Enterprising Crime Cartels in Mexico Muscle in on Local Politics The Straits Times
go to original January 20, 2016

How Corrupt Is Mexico? (TestTube News)

For a decade, Mexican troops have worked with United States agents to pursue kingpins, in what is known as the cartel decapitation strategy. Flamboyant gangsters with nicknames like "Tony Tormenta", "the Engineer" and "the Viceroy" have been shot down or arrested. "El Chapo", or Shorty, has been detained twice in less than two years.

Yet while these kingpins rot in prisons and graves, their assassins have formed their own organizations, which can be even more violent and predatory.

The new cartels continue to traffic drugs, some switching from Colombian cocaine to Mexican heroin to feed an epidemic sweeping parts of America.

But they have also used their armies of assassins to move into new endeavors - rackets, extortion, oil theft, even wildcat iron-mining.

And they are now muscling in on one of Mexico's most lucrative businesses of all: local politics.

Read the whole story at The Straits Times

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