Mexico’s Kingpin Strategy Against the Drug Cartels

2/16/16 New York Times 

Pope Francis’ visit to the violence-plagued Mexican state of Michoacán brought new attention to the government’s decade-long effort to break up drug cartels by targeting their leaders. The recent recapture of “El Chapo” — Joaquín Guzmán Loera, perhaps the most notorious cartel king — has been the signature achievement of the strategy, but it has also had other consequences.

A Spike in Violence

Felipe Calderón began the “decapitation” strategy when he became president of Mexico in 2006, and violence shot upward soon after. The tumult was widely viewed as evidence of disruption: a signal that more deadly and unpredictable gangs were competing to fill a vacuum. Kidnapping and extortion became more frequent as smaller gangs looked for profits.

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Mexico Finds Skeletal Remains Along US Border

Abc News, 2/11/14

Mexican officials have discovered hundreds of skeletal remains scattered on ranches in a stretch of towns along the U.S.-Mexico border as they carried out a wide search to locate missing people. Coahuila state prosecutors’ spokesman Jesus Carranza said Monday that the remains were burned and extremely hard to identify. News of the grisly finds came at the same time 12 bodies were unearthed from clandestine graves in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero and about two months after 67 bodies were found in western Mexico. Such discoveries remain common despite government claims that the number of killings has gone down in the past year.

 

Police in Coahuila haven’t said whether an organized crime group is suspected in the skeletal remains, but the area is known to be dominated by the violent Zetas drug cartel. Officers have arrested 10 men, including four police officers suspected of aiding a criminal group, the state attorney general’s office said in a press release.

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Energy reform in Mexcio & Z-40 – Weekly News Summary: July 26

The Mexico Institute’s “Weekly News Summary,” released every Friday afternoon summarizes the week’s most prominent Mexico headlines published in the English-language press, as well as the most engaging opinion pieces by Mexican columnists.

What the English-language press had to say…

This week, the potential reform of the Mexican energy sector dominated the public debate. Such a reform was cataloged by The Financial Times as “Mexico’s trickiest challenge” given the historical ban on foreign companies extracting oil.  The energy debate is taking place in an environment of declining oil reserves for Mexico but, at the same time, North America is experiencing an energy revolution , according to the Wall Street Journal.

In Mexico, dozens fall to new violence across 4 troubled states

Los Angeles Times, 7/23/2013

Despite some recent promising homicide statistics, violence continues to rage in regions of Mexico plagued by drug gangs and organized crime, as evidenced by dozens of killings spread over four states in the last five days.

Last week, the leader of the notorious Zetas drug cartel, Angel Treviño Morales, was captured by federal officials, and many had speculated that a wave of bloodshed would follow. But it is not clear if any of the recent events are connected to his detention.

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Mexico Says Another Drug Gang Leader Is in Custody

The New York Times, 7/20/2013

The Mexican authorities have captured a top leader of a drug trafficking organization, the attorney general’s office said Saturday, the second arrest of a drug kingpin confirmed by the government this month. The arrests were first publicly confirmed by the attorney general on Thursday but had not been widely reported. They preceded the arrest on Monday of the leader of one of Mexico’s most notorious drug gangs, the Zetas, a bigger catch that made headlines across the globe.

Taken together, the arrests may assuage fears by drug-war hawks that Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, would soften the government’s crackdown on drug traffickers. Mr. Peña Nieto’s aides have frequently criticized the approach of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, and Mr. Calderón’s partnership with United States law enforcement agencies.

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Mexico’s treasures

Financial Times, 7/22/2013

Enrique Peña Nieto is on a roll. In a single week Mexico’s president has boosted his credentials on domestic security with the arrest of the country’s most notorious drug lord and on the economy with a six-year 4tn peso ($316bn) infrastructure investment plan.

The arrest of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, brutal boss of the Zeta gang, is an unqualified victory in the war on Mexico’s mounting violence. The wins from Mexico’s infrastructure investment will take rather longer to materialise. But if fully implemented, the programme should help accelerate Mexico’s growth.

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Zetas cartel member arrested in Mexico

Fox News Latino, 7/25/2012

A man suspected of being in charge of drug smuggling for the Los Zetas cartel along the border between Guatemala and Mexico was captured by marines, the Mexican Navy Secretariat said.

William de Jesus Torres Solorzano was captured on Monday by a patrol in Puebla, the capital of the like-named state in central Mexico, the secretariat said.

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