Viva la Violencia: A Research Study on

Increasing Organized Crime-related Violence in

Mexico

Audrey Moore

Munck

IR 466

May 1, 2015

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It is the early 1990s. Journalists, police, and high-profile public leaders are trapped

between serving their civic duty to society and salvaging their own lives as the Cali and Medellín

drug cartels terrorize Colombia. Citizens live in constant fear, unsure of whether to rely on the

most powerful organized crime groups the world has yet seen for protection, or the legitimate

and democratic government these cartels increasingly infiltrate and undermine.

Today, the hardline policies and combined Colombia-U.S. efforts have since shut down

the two cartels and turned these scenes into faded recollections of a more dangerous time. As a

prime example, Medellín has reduced its homicide rate by over eighty percent since 1991 when it

was still under the control of kingpin Pablo Escobar (Brodzinsky).

Yet the plata o plomo mindset continues to plague public officials and security forces

elsewhere in Latin America; amidst Colombia’s slow-growing emergence as a safer state comes

now the downfall of a northern neighbor undergoing similar conditions. Nearly 3,000 miles

away, Mexico is caught in the middle of the same serious security threat. As prominent drug

cartels battle for control over prime trafficking routes and border crossings into the U.S., the

country has tried to mimic Colombia’s successful mano dura policies to settle its own security

dilemmas and reestablish order across the state. Public approval for such actions kept former

Presidents like Felipe Calderón popular, as citizens grew fearful over the bloodshed in their

country and anxious for any action or response to quickly fix the problem.

The plight in Mexico poses two critical questions, however. Firstly, are these policies

addressing the correct issues? Given the widespread epidemic of the organized crime-related

violence facing Mexico, it would appear that the root causes for such violence must be

reevaluated in order to understand how these security threats have escalated to their current state

today. And despite the popularity of such measures, have they been truly effective? An

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exasperated public may plead for action, but a Band-Aid solution can only do so much for a

gushing, bloody wound.

After thoroughly researching the issue by carefully reading numerous articles from

prominent scholars and media sources, I hope to shed light on answers to the above questions by

first exploring the primary three root causes to the drug-related disorder.

For the first of these, I evaluate how both past and present ties to the Colombian drug-

trade have dramatically increased the presence of drugs in Mexico, as trafficking routes and

production factories increasingly arose within the country. Then, I go on to discuss how

government policies and operations themselves have inadvertently caused increased competition

amongst the cartels, leading to greater fighting and security concerns. Finally, I discuss a

number of dilemmas within the social structure of Mexican society, creating obstacles for many

citizens of the lower-classes that are more easily surmounted by joining organized crime and the

drug-trafficking trade.

Once the foundational issues arising to the organized crime-related violence in Mexico

have been conferred, I then go on to explain why the Mexican government’s current policies

have been so unsuccessful in deterring the violence. This is largely accomplished by presenting

empirical evidence that demonstrates how, in many ways, the violence has not subsided, but

actually increased instead due to the legislative measures Mexico has implemented (such as

cracking down on the cartels with military force). Issues regarding impunity and a lack of

organization has also hindered the effectiveness of Mexico’s hardline response, I go on to argue.

Finally, I touch on whether the approach of Peña Nieto’s administration has been any more

effective than that of his predecessors, noting the progress made by the country in capturing

many prominent cartel kingpins.

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Seeking Out the Source: Causes for the Current Mexican Violence

If there is one thing for certain when it comes to Mexico’s response, it is that the root issues of

the violence are not being adequately evaluated, and as a result Mexican policy confronting the

drug-trafficking security dilemma has remained largely unsuccessful. With a greater

understanding of three key factors leading up to the current violence, Mexico will be able to

better survey the prevailing situation and brainstorm more effective solutions to tackling the

violence caused by organized crime.

Colombian Impact

While Mexico had been already been smuggling a variety of black market goods into the U.S.

from the beginning of the twentieth century (namely marijuana, heroin, and alcohol during

Prohibition (O’Neil 66)), organized crime in Mexico truly gained momentum when Colombia hit

its peak period for producing and distributing cocaine to the U.S. Although Colombian cartels

had used a variety of transportation methods to smuggle the drug across borders, the major

means of getting it into the country involved distribution through the Bahamas or landing

modified propeller planes in Florida via direct flights from Colombia itself (Bonner 36). After

the U.S. legislature passed get-tough policies in the mid-1980s to limit cocaine imports through

these two locations, however, Colombian cartels were forced to shift their trafficking routes to

land passages through Mexico. To acquire the necessary Mexican support, the drug lords offered

willing Mexican citizens $1,000 for every kilogram of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. (Bonner

36).

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Drug presence in Mexico skyrocketed, and brought with it the seedlings of the current

violence present in Mexico today. Whereas in 1991 only fifty percent of cocaine destined for the

U.S. passed through Mexico, by 2004 that same number had jumped to an astonishing ninety

percent (O’Neil 66).

The benefits of

border sharing and

lucrativeness of the

trade undoubtedly

appealed to many

Mexican citizens

looking for quick and easy (albeit risky) money. This increase in cocaine coyotes, as it were, soon

led to a substantial amount of traffickers available, all competing to close a deal with the

Colombian drug lords. After all, a typical cocaine drop into Mexico from Colombia during the

late 1980s and early 1990s contained 600 to 800 kilos of cocaine (Bonner 37), amounting anywhere

from $600,000 to $800,000 in gross profits. With such high stakes at hand, the competition became

cutthroat – literally. As Miron and Zweibel point out, “Because participants in the illegal drug

trade cannot use the legal and judicial system, the marginal benefits to using violence to resolve

disputes increases” (177).

Another reason for the increased drug presence and violent cartel competition dealt with

Mexico’s growing role as a cocaine supplier, as opposed to simply transporting the drug. Given

its immense success in trafficking, Colombian drug lords started to pay Mexican trafficking

organizations not in cash, but in powder cocaine. This paved the way for Mexico to

revolutionize itself into a major cocaine distributor as well as trafficker, allowing it to eventually

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eclipse Colombian prominence in the region (Bonner 37). In order to compete and maintain their

new role as distributors, drug-trafficking organizations needed to revamp their organizational

structure into something more refined. As a result, the door was opened to the highly

sophisticated, vertically organized drug cartel, capable of mass violence as seen today.

The Price of Politics

Just as government policies indirectly affected Mexico’s exposure to drug-trafficking and cartels,

they also directly affected organized crime-related violence through a variety of legislative

measures and government operations.

Crossing over

Specifically, tougher U.S. anti-drug policies not only made land passages through Mexico

more lucrative, but border crossings more valuable – and violent – as well. With both the U.S.

and Mexico clamping down on air drop locations in Florida and the Bahamas in the mid-1980s,

as well as border crossing zones in the 1990s and early 2000s, drug smuggling across the border

became a much more difficult, risky task. With greater risk comes greater value to the prime

border crossing zones, as the stakes for smuggling are raised. This had led to mass bloodshed as

cartels fight to intimidate citizens, security forces, and each other in order to gain control of

major border cities. Take for example the massacres at: Tijuana, coveted by both the Sinaloa and

Tijuana cartels; Ciudad Juárez and the ongoing battle between the Sinaloa, Tijuana, and Juárez

cartels which resulted in a homicide rate of 143 per 100,000 in 2009; as well as Nuevo Laredo,

sought after by the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels and resulting in 180 dead shortly after the conflict

began in 2005 (O’Neil 68-69).

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Democracy-driven violence

The grave amounts of deaths that have occurred in places like Ciudad Juárez are not solely tied

to tough U.S. border control policies, however.

Under the long single-party rule of the PRI, government officials had taken advantage of

the dangerous – but profitable – opportunities impunity provided them, hindering any real

effective judicial reaction from the government in regards to the drug cartels. In 1985, a head

government official, or comandante, could be paid off by a cartel in return for leniency for a

hefty sum of several million dollars each (Bronner 38). Once enough officials had been bought

off, the cartels were generally left to do as they pleased, facing no real governmental threats. As

a result, while inter-cartel violence might have still taken place, violent attacks between

government security forces and drug cartel members generally declined.

All of this changed in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, however. While the

election of a PAN member to the presidency was considered a great feat in the realm of

democracy for Mexico, it signaled a struggle to come for control over organized crime. Shannon

O’Neil, a Latin American specialist and Senior Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations,

attributes increased violence to the fact that the cartels could now act completely autonomously

of the government, breaking ties and dependencies from the previous federal government under

the PRI and establishing impunity at the local levels instead (65). However, given the new

federal officials’ fervent ideological platform on shutting down the cartels their opposition had

so dishonorably supported, it is highly likely the cartels would attempt to gain their support as

well, and that renewed conflict arose between the cartels and those officials who preferred plomo

instead. Examples of this can be found in Ciudad Juárez, where mass conflict and violence arose

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during a time when the city was governed by a PAN official even after Chihuahua was again

under the control of the PRI. The election of the PAN into executive office also caused a great

deal of political gridlock, halting any efforts made to quell the angst and surge in violence caused

by the cartels (O’Neil 65). Thus, while the election of a new political party to office provided

hope for a more open, transparent, and tough democratic government in the face of the drug

cartels, the surge in attacks and organized crime-related violence that ensued sent a different

message instead.

Stagnance on the Socio-economic Ladder

Although the Mexican government has been highly responsive to the direct causes of organized

crime-related violence – namely, the drug cartels themselves – it has done little in the ways of

rectifying the indirect, and perhaps more pertinent structural issues that have led to increased

participation in organized crime and thus organized crime-related violence.

Namely, poverty and a lack of opportunities have played an important role in increasing

drug cartel membership and violence. As mentioned in the UNDP Regional Development

Report 2013-14, “The crisis of confidence that both the Latin American police forces and the

justice systems are facing has

led citizens to search for

alternative methods for

procuring security” (10). The

report goes on to mention how

this security vacuum most

greatly impacts Latin America’s

poor. This makes sense, in that

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the poor are often marginalized in Latin American society and thus receive little governmental

support, or in this case, protection. As result, many impoverished communities have established

their own anti-organized crime vigilante groups, which in turn only increase the bloodshed

between everyday Mexican citizens and the members of drug cartels (Munck).

A second factor that has greatly limited the opportunities for upward mobility for many

Mexicans in the lower socio-economic classes is a lack of education. It is common amongst

impoverished families in Mexico to utilize all family members as breadwinners as soon as they

are able in order to support family survival. This is particularly common amongst agrarian

workers, whose job requires little educational training and a lot of manual labor time. However,

in a cruel catch-22, as young family members are pulled out of school to help earn a living for

the family, they are denied the opportunity to gain new knowledge and skills that could

ultimately advance them into a higher socio-economic status (with the ability to work higher-

paying, skilled jobs). With little opportunities to advance socially via legal means and immense

temptation of the profitability of the drug-trafficking business, many uneducated Mexican

citizens turn to the industry in order to make a living and climb the ranks of the social ladder.

The UNDP Regional Development Report for 2013-14 also supports this, noting that 85.9

percent of incarcerated Mexican citizens had completed less than twelve years of schooling and

51.1 percent of inmates had completed less than nine years of schooling (9). Faced with a lack

of opportunities to turn elsewhere and a hands-off approach by their government, the poor

working-class citizens often find themselves involved with a cartel simply in order to survive.

Ironically, the organizations that so drastically have threatened the people’s physical integrity

and right to life have become their economic and social saviors.

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The Ends Justify the Means?

Up until the election of Enrique Peña Nieto as President in 2012, Mexican leaders have done

little in the way of proactively addressing the problem of drug-related violence and have instead

focused on hardline reactive policies. While this may have worked for a variety of reasons in

Colombia, it has failed in the case of Mexico. The UNDP Regional Development Report for

2013-14 notes that Latin America was the only region of the world where lethal violence increased

between 2000 and 2010 (1), and Mexico was

no exception. Between 2005 and 2010, the

Report shows, the homicide rate in Mexico

more than doubled, shooting from less than 10

homicides per 100,000 inhabitants to nearly

25, and the greatest perceived threat to

Mexican citizens in 2012 was organized crime

(2). While tough-on-drugs politicians assure

their constituents that this dilemma must

unfortunately get worse first in order to get better, many Mexican nationals are left wondering

whether this “worse” period is truly worth the promised solution that has still yet to arrive.

Hardline Causing Hard Times

Contrasting Colombia

If hardline policies worked so well in Colombia in the 1990s, why then have they failed to

adequately secure stability for Mexican nationals throughout the 2000s?

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To begin, the Mexican government has lacked a clear, unified goal and organizational

strategy in eliminating the drug cartels. Instead, it has taken an apparent blanket approach to

confronting organized crime: destroy it, wherever, and whenever. Former Administrator of the

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (1990 to 1993) Robert C. Bonner argues six key points

related to this issue, focusing on a lack of organization, strategy, and strength on part of the

Mexican government. In Colombia, he notes, there was a clear goal centered around destroying

the drug cartels (rather than an expansive policy on drug-trafficking prevention), a one-at-a-time

strategy that focused on eliminating cartel kingpins, and a strong governmental response that

incorporated support from multiple levels of security forces (both local forces as well as the

military) along with international military and intelligence support (namely from the U.S.) (42-

4). Mexico has failed to accomplish most of these; especially pertinent in its case is the strategy

of handling one cartel at a time.

Unlike Colombia,

Mexico is plagued by a large

number of cartels, which when

combined, encompass nearly

the entire country under their

control. Any attempts to

dissolve all of the cartels

simultaneously would be –

and have proven – futile.

Instead of weakening the drug-trafficking organizations, this strategy has instead resulted in an

effect akin to poking an angry bear with a very short stick. Under Felipe Calderón’s mano dura

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policies, Mexico faced over 10,000 drug-related homicides between the time of his inauguration

in 2006 to 2009, with 6,000 of those occurring in 2008 alone (O’Neil 63). At the same time, it is

uncertain that taking the one-at-a-time approach would be much more effective, as the vast

amount of cartels existing in Mexico make it probable that with the fall of one, the others will

simply fight amongst each other for control of the former cartel’s territory.

However, in contrast to Bonner’s argument, there exists little support in Mexico’s case to

focus on capturing kingpins to halt the violence. While kingpins may be the experienced ring-

leaders that Bonner portrays, to think that they have not thoroughly trained a second- or third-in-

command to manage cartel operations in their absence or in the case of their arrest is a rather

short-sited approach. Arresting kingpins has actually been attributed to increasing organized

crime-related violence, since the newer second and third generations of leaders then engage in

bloody power struggles to fill the void left by their former leaders (O’Neil 67-8).

Corruption and the loss of legitimate power

Furthering this counterargument is the inherent issue of impunity within the Mexican justice

system. Unless extradited to the U.S.,

Mexican drug lords and cartel leaders

are often still able to regulate their

respective businesses and call for

violent attacks against other cartels,

security forces, or citizens when

necessary. Corruption has in fact

become so entrenched in Mexican

government that 57.6 percent of

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incarcerated inmates say they received a weapon from a friend or from the police themselves

within just six months prior to their arrest, according to the UNDP Regional Development

Report for 2013-14 (2). The lack of data beyond those six months puts into question how many

more inmates with older weapons received those weapons from governmental security forces.

This, along with the violence the security forces themselves have perpetrated across the state, has

led to a lack of perceived legitimate power of the government by its people. Not only has the

government indirectly perpetrated some of these homicides by protecting the cartels through

corruption, but policies enacted by leaders such as Calderón have allowed the Mexican military

and government to engage in questionable acts resulting in human rights violations.

As the UNDP Regional Development Report for 2013-14 mentions, “Iron fist

policies…have…had a deep negative impact on democratic coexistence and respect for human

rights, which are at the heart of human development” (13). When the military, not as well-

trained to handle domestic affairs, carries out bloody acts of violence in the form of human rights

violations, it loses all sources of legitimacy with the citizens, causing them to take up arms and

do the same for the purpose of self-defense (this stems back into the causal issues of organized

crime-related violence mentioned earlier). Governments ought to lead by example. Mexico’s

example would appear to proclaim, “¡Viva la violencia!”

Changing Times?

With a new, more progressive PRI leader in the executive office, many Mexicans are hoping for

some signs of change and reduction in the widespread organized crime-related violence. Indeed,

Peña Nieto, while still in support of the U.S.-backed Plan Mérida, has called for more proactive

measures in dealing with the cartels in order to reduce the bloodshed of his citizens. Given the

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strong past connections between the PRI and drug cartels of the 1990s, however, many question

whether any change will be brought about at all on this issue.

To be sure, Peña Nieto has already budgeted $9 billion dollars to preventative programs

focusing on issues such as education and social justice in order to deter citizen recruitment and

participation in organized crime. Furthermore, after holding office for only six months, the

Mexican Interior Ministry reported that organized crime-related violence had fallen by 16.5

percent within the country (Seelke 7). However, these numbers may be challenged due to the

increase or same levels of violence in particular

regions of the country, such as Michoacán.

Ironically, it was also estimated that 6,000

organized crime-related deaths took place in the

same first six months of Peña Nieto’s term

(Seelke 15).

If anything, Peña Nieto’s administration

has found success in arresting multiple kingpins

from major drug cartels. Big names like Jesús Salas Aguayo of the Juárez Cartel and José Tiburcio

Hernández Fuentes of the Gulf Cartel include just two of the major kingpins captured by the

Mexican government this year (in fact, on the same day) (Malkin).

Thus, the overall success of Peña Nieto’s more progressive policies remains questionable,

with uncertain outcomes to be awaited in the future.

Conclusions

After reanalyzing its history and past ties with coca-producing countries like Colombia, it

becomes apparent that the student state has learned well from and even outdone its southern

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professor, developing vastly more drug cartels with a widespread reach that extends across the

entire country. Government approaches to tackle the issue have failed to quell the violence and

in some cases have even increased it, whether intentionally (as with the case of impunity) or not

(as with the case of democratic change in 2000). The hardline policies of Calderón left an

estimated 60,000 people dead in their wake (Seelke 15), some of which were the result of bloody

human rights violations perpetrated by the government itself, causing citizens to mistrust the

very forces that should be protecting them and leading to an increase in vigilante movements for

self-defense.

Amidst all this bloodshed, Peña Nieto’s new progressive platform shows some signs of

hope in addressing the structural and social issues that are often overlooked in causing much of

this mass violence; however, without similar backing of these projects by the U.S. and with

much of the militant strategies still in need of reform, Peña Nieto’s success in reducing organized

crime-related violence will be an uncertain variable and a challenging feat to accomplish.

One thing is for certain: if the past strategies Mexico has been employing remain

unchanged, it is highly likely that citizens will only continue to suffer from the anxiety and

insecurity that afflict them already, and the hard-fought democracy that Mexico finally fully

achieved in 2000 could once again be eroded away.

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Works Cited

Bonner, Robert C. "New Cocaine Cowboys - How to Defeat Mexico's Drug Cartels." Foreign

Affairs 89.4 (2010): 35-47. Web.

Brodzinsky, Sibylla. "From Murder Capital to Model City: Is Medellín's Miracle Show or

Substance?" The Guardian 17 Apr. 2014: n. pag. Print.

Malkin, Elisabeth. "Mexican Police Capture Leader of Juárez Cartel." New York Times. N.p., 19

Apr. 2015. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

Miron, Jeffrey A., and Jeffrey Zwiebel. "The Economic Case Against Drug Prohibition." The

Journal of Economic Perspectives 9.4 (1995): 175-92. Web.

Munck, Gerardo. "IR 466 - The Current Violence: Crime and Drugs." 13 Apr. 2015. Lecture.

O'Neil, Shannon. "The Real War in Mexico: How Democracy Can Defeat the Drug

Cartels." Foreign Affairs 88.4 (2009): 63-77. Web.

Seelke, Clare R. Mexico’s Peña Nieto Administration: Priorities and Key Issues in U.S.-Mexican

Relations. Rep. no. R42917. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2013.

Print.

UNDP, Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014. Citizen Security with a Human Face:

Evidence and Proposals for Latin America. Executive Summary. New York: UNDP,

2013. Print.