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2021-08-07 Caribbean-Latin America
Tracking Mexico's Cartels in 2021
[STRATFOR] Editor's Note: This security-focused assessment is one of many such analyses found at Stratfor Threat Lens, a unique protective intelligence product designed with corporate security leaders in mind. Threat Lens enables industry professionals and organizations to anticipate, identify, measure and mitigate emerging threats to people, assets, and intellectual property the world over. Threat Lens is the only unified solution that analyzes and forecasts security risk from a holistic perspective, bringing all the most relevant global insights into a single, interactive threat dashboard.

Since 2006, Stratfor has produced a cartel report that examines the forces driving the complicated cartel landscape in Mexico. Beginning with the fragmentation of powerful, time-tested cartels, this task has become increasingly intricate as the number of violent groups in the country continues to rise. The list of all drug trafficking organizations in Mexico is long, so we will highlight the most important groups and evaluate the ways in which they will impact Mexico over the next 18 months in our 2021 annual cartel report, which will be broken up into two parts this year; Threat Lens clients will have access to part two.

LARGELY STATIC CARTEL DRIVERS, FROM 2020 TO 2021 AND BEYOND
Despite pandemic-related changes in the last 18 months — which include U.S. border closures, travel restrictions, lockdowns and curfews — the strategic forces behind cartel violence in Mexico have changed very little since 2020: larger groups continued to fuel local conflicts by controlling trafficking routes and territory through cooperation with local gangs, and in many cases using COVID-19 lockdowns to assert territorial control. Important drivers of violence and insecurity in Mexico in the next 18 months will be cartel revenue streams, political relationships, the U.S.-Mexico security relationship, cartel technological and military capabilities, and cartel rivalries. Criminal groups also will continue to experience fragmentation and infighting that leads to sporadic upticks in violence, such as the events in Reynosa on June 19, when civilians were killed as a result of Gulf Cartel infighting. Other notable cartel-driven risks for the coming 18 months include:

  • Volatility along the U.S.-Mexico border — vital turf for cartel activities including drug- and migrant-smuggling — which could lead to sporadic shutdowns and delays at ports of entry and border crossings.

  • An increased threat of indiscriminate violence in important areas where cartels are vying for control, such as the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Queretaro and Zacatecas.

  • Ongoing extortion and theft threat to businesses that focus on natural resource extraction — such as oil, mining and timber — given the lucrative nature of these businesses.

    For all the pandemic-related restrictions on movement, cartel-related violence remained very high by historic measures, with the number of homicides declining only 0.4% from 2019's record high of 34,648 homicides. Despite significant investments in various security measures, since 2018 Mexico's homicides effectively plateaued at their highest level, further underscoring the cartels' sustained influence nationwide. The two largest cartels remain Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel.

    Confrontations between them — and between them and a variety of local militias, smaller cartels and Mexico's security forces — drive ongoing violence and broader insecurity. While the CJNG and Sinaloa attract the most attention, smaller groups play important roles in localized conflicts, such as how Sinaloa-aligned Carteles Unidos combats CJNG advances in the state of Michoacan. While smaller groups like Knights Templar, La Familia Michoacana, Los Viagras, Los Rojos and the Juarez Cartel do not have the kind of national presence of some of their rivals, they serve as important proxies for larger, national-level criminal organizations and perennial sources of local violence and insecurity in their areas of operation.

    DEMAND FOR DRUGS AND CARTEL REVENUE STREAMS
    As we have highlighted since the 2018 report, fentanyl continues to play a large role in drug trafficking, something evident in the 70% increase in border seizures of synthetic stimulants from October 2019 to September 2020. This is despite consumer lifestyle changes brought on by the pandemic that saw a slight turn away from stimulants, and toward drugs like marijuana and fentanyl due to nightlife closures. It is expected that as restrictions on bars and clubs are lifted and inoculation rates go up, so will demand for stimulants like cocaine and meth. In 2020, drug overdose deaths in the United States hit a record high, up 29% from the previous year. Of these overdose deaths, 60% were due to synthetic opioids, specifically fentanyl, suggesting that cartels are continuing to expand their synthetic opioid lab operations in Mexico. The rise in fentanyl's popularity can be attributed to its potency for consumers and profitability for cartels. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, meaning that the user's high is much more intense. We estimate that cartels made approximately $14 billion on fentanyl sales in 2019. Based on profitability alone, the move toward fentanyl makes sense. Cartels find the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl, easier compared to much bulkier, lower value cannabis.

    While drug trafficking continues to be the main source of revenue for — and conflict among — Mexican cartels, other revenue streams also offer lucrative profits and can often lead to violent disputes. As illegal migration increases from Mexico and Central America to the United States, human smuggling, which depending on the country of origin can cost anywhere from $1,300 to $10,000 per person, has become an increasingly important cartel activity. Cartels have exploited this practice to supplement revenue from drug trafficking and assert dominance along the U.S.-Mexico border. Other criminal economies frequently exploited by Mexico's cartels include illegal mining — which is estimated to consume 10% of the country's total mining activities — and oil theft, which is estimated to have hit a total of $3 billion in losses for Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned petroleum company. While drug trafficking remains important in rural areas, these particular criminal activities often increase violence, especially in smaller towns where the local economy is limited to natural resource extraction. The central Guanajuato town of Celaya had the highest per capita homicide rate in the country in 2020: 109 per 100,000 inhabitants (compared to a national rate of 13 per 100,000) due to fighting between the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the CJNG over fuel theft and the control of the sale of methamphetamines.

    POLITICS
    Cartels have long exploited the Mexican political system to gain access to protection from elected officials, increase their staying power and derive a host of other benefits that come from political connections and leverage. The Sinaloa Cartel, in particular, has historically proved adept at maintaining strategic relationships with government officials, allowing the cartel's members to avoid clashes with security forces and generally forestall serious government scrutiny. Reflecting the importance cartels attach to political influence and driven by legislative elections in June for the lower house of the Mexican Congress, cartel violence against political candidates in 2021 increased to its second-highest point since the 2000 elections. Given the importance of establishing subnational control of a given state — such as Guerrero, where political violence has especially spiked — cartels are likely to target traditionally less politically prominent municipalities where they can operate more freely without a significant state security presence. Increased violence targeting politicians in order to install cartel-backed candidates will improve criminal groups' abilities to operate behind the scenes and manipulate political forces to sustain their criminal activity. Following the recent electoral success of cartel-backed candidates in states such as Guerrero, it is likely that increased violence in and around elections will be regularized moving forward, particularly if it is shown to bring tangible benefits.

    While cartels benefit from political relationships, they still face routine pressure from Mexican security forces at all levels of government. In the past, this pressure has been bolstered by a strong working relationship between Mexican security forces and U.S. authorities sharing intelligence useful for targeting cartels. Following the U.S. arrest of two high-level Mexican officials in 2020 on allegations of assisting cartels, however, the relationship between Mexican security forces and U.S. counterparts has suffered. The decrease in bilateral engagement in the last year has created an intelligence gap within Mexico's security services that could usher in increased cartel activity throughout the country.

    TECHNOLOGICAL AND MILITARY CAPABILITIES
    While cartel technology has not changed significantly in the last 18 months, the increasingly militaristic capabilities of Mexico's cartels are of particular importance in analyzing and helping to explain growing violence. Los Zetas was the first criminal group in Mexico to have direct links to past U.S. military training, as members of the group were former members of Mexico's security apparatus. Since then, this trend has continued to spread throughout Mexico's cartels and has helped to catalyze the paramilitary nature of groups like the CJNG. Aside from providing obvious boosts to cartels' violent capabilities, such militarism can provide propaganda to intimidate rivals, security forces and local citizens. For instance, in a propaganda video released by CJNG in July 2020, group members dressed in tactical uniforms with flak jackets labeled "CJNG," holding automatic rifles and driving armored trucks with mounted weapons that have come to be known as "monsters."

    As they have expanded their paramilitary capabilities, cartels have continued to make advances in their use of weaponized drones to target enemies, as seen in an April 2021 incident in the Michoacan town of El Aguaje, where CJNG targeted state police with drone-dropped bombs. While such weapons have not yet shown themselves to be especially lethal, they add yet another threat vector for already out-gunned law enforcement officers when responding to cartel-related activity. Even if not tactical game-changers, cartels' further use of drones could be psychologically effective and deter future law enforcement responses in ways that amplify cartels' sense of impunity. As perceptions that being armed like rogue militaries brings comparative benefits, it is likely that a growing array of violent groups beyond the largest cartels will begin to mimic such trends, which will increase the likelihood and lethality of violence amid a potential arms race among violent groups.

  • Posted by Besoeker 2021-08-07 07:27|| || Front Page|| [1 views ]  Top

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