Mexican cartels have seen a surge in growth in their participating members over the last decade, according to a new study, to the point where they have effectively become the nation’s fifth-largest employer.
Researchers created a mathematical model using homicide, missing persons and incarceration data to track cartel recruitment. Their study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that some 175,000 people in Mexico are employed by 150 different cartel groups.
The researchers said they hope their study can help analysts and governments who “have long struggled to understand cartels” and find a “better way out of this cycle of violence.”
In the last ten years, 37 percent of known cartel members had been killed or incarcerated, and yet the size of cartels grew. The researchers found they must have recruited nearly 20,000 members a year to make up for losses.
An unrelated report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July estimated that the two largest cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, employed more than 44,800 people. The study’s author, Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a former Mexico City police officer, said his model showed a similar number of 46,000 cartel members in those two groups.
Neither of those numbers might be fully representative of the total number though, the Thursday report said.
“The model only accounts for those directly involved in work that puts them at risk of violence, and not members—such as bankers—who help move and launder cartels’ money,” it stated.
Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for Insight Crime who did not take part in the study, told The Guardian that the numbers depend on the definition of a cartel and what constitutes membership.
“It can be very difficult to say who is a member of a criminal organization and who isn’t,” Dittmar said. “What about a politician that receives money? Or someone who cooperates with the group just once?”
Other researchers have said Prieto-Curiel’s July study is a breakthrough because previous attempts to fight organized crime by the cartels have failed — and the study has shown combatting the crime starts with decreasing the cartels’ ability to recruit new members.
“At least we know we have to focus on that question rather than just sending more money to armed forces and building prisons,” said Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist at Binghamton University who did not participate in the research. “You need to cut the source of the problem rather than dealing with the consequences.”
Can any cartel employees comment on their benefits package? Work-from-home policy?
Most of them work from police cars and stations I think.
Last week I was in a cartel controlled area buying tacos. Police were right there.
How much of a role does the US play here? Does Washington actively keep Mexico weak, or do they simply watch and not help?
To an imperialistic outsider, Mexico seems to be in that “sweet spot” of being too weak to present any kind of military or economic challenge, but just stable enough to avoid collapsing into total anarchy. They’re readily exploitable, but non-threatening.
There’s a very tedious relationship. The US has sent troops to train the Mexican national police to combat the cartels, and helped provide weapons to the Mexican federal government. The US has sent money to the Mexican government to assist with that.
The issue is that corruption goes very high, and the cartels pay more than the Mexican Feds, so many of those trained took their training and weapons to the cartels, or just actively work with them as police on the side.
The US has tried, but without a strong federal government in Mexico that can deal with the root issues locally, there’s no real answer. If they can’t pay more than the cartels and get people to actually fight for their own lands, then they will never ever be able to build a force that can rival them for control. People the do bring in will either be killed because the cartels have inside players and more resources, or they will defect to the cartels and take the money and training with them.
An article from 13 years ago. https://www.npr.org/2010/04/13/125878556/u-s-trains-mexican-federal-police-to-combat-drugs
Just adding a detail, criminality isn’t punished due to overt threats of violence. It’s relatively common for someone to obliviously run a campaign on the merits of decency and simply cease to exist. Worse still, to be found strewn about in pieces, visibly violated as a warning. The cartels are politically savvy.
They’re essentially their own governments in large portions of Mexico, and significantly more powerful than the federal government.
There’s no real solid answer to it, but to eliminate the cartels will require massive collaboration both politically and militarily between the US and Mexico. Which likely won’t happen. Mexico would never agree to allow a deployment of US troops even if working hand in hand with the Mexican military, and the US government would never put US troops under foreign command.
But it’s going to have to take a much more powerful military to eradicate the cartels, who themselves are pretty powerful militaries.
Tangentially related: I read somewhere that Mexico doesn’t invest much in cutting-edge military technology, because their geographic location means they would easily overpower South America, or easily be overpowered by the US. Or maybe that’s not very much related at all…
Hey, close enough!
The role the US plays is buying illegal drugs. End of story.
Fuck we think is going to happen when we keep drugs illegal?! All that money going to gangsters while we clutch our pearls.
“We never thought gangsters would take advantage!”
Meanwhile, the evils of alcohol prohibition are taught in American schools…
Legalization of recreational use of cannabis over the last decade or so has shown a significant increase in cannabis use across the US.
Decriminalizing hard drugs and focusing on treatment will help, but legalizing the sale of hard drugs like fentanyl and meth would be batshit insane.
And unless the sale of the drugs is legalized and regulated, there’s still going to be a heavy black market for them that the cartels will fill.
It’s one thing to legalize and regulate something like cannabis which is relatively harmless, resulting in the black market shrinking because people can readily get it legally. It’s another thing entirely to legalize selling crack.
Make a zone in every state that builds a city that allows that… And have a hospital, rehab ETC in that zone. Teach kids from a proper age the harm of drugs. Regulate, scan for drugs everywhere else and send them over to those cities and or zones if drugs are “clean”.
Education, better jobs , full democracy instead of a flawed democracy is what we all need. Medical healthcare and affordable medicine and therapists and gyms is what we all want and need. Better jobs , better schools , better governments.
Well, if you really want to dig down into this shit… the US “war on drugs” was undeniably lost a long fucking time ago. We saw how well that sort of policy worked in the prohibition era… and then decided to try it again, expecting a different outcome.
Never thought of comparing the war on drugs to prohibition… and prohibition is what created the environment for organized crime to thrive in the US. Damn.
Yep. “Time is a flat circle.” …but yeah. It actually is, in a loose sense. We, as a species, have an unfortunate propensity for repeating the mistakes of our forebearers.
Well said / well put!
You know the war on drugs was never really a war on drugs, right?
Yes, I’m aware.
Mexico’s economy is booming. It’s not like there aren’t other jobs, or tax revenue. The main problem is that they are ideally situated up against the largest drug market in the world: the US. Until people in the US stop wanting drugs, this will continue, because it’s just too much money for anyone to leave on the table.
In large part, the US is content to let it continue, because it keeps the underworld activity mostly outside our borders. However it’s gone a bit far, with the cartels virtually taking over the entire country, and contributing to a refugee crisis of epic proportions.
The only solution is for the US to decriminalize drugs and take the entire industry legitimate. It’s well underway with marijuana. The issue is that there are way worse drugs involved now. Meth, fentanyl, and worse. Those aren’t so easy to legalize as weed, which is pretty harmless.
Nailed it from what I’ve seen.
Edit: Wrote this whole wall of text about Mexico being conquered. Posted. Then came back to check if I had answered your question correctly. Realized you weren’t even talking about Mexico being conquered. Meh… I am leaving it.
It doesn’t matter if Mexico is ripe for conquering. There is no appetite for conquering Mexico by any major portion of the US. The reasons are many and complex, but I can think of six major ones off the top of my head.
First, the general perception of most Americans is that there isn’t much of interest in Mexico except pretty beaches, cheap drinks, and Aztec/Mayan architecture. All of which are already currently accessible to Americans.
Second, it would be expensive, there are a lot of aspects of Mexico that would need complete overhaul to begin to match US regulations and expectations. Many existing states would demand the Federal government pay to bring them up to code, the expense of which would end up being footed by the American people.
2.1: The expense couldn’t even be passed on to the Mexican states through taxes since they would almost certainly be brought in as territories. US territories and their populations have no voting power in the federal government but also have no Federal taxes because of our history with Britain. “Taxation without representation” and all that. More on Territories in the third segment.
2.2: Cleaning up the cartels would be a huge expensive mess under the American legal system and would like cause even more oppressive laws to be implemented to the detriment of current US citizens.
Third, voting and politics, Mexico’s 31 states would have to be added into the US in some fashion. Even if they started as territories, the population of many of them are too great to leave them in that status quo for long. Bringing in new states would be a huge issue and quite possible would help push us to civil war, like last time we added a bunch of states. Pre-Civil War new states were added in pairs; one slave state, one free state. Something like that would need to happen again. Neither Democrats nor Republicans would allow a new state to be brought in that gained the other side a majority.
Fourth, the people of Mexico are pretty different demographically from most of the US, not just in culture, language, and skin color, but also in the variety of religion or non-religion practiced. (This was the largest paragraph but it was getting way into the weeds so I pared it down.)
Fifth, would have to be an open travel, outsider, racism, etc issue. Whatever you want to call it, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of any American to move to any other part of America freely and many of the newly joined citizens would want to utilize it. There is a clear majority (currently) of Americans that think we have an issues with too many immigrants. Even people who are vehemently against Trump’s wall may support decreasing immigration. Absorbing Mexico would be throwing open the flood-gates in the eyes of those who want to slow immigration down.
Sixth, American relations with the International community. Any way you spin it, an offensive war to conquer more territory would be viewed poorly by our allies, and used as justification to increase expansionism by our adversaries. Most Americans have no stomach for continuing to be viewed as colonial, or the consequences of such an action, even if we wouldn’t mind some of the benefits.
The edit made me laugh. Plus, your comment was worth reading anyway!
Glad you enjoyed the edit. I am doubly glad someone actually read all that, even though it was mostly irrelevant. 🙃
They probably have better benefits and work-life balance than most employers.
Stock bros are legitimately so mad they can’t directly invest in the cartels.
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Don’t take me to Funky town
Mexico is completely bonkers to me. How do you even salvage this country without outside intervention?
I mean as someone from the US I’m not sure anyone here agrees that we’re on a good path (though the right path we may disagree on). I’d wager most countries could say the same.
Maybe once we figure it out at home we can think about what it might mean to salvage another country.
Its economy is booming. It’s not like there aren’t other jobs, or tax revenue. The main problem is that they are ideally situated up against the largest drug market in the world: the US. Until people in the US stop wanting drugs, this will continue. In large part, the US is content to let it continue, because it keeps the underworld activity mostly outside our borders. However it’s gone a bit far, with the cartels virtually taking over the entire country, and contributing to a refugee crisis of epic proportions.
The only solution is for the US to decriminalize drugs and take the entire industry legitimate. It’s well underway with marijuana. The issue is that there are way worse drugs involved now. Meth, fentanyl, and worse. Those aren’t so easy to legalize as weed, which is pretty harmless.
Cartels are also getting into legal businesses already and pretty much own politics. If you’re outspoken in fighting cartels and corruption, you’ll die - likely in a very gruesome way too.
Well if the cartels become legit businesspeople and own politics, then Mexico will not be that far off from the US.
Polemic and whataboutism.
Hardly. Just pointing out that commerce isn’t born from some divine source. It arises out of chaos through force of arms to establish the stable conditions for business. Terror often comes with the bargain. Ask the Native Americans. It’s just the way. We’re not going to stamp out the cartels but we could bring them into the economic order.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mexican cartels have seen a surge in growth in their participating members over the last decade, according to a new study, to the point where they have effectively become the nation’s fifth-largest employer.
An unrelated report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in July estimated that the two largest cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, employed more than 44,800 people.
The study’s author, Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a former Mexico City police officer, said his model showed a similar number of 46,000 cartel members in those two groups.
“The model only accounts for those directly involved in work that puts them at risk of violence, and not members—such as bankers—who help move and launder cartels’ money,” it stated.
Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for Insight Crime who did not take part in the study, told The Guardian that the numbers depend on the definition of a cartel and what constitutes membership.
“At least we know we have to focus on that question rather than just sending more money to armed forces and building prisons,” said Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist at Binghamton University who did not participate in the research.
The original article contains 405 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Biggest industry? I doubt it. They’re mixing stats by including everyone modeled to be involved in violent crime as a “company.”
The cartels have moved beyond the drug trade, they have taken over towns, mines, even a few factories.
These organizations aren’t cartels. They aren’t colluding with each other to keep prices high.
They absolutely are. Each cartel is a group of various drug lords all operating together to keep the price of their product high, and enforce that through violence.
The Sinaloa cartel for example is one organization of drug lords colluding and operating together across numerous nations and territories. It was originally an agreement between El Chapo and Izmael Zambada Garcia to work together trafficking drugs instead of competing because it meant more profit for both of them.
Combined, correct they are not one cartel. That’s why it says cartels and not “the cartel”.
The Mexican drug “cartels” barely fit the economic definition of the term, which is rarely if ever used for criminal organizations. The Mexican gangs get the label for political and sensational reasons. This interview disabused me of using the cartel label.
I’ve read Zavala’s book and he makes good points but ignores critical factors because he looks at it from a traditional national and political view.
The cartels do not recognize the Mexican federal government largely. They view themselves as the rulers of the territories they operate in and compete with other ruling parties in their territories. Not competing organizations operating within a nation and subject to that umbrella. They essentially are their own autocratic governments.
OPEC is like the poster example of a cartel, but they operate in a competitive global oil market against other nations like the US, Russia, and Canada. They formed to compete against the predominant oil cartel in the 60s and 70s (the seven sisters) to restrict competition and increase oil profits among member states. The fact that one organized cartel competes against other players doesn’t make them not a cartel.
The drug cartels operate similarly. They are agreements between drug lords that were powerful locally to not compete against each other and consolidate their power and resources to gain more market share against other competing parties. Same as how OPEC was a group of oil producing.
He’s also wrong that the narco trafficking entities in Mexico don’t have a defined hierarchy structure or level of power that a cartel would have. They absolutely do have defined power hierarchies, chains of command, and a top down power structure from the leaders to the street runners. They also have significant power and control over their territories, largely ruling entirely uncontested. They have better training and better weaponry than the Mexican army and federal police. They are essentially their own nations.
