Mexico Is on Track for Its Bloodiest Year Ever - and It’s Likely to Get Worse Luke Barnes - ThinkProgress
go to original November 3, 2017

Mexico's drug war: 2017 on course to be deadliest on record (Al Jazeera)

Mexico is currently in the middle of a blood bath. The country has a murder rate of roughly 2,300 homicide victims a month, which translates to a murder every 19 minutes, according to a recent study. If current trends keep up, Mexico is set to end the year with approximately 28,000 murders — its highest number ever — surpassing the morbid 2011 record, when the drug war was thought to have reached its apex.

As levels of violence have surged, they have also spread beyond traditional drug smuggling corridors. Cartels have also evolved from vast, drug-trafficking organizations, led by a handful of kingpins, into smaller networks are more violent, less stable, and aren’t just content with just dealing drugs. What’s more, Trump’s policies are likely to make things in Mexico even worse.



When former President Felipe Calderón first deployed the military against the cartels in 2006, there were roughly half-a-dozen major drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico. Since then, the landscape has changed dramatically. The Gulf cartel, which is one of the country’s oldest trafficking organizations, has lost much of its territory, while the notoriously brutal Zetas have now split into rival warring factions.

New groups have risen up to replace them. Chief among them is the Cartel Nueva Generación Jalisco (CNGJ). Originally formed after splintering from the Sinaloa Cartel in 2010, the CNGJ is now “one of the most powerful and fastest growing cartels in Mexico and the United States”, according to the DEA’s recent National Drug Assessment. The DEA added that CNGJ’s expansion “is characterized by the organizations willingness to engage in violent confrontations.”

“I think the best metaphor for what’s going is the southeastern state of Guerrero,” said Nathan Jones, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University and an expert on drug violence in Mexico. “There are 12 cartels operating there and all fighting…at that point you can’t even call them cartels.” He explained that the dispersal and fragmentation of cartels means that groups are now willing to look to new criminal ventures for profits, including fuel theft, extortion, and even frozen octopus theft.

“As these groups gets disrupted they get profit starved,” he said. “Then they look for even more violent and predatory activities.”

Read the rest at ThinkProgress

Related: Rising Crime in Downtown Mexico City Prompts Calls for Stepped-Up Policing (CNSNews.com)

Related: Mexican Gang Leader Getting Plastic Surgery Shot Dead in Hospital (NBCnews)

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