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By Fred Burton
So far, 2007 has been a bad year for one of Mexico's two most powerful drug-trafficking enterprises: the Gulf cartel. In January, the organization suffered a major hit when Mexico extradited its captured leader, Osiel Cardenas, to the United States. Then, on April 17, authorities arrested five Gulf members just south of the Texas border in Reynosa. Among those taken into custody was Juan Oscar Garza, purportedly an important Gulf cartel leader in the city. Less than a week later, authorities in Nuevo Laredo captured Gulf cartel leader Eleazar Medina Rojas. The Mexican Attorney General's office described Medina as "a major killer."
During his 2006 election campaign, Mexican President Felipe Calderon pledged to take measures to quell the brutal cartel war that has been raging in his country since 2003 -- a war that has escalated dramatically over the past two years. Calderon, in attempting to fulfill his campaign promise, is responsible for the angst currently being felt by the Gulf cartel. Sources familiar with the operation say the Gulf cartel is the government's primary target now, and that Calderon hopes to have it dismantled within a year. Should this operation succeed, it will have public security ramifications on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The immediate benefit, of course, would go to Mexico's other main cartel, the Sinaloa organization, which would assume control of the Gulf cartel's operations in many areas. However, with the long-running turf war between these two organizations concluded, the brutal violence that has spread across the country could subside, at least for a time. On the other hand, members of the cartel's infamous Los Zetas enforcement arm would be left without a master -- or the protection that comes with being part of a powerful cartel. At least some of the Zetas would flee into the United States, spreading their particularly brutal style of violence north of the border.
The Cartels
Given its geographic location, Mexico has long been used as a staging and transshipment point for narcotics, illegal aliens and other contraband destined for U.S. markets from Mexico, South America and elsewhere. The smuggling routes into the United States are controlled by the cartels, which operate major transshipment points, or plazas, run by a top figure within each cartel known as the "gatekeeper."
Currently, the majority of Mexico's smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana -- though Tijuana is the least powerful. This has not always been the case. As recently as November 2005, the Juarez cartel was the dominant player in the center of the country, controlling a large percentage of the cocaine traffic from Mexico into the United States. The death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997, however, was the beginning of the end of the Juarez cartel. After the organization collapsed, some elements of it were absorbed into the Sinaloa cartel -- a relatively young and aggressive organization that has gobbled up much of the Juarez cartel's former territory.
Over time, the balance of power between the various cartels shifts as new ones emerge and older ones weaken and collapse. The interplay between cartels is, in fact, very much like that between some nations: The chances for peace are highest when a kind of stable coexistence is maintained and profits flow freely. However, a disruption in the system -- such as the arrests or deaths of cartel leaders -- generates tensions and, frequently, bloodshed as rivals move in to exploit the power vacuum.
Leadership vacuums sometimes are created by law enforcement successes against a particular cartel -- thus, cartels often will attempt to use law enforcement against one another, either by bribing Mexican officials to take action against a rival or by leaking intelligence about a rival's operations to the Mexican government or the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Current Cartel War
The collapse of the Juarez cartel, the February 2002 death of Tijuana cartel leader and chief enforcer Ramon Arellano Felix, who was killed in a shootout with police in Mazatlan, and the March 14, 2003, capture of Gulf cartel kingpin Cardenas in Matamoros combined to spark the current period of unrest -- and particularly brutal warfare -- among what were then the three main cartels. The aggressive Sinaloa cartel saw those developments as an opportunity to expand its territory -- and profits -- and made its move.
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