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On the front lines between the belligerent cartels in Mexico, armed men can spray walls to claim a territory like street gangs. I took this photo of a new generation cartel marker from Jalisco on the blood border of Michoacán and the State of Jalisco in 2022. A decade earlier, I had pointed out the Gulf Cartel and Zetas combat block by block above the City of Cadereyta And in competition to paint “CDG” and “Z”, then conquer a few meters of lawn to remove the markers from their rivals.
However, these raw labels are the exception rather than the rule. Cartels are generally much larger than street gangs and exercise power over mayors, police forces and whole states. They do not need to spray a wall so that the curled residents know that they are in charge.
So what territories do they control? Below, I sketch a card from which, in my analysis, are the important cartels and the lawn they hold or disputes at the beginning of 2024, the last year of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (and the changes of the presidents of Mexico tend to lead to the transition of the cartel borders).
I do not pretend that this idea of a cartel card is original; Strategic intel companies such as Strafor has long published them. But this is my point of view on the divisions and I add a level of nuance by classifying the cartels on three levels: the main transnational cartels (I have two); Powerful regional cartels (I have four); And local cartels (more than a dozen). I also manage to analyze the operation of the different cartels, their strength and which directs them.
I can hear some of your brains scream on problems with cartel cards, and I throw great warnings here. Cartels are not like descending companies or tight armies, but are complex criminal networks. (I go to the debate on their nature here). They are made of semi-line factions and prey to intestine struggles. However, they exercise real power and release a painfully real violence that we are forced to understand.
Another nuance is that control of the cartel varies in its intensity. In extreme examples, as in Comalapa, chiapasThe cartel exercises brutal control and visible on many aspects of life. But in other places, like Mexico CityCartels can work quietly to conclude agreements with federal officials and whiten money. I plan a more detailed graphic on the levels of violence contrasts to come, and I considered it a part here with a white area for “the activity of the cartel with low intensity”.
It is not an exact science. Over the years, I have reported in each Mexican state, interviewed thousands of people and browse all the sources I can. However, the demarcation of the territory I pain moves and opens up to the debate – and this also applies to cartel maps by security companies or even by the DEA or the Mexican army. There are complicated factors: a local cartel can have an alliance with a larger cartel; A cartel can be dominant but there is a small presence of another force.
In this spirit then, here is the card of the “official” Crashout cartel and the list of important cartels for 2024.
List of cartels (descriptions below)
Major transnational cartels
Sinaloa cartel
Cartel Jalisco New Generation
Powerful regional cartels
Gulf cartel
Northeast cartel
Cartel Juárez / La Linea
The familia
Local Cartels
Organization Arellano Félix (CAF)
Zetas factions (Zetas Vieja Escuela, Zetas nueva blood)
Los rojos
Guerreros Unidos
La Unión Tepito (La Unión CDMX)
Los ardillos
Los Taliban
Los tlacos
Los Viagra (part of Cárteles Unidos)
Cártel de Santa Rosa de Lima
Caballeros Templarios
ACAPULCO (CIDA) Independent Cártel
Cártel Chamula (CSJC)
The two big
Sinaloa cartel
THE American Justice Department Said: “The Sinaloa cartel is one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and is largely responsible for the manufacture and import of fentanyl for distribution in the United States.” He claims the most infamous gangsters, including El Chapo, and probably controls the most territory in Mexico.
Perched on the Pacific, Sinaloa has history of drug production in the 19th century when Chinese workers brought poppies of opium and planted seeds. In the 1950s, at the birth of El Chapo, he had such a flourishing heroine production that his baseball team was nicknamed the Gummers (which means those who harvest opium gum).
Sinaloan traffickers were mobile and founded networks where they went, from Tijuana to Ciudad Juárez in Jalisco. What was undoubtedly the first cartel in Mexico, the cartel of Guadalajara, was led by a trio of Sinaloan pingis in the 1980s. The kings of Sinaloan crime, in particular El Chapo and his partner El Mayo, became known as the Federation or the Pacific Cartel in the 1990s, then more commonly 2000.
The Sinaloa cartel operates as a gangster federation operating across Mexico, the United States and the world. Its greatest actors include the chapitos, or son of El Chapo, dominating in the Caliacán State capital, and Ismael “El Mayo” of 76 years “El Mayo” Zambada, who controls the central campaign. Fausto Isidro Meza, or “El Chapo Isidro”, is powerful on the Sinalane coast, including Mazatlán and Mochis. (He was part of Beltrán Leyva’s escape cartel but probably returned to the main Sinaloan network).
Sinaloan gangsters often sell like the “good bad guys” who focus on the sale of drugs rather than predatory rackets like the Shakedowns. But it can be false, and certain parts of their empire such as Durango now include a major extortion of the mining industry.
Cartel Jalisco New Generation
The second cartel in Mexico suddenly appeared as a paramilitary death team performing major massacres of the Zetas in 2011 before it seems to appear in each battlefield. In 2015, the CJNG was sadly famous for its exhibitions as armed man as above and even pulled a helicopter from the Mexican army.
The speed of its ascent leads to rumors, it is a state of state of state. But although it certainly buy official protection, the other crowds and its success are probably due to other factors.
First of all, he increased in the state of Jalisco, which is strategically placed in the heart of Mexico, and he obtained angels on the coasts of the Gulf and the Pacific. Second, he was built on the old commercial networks of the Guadalajara cartel while incorporating the paramilitary style of the Zetas which he helped to fall. And thirdly, he had a particularly strong leadership in Nemesio Oseguera, or El Mencho.
Originally from a city of drugs in the hills, Mencho was a heroine merchant in San Francisco in the 1980s before becoming a cop from Jalisco. He soon turned to the Narcos and got up under the Sinaloan Nacho Coronel gangster before taking his empire when soldiers shot him.
Mencho has survived various arrest attempts by bribes or the use of force, and is an expert in violent pressure on the government. He would be sick and needs dialysis and rumors often abound from his death, one in December in December triggered by a corridor (ballad) entitled “Ya fue“Or” now he’s gone. “If it is true, or each time he dies, there is a risk of instability on his succession.
Four regional powers
Gulf cartel
The Gulf cartel is sometimes recognized as the oldest for its roots in the Bootlegging network of Juan Nepomuceno Guerra, a criminal macamoros magnate over the Rio Grande de Brownsville, Texas. But he probably did not become a large drug trafficking force until the 1980s and properly extended his domination in the neighboring Nuevo Laredo in the 2000s.
He sadly recruited the Zetas of the Mexican army, which would degenerate the whole war of the Mexican cartel. This would also tear the cartel while the Zetas rebelled and became a unleashed arrival force through Mexico. While the Gulf cartel has bounced back to keep its territory key, it has been caught in a circle of intestine struggles since.
However, the CDG remains important by controlling a piece of lawn in the Gulf of Mexico which is particularly lucrative thanks to growth in Texas and the level of human smuggling.
The Juarez / La Linea cartel
Built by the famous lord of heaven, the Juárez cartel dominates the precious center of the Mexican border. Since the 2014 arrest of her boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, she lacked clearly leadership and her factions such that the Gang Barrio Azteca have focused on the violent sale of street drugs.
However, its Linea armed wing deepened its control through the state of Chihuahua. This puts him into a renewed conflict with the Sinaloa cartel, which led to the massacre of nine women and Mormon children in 2019.
Northeast cartel
When the Zetas were attacked on all sides in the 2010s, they fragmented. Their central strength, however, renamed itself like the Cártel del Noreste and was maintained in Nuevo Laredo, the passage of the most busy truck over the border. Although this territory is limited to the scale, it is lucrative for traffic and the CDN exercises important paramilitary forces.
The familia
While the Familia has formed in Michoacán, it now has its strongest base in the state of Mexico and slips into Guerrero. Being in the most populous state of Mexico gives it a strong economic basis, but its Shakedowns led it to a violent confrontation with farmers in December.
The Dirty Dozen
We could argue that the dozen groups and the groups that I classify as “local” do not deserve to be called cartels because they do not have the scale. However, they follow the same practices and structures as the major actors and can each have thousands of agents under their command. (There are also other groups that would say that some should appear on the list).
Some have acquired immense control of politicians and police forces at the local level, and a terrifying ability to violence, such as the Unidos Guerreros behind the disappearance of 43 teachers in 2014.
Many are fragments of cartels once larger. The Beltrán Leyva cartel dominated Guerrero and Morelos before breaking in many new groups. The remains of the Zetas haunt corners of Puebla, Veracruz and Tamaulipas.
This fragmentation and its violent consequences highlight the failure of the working ankle strategy to cut the heads of the snakes. Unfortunately, no one has found an alternative that works either. Mexico now has a varied criminal ecosystem of large, medium and small cartels.
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Copyright Ioan Grillo and Crashoutmedia 2024
