Cartel evolution revisited: third phase cartel potentials and alternative futures in Mexico

Abstract

Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) – commonly called drug cartels – are challenging states and their institutions in increasingly brutal and profound ways. This is seen dramatically in Mexico's drug wars and the expanding reach of Mexican organized criminal enterprises throughout Latin America and other parts of the world. This essay updates a 1998 paper ‘Cartel Evolution: Potentials and Consequences’ and examines current cartel and gang interactions. The paper links discussion of cartel phases to gang generations; updates and applies the discussion of third phase cartel potentials to Mexico; and assesses four alternative futures for Mexico, as well as their cross-border implications for the United States.

Keywords:

• cartel evolution
• criminal-states
• drug trafficking
• DTOs
• Mexico futures
• 3GEN gangs
• third phase cartels

Notes

 1. See Sullivan and Elkus, ‘Red Teaming Criminal Insurgency’, ‘State of Siege’, and ‘Plazas for Profit’; and Sullivan, ‘Criminal Netwarriors in Mexico's Drug Wars’.

 2. Sur stands for Sureños (Southerners) and 13 for the letter M (Eme) and that means that those street gangs are subordinate to Mexican Mafia (Eme) authority.

 3. Bunker and Sullivan, ‘Cartel Evolution’, 55–74.

 4. Few works have been produced on the potential for cartel evolution. In addition to the original paper ‘Cartel Evolution: Potentials and Consequences’, see Fatic, ‘The criminal syndicate as para-state in the Balkans’, 137–56.

 5. Creveld, The Transformation of War.

 6. Bunker, ‘Epochal Change’, 15–25.

 7. Clawson and Lee III, The Andean Cocaine Industry, 47. See also Cañon, El Patrón, 20, 129.

 8. Logan, ‘Los Zetas’.

 9. See Briscoe, ‘The Proliferation of the “Parallel State”’.

10. Paternostro, ‘Mexico as a Narco-democracy’, for an early discussion of the emergence of criminal enclaves in Mexico.

11. Bunker and Sullivan, ‘Cartel Evolution’.

12. Hawley, ‘Bold New Cartels Emerging in Mexico’.

13. Hawley, ‘Bold new cartels emerging in Mexico’

14. Hawley, ‘Bold new cartels emerging in Mexico’

15. Sullivan, ‘Maras Morphing’, 487–504 for a detailed discussion of the current state of maras and third generation (3 GEN) gangs worldwide.

16. Sullivan, ‘Transnational Gangs’.

17. Franco, ‘The MS-13 and 18th Street Gangs’, 2.

18. Sullivan, ‘Third Generation Street Gangs’, 95–108.

19. Sullivan, ‘Gangs Hooligans, and Anarchists’, 99–128 for a discussion of the analysis underlying this section.

20. Bruneau, ‘The Maras and National Security in Central America’.

21. Llorca and Bajack, ‘AP Impact’.

22. Casas-Zamora, ‘‘Guatemalastan’: How to Prevent a Failed State in our Midst’.

23. See Sullivan and Bunker, ‘Third Generation Gangs’, 1–10 for a discussion of ‘third generation’ gang literature. A newer contribution is Brands, ‘Third-Generation Gangs and Criminal Insurgency in Latin America’.

24. See, for example, Sullivan, ‘Future Conflict’ and notably Fatic, ‘The Criminal Syndicate as Para-state in the Balkans’, 137–56.

25. Salazar, ‘Young Assassins of the Drug Trade’.

26. Manwaring, A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty, 20.

27. The computer seized in 1994 was valued at one million dollars. See Chepesiuk, ‘The Fall of the Cali Cartel’.

28. This comparison does not take into consideration the guerilla FARC group which suggests that second phase cartel evolution and mutation is alive and well in Colombia with that hybrid guerilla-cartel entity's larger spheres of operation than those achieved by the Cali Cartel.

29. Logan, ‘Mexico’.

30. Lacey, ‘In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself’.

31. Skaperdas and Syropoulos, ‘Gangs as Primitive States’, 61–82.

32. Early participation of individual Mexican Mafia members as hit men for the Mexican cartels is not well known. See Rafael, The Mexican Mafia; and Blatchford, The Black Hand.

33. Fatic, ‘The Criminal Syndicate as Para-state in the Balkans’, 137–56.

34. Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting, 1–42; and Bunker and Sullivan, ‘Cartel Evolution’, 55–74.

35. Stanislawski, ‘Transnational “Bads” in the Globalized World’, 155–70 and ‘Para-States, Quasi-States, and Black Spots’, 366–96.

36. Email correspondence concerning the characteristics of Black Spots with Dr. Bartosz Stanislawski, October 17, 2008.

37. Lovelace, ‘Foreword’, iii–iv; and Manwaring, A ‘New Dynamic’ in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment, ix.

38. Logan and Sullivan, ‘Mexico's “Divine Justice”’.

39. Ibid. See also Bunker et al., ‘Torture, Beheadings and Narcocultos’, in this work for additional information on La Familia.

40. Sullivan and Elkus, ‘Mexican Crime Families: Political Aims and Social Plans’.

41. This synopsis is drawn from the Narcocultos section of Bunker et al., ‘Torture, Beheadings and Narcocultos’, found in this work.

42. An excellent background debate on Mexican failed-state potentials, narco related conflict, and futures for that country can be found in Ronfeldt's Two Theories blog. See ‘Why Mexico May NOT Fall Apart – and a Way to Think about it’ and ‘Mexico Plagued by Myriad Interlaced Netwars – a TIMN Analysis’.

43. The bulk of the security cooperation money will go to Mexico with some also earmarked for Central America and the Caribbean. See Johnson, ‘The Merida Initiative’.

44. See Logan and Sullivan, ‘Costa Rica, Panama in the Crossfire’.