Mexico's Next Generation Cartels Not Getting the Government Message Patrick Corcoran - InSight Crime
go to original June 10, 2015

Inside Story: Despite Relentless Efforts, Mexico Has Failed to Eradicate Drug Cartels (Al Jazeera)

The ongoing aggression of Mexico's Jalisco Cartel - New Generation suggests the government's message to cartels to keep violence down or be dismantled is yet to sink in for the many of the next generation of up and coming criminal organizations.

Five years ago the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG) was a non-entity. Now it is the target of a major federal security operation in Jalisco as one of the most prominent engines of violence in western Mexico. According to at least one analysis, it has become the most dangerous drug trafficking organization in the country.

While there is room for debate on this last point, there is no doubt the group has risen rapidly since emerging out of the embers of the organization controlled by former Sinaloa Cartel boss Ignacio Coronel, who died in a shootout with the Federal Police in 2010.

It has been an overtly aggressive organization since the outset, when it announced its existence with videos threatening their local rivals, first the Resistance, and later the Knights Templar.

More recently, the CJNG has taken advantage of the geographic and public relations vacuum left by the decline of the Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Knights Templar - organizations that have all seen their leadership decimated by arrests and shootouts with Mexican authorities. While it may not be the most powerful organization in Mexico, it is one of the few that seems to be at the front end of its narrative arc.

The group has been linked to notorious crimes in Jalisco and neighboring states over the past five years, most recently the August murder of a Jalisco mayor and the ambush that left 15 state police officers dead in April, crimes that have called to mind the methods of the old Jalisco Cartel of Sinaloa godfather Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. The CJNG has also employed tactics that are disruptive and harmful to the society at large, such as extortion and blockades of popular thoroughfares.

The CJNG’s activities have provoked a furious government response, particularly the federal government’s Operation Jalisco. The government’s prioritization of the group appears to have been a factor in the shootout in a Michoacan ranch last month in which 42 alleged members of the CJNG were killed by government authorities - who in turn suffered just one casualty. The group responded with promises of vengeance against government officials.

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