Friday, October 21, 2016

A Short History of Mexican Drug Cartels

Posted by Chuck B Almada, Republished from a San Diego Union-Tribune article
Written by Kristina Davis October 21, 2016
A gun decorated with gold belonging to Mexican drug lord of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, is displayed in the Drugs Museum at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Mexico City.
 Contraband has been flowing across the Mexico border into the U.S. for the past century, beginning with alcohol during Prohibition and moving onto drugs, namely marijuana and later cocaine.

The birth of Mexico’s major cartel can be traced to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, nicknamed “The Godfather,” who in the 1980s became the country’s liaison with Colombian cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar of the infamous Medellín cartel.

Gallardo went increasingly underground after the arrest of his cartel’s co-founder, Rafael Caro Quintero, for the murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Enrique Camarena in 1985, and the drug lord later held a summit among Mexico’s larger drug traffickers. The meeting divided up Mexico into “plazas” — or regions — to be controlled by various drug-trafficking organizations.

The agreement solidified major players in the trade, including the Sinaloa Federation and the Arellano Félix brothers of Tijuana.
Since then, drug lords have come and gone — and new groups have risen to power as loyalties fade, political protection changes, and killings and arrests leave vacuums in leadership to be filled.

In Tijuana, law enforcement’s takedown of the Arellano Félix Organization led to a split in the group and a bloody war for control of the drug corridor. The Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, has dominated for the past several years, although the group has been the subject of a piece-by-piece takedown by U.S. authorities nationwide, including in San Diego.

The Sinaloa are also facing a new threat by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, a newer player from central Mexico that has quickly expanded its influence. The cartel, often called CJNG, has been recruiting former members of the Arellano Félix Organization and urging Sinaloa traffickers to flip.

The war on drugs has been costly, in both lives and resources.

Mexico has felt the brunt of the violence, with assassinations of drug gang affiliates, law enforcement officers, crooked officials, snitches, journalists and civilians.

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2006 waged a fierce battle against the cartels, deploying the military to the streets and the countryside to wipe out the drug trade. Violence escalated as a result.

Mexican media and researchers who have closely tracked drug violence estimate 45,000 to 55,000 organized crime-style killings in Mexico from 2007 to 2012 during Calderón’s administration.

Some of the bloodshed has spilled into the U.S.

In 2002, an enforcement crew that used to do work for the Arellano Félix Organization, called Los Palillos, moved from Tijuana to San Diego for safety. They brought with them cartel-style violence that resulted in kidnappings, killings and bodies dissolved in vats of acid in a San Ysidro horse corral. Seventeen people were indicted in San Diego; others remain at large.

Putting a figure on the economic impact of violence in Mexico and the war on drugs in general is not easy.

In 2015, the economic impact of violence in Mexico — with much of that violence believed to be drug related — was pegged at $134 billion, according to the London-based Institute for Economics and Peace.

In the U.S., untold billions have been spent combating traffickers.

The U.S. has worked to tighten security at the border, an effort that has included a massive hiring push by the Border Patrol and deployments of National Guard troops to the border.

In 2007, a formalized partnership was developed between the U.S., Mexico and Central America to go after the drug trade. From 2008 to 2015, the U.S. set aside $2.3 billion for Mexico under the agreement.

Would legalizing marijuana in California have a visible effect on law enforcement, on the courts, on government coffers, on taxpayers?

No one knows the answer for certain. It could be one question voters consider as they head to the polls Nov. 8.

57 comments:

  1. YOUR DOING A STERLING JOB CHUCKY B

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  2. I know there are going to be complaints from plenty of folks about this article's lack of important characters, so I guess I'll chime in as well.

    Obviously, omitting the Gulf Cartel, Mexico's oldest continuously operating mafia group leaves a reader without a key factor.

    However, this article focuses on the splinter of the Sinaloans who founded the Guadalajara Cartel, so omitting Amado Carrillo Fuentes and his days as the lord of the skies, running the Juarez Cartel, is an important omission, considering that el Mayo Zambada and el Chapo Guzman both worked for or with his organization, not to mention many other important narcos, such as the Beltran Leyva brothers.

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    1. Gulf cartel has played a minimal role in drug trafficking when you are talking volumes ... They're biggest contribution was the creation of the Zs

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    2. The article is from the San Diego, CA major newspaper. Their focus is on what has happened on their border. To Oct 21 10:27 pm: LMFAO, stop snorting so much bad stuff, Carrillo organization had more money because their major product was coke; AFO only moved small amounts of coke. So STFU because you have no idea what you are saying. AFO's best times were when they crossed big rigs with weed.

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    3. Your wrong the gulf cartel has been around way longer than Guadalajara cartel

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    4. You probably never heard of Juan Garcia Abrego. Who was the real founder of the gulf cartel had FBI agents on his payroll was the first Mexican drug lord to be in the most wanted list. Yea minimal

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    5. The Gulf needs to be mentioned because they fought off Juarez, CAF and CDS/BLO. The I-35 corridor down to Matamoras werr extremely sought after plazas. Osiel changed the game with the Zetas and El Verdugo took the violence to a whole new level.

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    6. Exactly. The first really big Jefe de jefes was Nepomuceno Guero back in the thirties. His organization sort of evolved into the Gulf Cartel, although he never called it that at the time.

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    7. 10:27 no no no Gulf cartel played a big role in the drug trafficking business just because Chapo & El Señor De Los Cielos & Pablo are Hollywood names it doesn't mean CDG is a no body. CDG shape the drug trafficking game in a major way.

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    8. @5:15...I-10 has always been known as the "cocaine pipeline".. Como decia mi abuelo..
      "Platicale a mis huevos que no tienen ojos"..

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    9. Cdg is been in the shadows of the other cartels until oziel took it over. The only autonomous cartel. Free of foreign influences. Working in the shadows until it's founder got locked up and the younger generation took over.

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    10. Never had that much power or influence cuss they were always messing up. In wars and such. You want to know a true cartel not a little mafia that calls itself a cartel. Google cartel del dorado. When that cartel went down the prize of cocaine went up globally from its sources. That's why in New York you pay 35 for 88% pure now and days. Imagine the quantity of coke this cartel use to churn out. If you don't believe it read on it.

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    11. The Guadalajara cartel paved the way for all the cartels like caf cdj cds. Sooo....

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    12. the first one to go into drug trafficking were sinaloenses way back before anyone. as for el golfo.. according to my friend his uncle was the first boss and created what later becomed CDG and he was from sinaloa and were compadre to napomuceno..then napomuceno took over. then CDG is abrego a men of word this is an example to to those narcos this senor have never put anyone of his people he kept quiet like a man. as for CDJUAREZ it was someguy from las nieves durango.

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    13. @5:10 and 8:10- 1) I-35 doesn't go to Matamoros, it goes to Laredo which is the biggest land port in USA. I-35 connects to I10 in San Antonio heading to Houston and I35 north to Austin, Dallas and then anywhere and everywhere. 2) Golfo and 100s of independents have used Laredo for generations but Golfo has had longest running use of this important plaza that is much, much bigger than Reynosa, Matamoros amd the many frontera towns south of Nuevo Laredo. 3) La Barbie worked Nuevo Laredo for years and wasn't with Golfo and Nuevo Laredo is more similar to Juarez, Mexicali, Tijuana where there have and will continue to be independents that use these routes. There are thousands of families all over Mexico with no affiliation to anyone but their family and money that use all the mega-ports and don't pay a dime to cartels for rights. Culiacan, Durango, Gomes Polacio, Mazatlan, all full of independents that mitigate risk using the big frontera crossings. _/^^\

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    14. To the guy the said some bullshit about cdg being formed by a sinaloan. Bullshit. Your friend don't know shit and he taking you for a ride. Cdg was formed by Juan Garcia abrego with the financial backing of Juan N Guerra. Who was not a drug trafficker, also he was a advisor to his nephew. Virgilio Davila el all capone de tamaulipas was the first drug smuggler in tamaulipas. Then there were many families operations. By the late 70s el Cacho Espinosa was the most notorious drug boss in matamoros. Juan Garcia Abrego had to kill him using el comando de la muerte "a zetas forerunner" in order to build what Wld become the gulf cartel. This is the short version of the CD sorry. Before any one says any shit about my comment Google the names up. Read it then if u disagree say something.

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    15. I Agree
      Tamaulipas has always been the main gateway.
      CDG cartel needs to be mentioned.
      They were an established entity .
      Zetas followed.

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  3. Great article.Very informative for those who are not too up to speed on things down south. Keep up the good work BB.

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  4. What about Pedro aviles perez, clave 7? Didnt miguel a. flex gallardo kill him to take over????

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  5. Charles Bowden said " the drugs go north, the money and weapons go south" . in between that negocio is a system of corruption that involves law enforcement ,Dea,Ice,regular moms and pops ,gangs,business men, property investors,musicians,drug addicts, manipulators of drug addicts, teenagers expirementing and people who listen to narco corridos and the radio staions that allow that .

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    1. Good point there - many people are involved on the periphery of narco-trafficking, probably far more than we would imagine by just counting the users, addicts, street-criminals, drugs gangs, growers and producers? I'm suspect there are huge parts of the global financial system that are propped up by narco cash, along with the so-called "military-industrial complex".

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    2. when multi- million dollar shipments make their way across the united states every day, you best belive dirty money makes a percentage of our economy. border patrol has alot to do with this.

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    3. Charles Bowden es un pendejo, mexico has no real billionaire capitalistas other than carlos slim helu, but he made his coin from robbing mexicans, after trafficking drugs and peddling influence for more than 30 years, unlike the mineras canadienses and the Arcelor-Mittal and others, that come to mexico to steal.
      All the biggest offshorers have invested their moneys in china or other slave labor paradises, and none of them is mexican, no mexican drug lord has invested in off shoring industries, production and jobs like the american vulture capitalistas and they still need more just to get by, Charles Bowden needs to go back to school.

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    4. you may feel like the pendejo to learn it is impossible for one of my all time favorite authors to go back to school....The late great Charles Bowden is dead.

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    5. @11:49
      México has no real billionaire capitalistas? Most of the heavy hitters lay in the shadows. Open your eyes and look around, all those puppets, there has to be puppeteers. That's the way this world works. El Nemesis-

      P.s. Good job Chivis, let this vato have it.

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    6. 11:49 - thee americanos sopilot
      es have easy pickins down south , its here in my country that i am concerned.

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    7. 11:49 Mexico has more billionaires not just Slim.

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    8. 12:16 The author didn't know then what we know now, chivis, his entertaining but not excitingly exacting wisdom loads all his crap on the cartels, and we know better now, there are pupets, puppeteers and middlemen...
      I remember the days I was incensed with the mighty furies because the american leftistas forced president nixxon to resign his presidency because of some "goddamened plumbers" thad had been working with him and a few zetas since before they killed Kennedy, JFK...
      --another bad precedent is that George Washington, jefferson, max Engels and BB king are dead but their ideas still are discussed by pro and con detractors, there is that hitler too...
      --my respects chivis...

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    9. Remember he researched and wrote about geographical narrow scope of organized crime, it isn't that he did not know more, he chose to write about Juarez/Chih. and that is not all he wrote about. I loved his writing style, old school keeping one on the edge of his/hers seat.

      He left this world penniless and homeless. Few writers get ultra rich, it is the love of the craft that keeps a writer going...............thanks for weighing in.

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  6. Jesus Blancornelas mentioned it best. Los Arellano Felix: La Mafia mas poderosa en la historia de América Latina. Maybe Mexico but not America Latina. The most powerful political influential mafias in the history books to export the most product were Medellin and Cali. CAF in its heyday was a Narco titan not to be reckon with and in my opinion paved the way for the organizations that are operating today.

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    1. Pretty much, organization, corruption repercussions for bad behavior, trained hit men, every thing was CAF at one point till they spread to thin and got snitched on.
      But remember that was a different time. There was a sense of truce back them from other groups.

      Then CDG came and really changed the M.O. up


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  7. Good article from my info baltranes was a big part after the god father appointed plazas and Arturo after a while controlled most of them y cuz he made alince not snitched on his comrades!

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    1. Very true. Thats who really made cds big and el chapo ruined it.

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    2. does el borrado mp sound familiar to you.? they snitched on vicentillo and villareal on el rey zambada. WTF?? what do you call that.? in china and in any place thats a snitch..

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    3. El pinchi borrado was not in pachuca Hidalgo dealing with El Rey Zambada, MAO 'osario' CHÓN WAS...

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  8. Pablo Acosta Villareal, aka Lobo de Ojinaga

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    1. Pablo Acosta Villareal , EL ZORRO DE OJINAGA! imbecil. Mucha gente comenta a lo puro pendejo nomas por hablar sin saber que pedo
      El FM

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  9. Drugs are dangerous and can harm the user and are therefore illegal.
    Guns are dangerous and harm OTHERS than the user but arw legal! WTF?!

    Either both drugs and guns are to be illegal or both should be legal.

    Everything else is hypocrisy and leads to a disaster!

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  10. 134 billion in economic impact due to drug violence. Dang, some people are getting rich off death.

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    1. 6:51 ...and the mexican drug traffickers had to sell their earnings 'in species' in mexico to their sicarios.
      --they don't make enough money to pay them sicarios, because the big owners of the business get to keep most of the profits, estimated at about 90% by the wise arses that know them.
      --Mexican narcos get paid in polvo and weapons, and they eat it or sell it, in mexico or wherever they can, if they steal or deal on the side, they are on their own like durazo or noriega.
      --By the way, the cuban Castro brothers, friends of mexican DFS chief fernando gutierrez barrios, have never been persecuted for their drug trafficking by the US, owner of the mexican DFS.

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  11. Nice work fella 👌🏼

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  12. i seen el chapo in juarez the other day with the military jajajaja!
    he isnt in jail! why hasnt BB reported anything on that? if i have seen him then i know a whole lot of other ppl have seen him as well

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  13. Milk on a hot day?... Yeaaahhhhh buddy!!!
    The sky is blue, the sun is hot, we breathe oxygen. 123, ABC, etc., etc..

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  14. Blah blah blah. And what about the BIG BALLS MARINA? Where is Guano, Chapos kids or even Zambada??? Army gets ambushed by these fuckers and yet they still roam free!!!
    Goes to show that the Mexican government and even U.S. DEA and CIA is in favor of these fuckers. No significant capture of any of their kingpins since Chapos last arrest in January and even then no extradition of his ass!
    Goes to show CDS cannot have all it has alone for all them nutthuggers!
    Solos no pueden los de CDS solo con la ayuda de Mexico y E.U.

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    1. You my friend are jelous of the sinaloa cartel🌏

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    2. @7:17 CDS kills people left and right with their drugs and weapons. What is their to be jealous of?

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    3. I don't think he's jealous, it's just his opinion. Don't get your tanga in a bunch. And I agree with what he is saying. CDS has been able to operate just about freely for a long time now. Que tienen "talento" y "cerebro". My ass, these fuckers have always been the governments hoe. The top bitch, the dime....best snitches, informants and cowards. These fuckers are making it a cool thing now to snitch, just read how many chapa nuthuggers there are here on BB. Damn shame. Not saying que en esos rumbos no se da gente valiente, si lo ay, como en todo Mexico. Pero no se paren el cueyo de muy vergas que sin los dos goviernos nunca vieran llegado a ese nivel que "Estaban". Just face reality Chinolas, your Chapa, Maya and so on are "snitch bitch", y en el terror that's frowned upon not glorified as a strategic move!....

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    4. Hater much?

      What state are you from?

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    5. Carnal, whichever the state, it has nothing to do with it. The truth is the truth. But if it's tickling your ass to know de Michoacan vengo y cantoneo en Playa Larga....one more thing my bro, don't get me wrong I do not cheer for any fucking group because none of them fuckers pay my bills. Todos son iguales just diffrent accents. Si andas entre la Bola tarde o temprano rebotas. Childhood friend, pariente don't matter. La ambicion para unos es peligrosa cuando son gentes muerta de hambre hija de puta.....cyber narco 007 out!!!

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    6. 8:15 R.- 10:19 is from "tanga in knots up his/her cerebro"
      I've been telling you, the biiig baaad narcos are not the worst people in the world.
      There are always other aspirinos.

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  15. Chuck B. thanks man for the consistent flow of posts.

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  16. Mexico was right for the taking due to:
    corrupt politicians and law enforcement,
    the public not allowed to own fire arms for self defense,
    no fear of death penalty because it doesn't exist,
    thousands of Mexican citizens with little to no education,
    To put it bluntly, in Mexico money talks and bullshit walks. As the saying goes "En mexico la vida no vale nada."

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  17. Reporter Chuck, I also want to thank you for the work at BB. I know some may say "it is copy and paste, that's all" those people are fools. I know Blogger and it ain't that easy, not to mention time researching for the best articles, and many of yours are translated. So to the haters I say fuck yourself. We have a good team. Go elsewhere if you dare.

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  18. El Kevin could put many at risk if interrogated hence, the decision to shoot and burn soldiers.

    How did the CDS sicarios know on which car not to fire upon?

    Soldiers making the transport not smart enough to have other 3 trucks with soldiers waiting for them for support?

    This happened in Jerez, Zac when police and soldiers were transporting a HVT to zona militar 11.

    Many of them shotto death.

    No learnings taken from that exercise I guess

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  19. Es muy posible que el cartel mexicano mas antiguo sea el de Enrique Fernandez en los 1920's. Mas antiguo que el del Golfo.

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