mexican drug war

Mexico has long been used as a staging and transshipment point for narcotics and contraband between Latin America and U.S. markets. Mexican bootleggers supplied alcohol to the United States' gangsters throughout Prohibition in the United States,[38] and the onset of the illegal drug trade with the U.S. began when prohibition came to an end in 1933.[38] Near the end of the 1960s, Mexicans started to smuggle drugs on a major scale.[38]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico was part of both Operation Intercept[48] and Operation Condor,[49] developed between 1975 and 1978, with the pretext to fight against the cultivation of opium and marijuana in the "Golden Triangle", particularly in Sinaloa.[50]

The operation, commanded by General José Hernández Toledo,[51] was a failure with no major drug lord captures, and reported abuse and repression in rural zones.[52]

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Colombia's Pablo Escobar was the main exporter of cocaine and dealt with organized criminal networks all over the world. While Escobar's Medellin Cartel and the Cali Cartel would manufacture the products, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo's Guadalajara Cartel would oversee distribution. When enforcement efforts intensified in South Florida and the Caribbean, the Colombian organizations formed partnerships with the Mexico-based traffickers to transport cocaine by land through Mexico into the United States.[53]

This was easily accomplished because Mexico had long been a major source of heroin and cannabis, and drug traffickers from Mexico had already established an infrastructure that stood ready to serve the Colombia-based traffickers. By the mid-1980s, the organizations from Mexico were well-established and reliable transporters of Colombian cocaine. At first, the Mexican gangs were paid in cash for their transportation services, but in the late 1980s, the Mexican transport organizations and the Colombian drug traffickers settled on a payment-in-product arrangement.[54]

Transporters from Mexico usually were given 35% to 50% of each cocaine shipment. This arrangement meant that organizations from Mexico became involved in the distribution, as well as the transportation of cocaine, and became formidable traffickers in their own right. In recent years, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel have taken over trafficking cocaine from Colombia to the worldwide markets.[54]

{cartel factions, the main ones, there are more factions or smaller groups of them.} Sinaloa Cartel CJNG LNFM Los Viagras Gulf Cartel Los Metros LFM CSRL Los Zetas Juárez Cartel Tijuana Cartel Cárteles Unidos La Barredora La Unión Tepito Milenio Cartel BLO CIDA Knights Templar Cartel