group: los Zetas. Having begun as a private army for the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas decided later on to enter the drug business for themselves. The change from enforcement to trafficking did not alter their methods, which continue to be based on the use of extreme violence. Above all, it was the Zetas who transformed the Mexican drug trade from simply buying and selling drugs for a profit to include kidnapping, torture, human trafficking, and gruesome murder.

Current Policy:

Felipe Calderón was elected President of Mexico in 2006 as the candidate for the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), the mainstream conservative party in the country. Almost immediately after taking office, Calderón ordered a massive overhaul of Mexico’s security forces in order to crack down on the drug cartels that were becoming ostensibly more powerful, especially in the north. The biggest component of this policy change was the deployment of 50,000 soldiers into the streets.[2] Entering the states with significant cartel activity, the army soon shifted from supporting local law enforcement agencies to superseding them. Currently, federal police and soldiers are the primary agents of security policy in these high-violence states.

The results of the militarization of the war on drugs have been mixed at best. First, the level of violence has not significantly declined despite the rise in trained military personnel combating the cartels. Since Calderón came to office in 2006, nearly 50,000 people have been killed in drug war-related incidents across Mexico.[3] The Mexican government, in a report released in 2012, estimated that a drug war death occurred, on average, every half hour in 2011.[4] On a provincial level, Calderón’s policies have appeared to reduce levels of violence and trafficking in at least some states. Unfortunately, further examination reveals that this seeming success has often been the result of cartels shifting their activity from one state to another, rather than truly being defeated by military forces.[5]

Second, the militarization of law enforcement has raised new concerns about human rights and corruption. Since 2006, the number of complaints of human rights abuses by the Mexican government has increased substantially.[6] This has at least in part been a result of the enormous autonomy given to the army and navy by the federal government to deal with the drug cartels. At the same time, federal officials, who were once thought to be less prone to corruption than local officials, increasingly have been shown to hold ties to the cartels. For example, Noe Ramirez, a former top anti-cartel official, was found in 2008 to have received $USD 450,000 per month in bribes in exchange for providing the cartels with information about military activities.[7] Although the government passed a series of reforms in 2008 to increase oversight by the judicial branch, it has yet to fully implement the necessary changes to reduce the corruption and abuse of the powerful military.

Outlook:

As Calderón’s term in office ends and that of Enrique Peña Nieto begins, the future of drug war policy is uncertain. On both sides of the border, government officials and candidates have started to question the traditional approach of militarization and strict enforcement, which has not produced the significant change promised. United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton apologized in 2009 to the Mexican government and people for what she called the United States’ “insatiable demand for illegal drugs” and “inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border.”[8]These comments—the first given so bluntly by any ranking U.S. official—suggest that Mexico’s northern neighbor may be reconsidering its policy of arming Mexican soldiers to stem the flow of drugs.

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[1] Keefe, P.R. (15 June 2012). “Cocaine Incorporated.” The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all