Tag Archives: Jalisco New Generation cartel Mexico cocaine

The Mystique of Mexican Drug Cartels

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Homicides in Latin America are driven by violent cartels. The impact of Mexican cartels is especially far reaching because they prey upon undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border, violate human rights, and weaken political and economic institutions. However, cartels remain mysterious despite being a major employer. Because understanding how Mexican cartels function is essential to attenuating their power, Prieto-Curiel et al. conducted a sophisticated analysis that estimated their population size and examined factors driving cartel growth and shrinkage. Factors included “recruitment” (new cartel members join), “incapacitation” (police incarcerate or arrest members), “conflict” (cartels fight other cartels), and “saturation” (members leave). Findings suggest that reducing “recruitment” instead of increasing “incapacitation” is a much more effective policy to decrease violence. This is because cartels are one of the biggest employers in Mexico. Recruiting between 350 and 370 people per week is essential to avoid their collapse because of aggregate losses. 

Summary of Rafael Prieto-Curiel  et al., Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico, Science, Sept. 21, 2023

The New Underworld Order: Invincible Cartels

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Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera spent decades building his Jalisco New Generation Cartel into a transnational criminal organization fierce enough to forge a new underworld order in Mexico, displacing the Sinaloa cartel, torn by warring factions, as the world’s biggest drug pusher. The Sinaloans, Mexico’s top fentanyl traffickers, got caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which promised to eradicate the synthetic opioid. The crackdown has left an open field for Jalisco and its lucrative cocaine trade, elevating Oseguera to No. 1.

The Jalisco cartel transports the cocaine by the ton from Colombia to Ecuador and then north to Mexico’s Pacific coast via speedboats and so-called narco subs…The U.S. has a $15 million bounty on Oseguera, but he rarely leaves his mountain compound, according to authorities. Few photos of him circulate. The cadre of men protecting Oseguera, known as the Special Force of the High Command, carry RPG 7 heat-seeking, shoulder-fired rocket launchers capable of piercing a tank, people familiar with cartel operations said. Visitors to the drug lord’s stronghold are hooded before they embark on the six-hour car trip through terrain sown with land mines, those people said. Locations of the pressure-activated explosives are known only by members of Oseguera’s inner circle.

The Jalisco cartel, which controls ports on Mexico’s Pacific coast, now uses routes and tunnels into the U.S. that are controlled by the sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán….
 
The cartel acts as a parallel government in the southwestern state of Jalisco and other parts of Mexico, taxing such goods as tortillas, chicken, cigarettes and beer, security experts said. It controls construction companies that build roads, schools and sewers for the municipal governments under cartel control.  A booming black market for fuel is another cash cow. Gasoline and diesel stolen from Mexican refineries and pipelines—or smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. without paying taxes—is sold at below market prices to small and large businesses.. The head of the Jalisco cartel’s fuel division is nicknamed “Tank” for his prowess at stealing and storing millions of gallons of fuel. 

Excerpst from Steve Fisher et al., America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In, WSJ, Sept. 16, 2025