MEXICO: Trouble at the top of the narco-business?
Any important industry that loses three of its most powerful chief executives in less than a year is going to face some questions. How significant were the displaced leaders and who will take over from them? Is there a crisis in the making, or perhaps a change in the business model looming somewhere on the horizon? Or is the underlying business strong enough to continue, no matter who is running the show? All these questions are now being asked about Mexico’s very large, very powerful (and completely illegal) drugs business.
The last Mexican president, Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) pursued a clear, high profile and very hard-line policy of ‘war’ against the country’s drug running syndicates, with the aim of decapitating them. Most security analysts now agree that it was a failure. Fairly or unfairly, Calderón’s decision to militarise the anti-drugs effort, throwing the country’s armed forces into battle against criminal gangs, is considered to have come at a massive cost (over 70,000 deaths in the six years of his presidency), with very little by way of results: the drug syndicates appeared as powerful as ever at the end of his term, with the flow of illicit merchandise into the US undiminished.
Nor were analysts particularly impressed by the change of strategy initially announced by Calderón’s successor, President Enrique Peña Nieto, when he took office in December 2012. The new president took a ‘softly-softly’ line. He spoke of a more low-key, intelligence-led approach, with less media hype on the day-to-day battles and, apparently, less emphasis on taking out the drug kingpins. This new policy seemed vague and hard to pin down exactly. At worst, it seemed to boil down to no more than a desire to ‘manage’ the news agenda and keep the grisly drugs-related violence off the front pages.
But latterly even cynics have had to acknowledge that the Peña Nieto administration is delivering some real results. In the space of less than a year, three of the top Mexican narco-syndicate leaders have been taken out of action. In July 2013, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, also known as ‘Z-40’ or ‘cuarenta’, the leader of the ultra-violent and feared Los Zetas cartel, was captured by the Mexican Navy. In February 2014, this was followed by the capture, again by the Navy, of the head of the world’s ‘most-wanted’ man, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, who had evaded capture for over a decade since a daring prison escape in 2001. Then in early March came the news that Nazario ‘El Chayo’ Moreno, reputedly the leader of the Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT) cartel, based in Michoacán state, had been shot dead in a gun battle. This development could not have marked a bigger contrast with the Calderón administration, since the latter had actually pronounced El Chayo dead in 2010, even though it never had a corpse to prove its claim. This time, it appears that El Chayo really has been taken out of circulation.
So what is happening? Various interpretations are possible. We can start by examining one of the most pessimistic. On this view, essentially, while some of the top leaders have been removed, in all other respects it is “business as usual” and the Mexican drugs business remains as important, as strong, and as profitable as ever as a supplier to the US market. New leaders quickly fill the gaps left by their predecessors. In a business prone to violent battles for control of territory, Los Zetas appear to have managed a fairly orderly transition. Since the capture of Treviño Morales (Z-40), it is widely believed that the organisation is now being run by his brother, Omar Treviño Morales (known as Z-42). In the Sinaloa cartel, the heir-apparent is Ismael El Mayo Zambada, with Juan José El Azul Esparragoza also in a powerful position. “I have no reason to believe El Chapo did not have a good succession plan in place and Zambada has likely already taken the reins, with Esparragoza at his side” says Sylvia Longmire, a US drug war expert.
While not necessarily subscribing to the “business as usual” theory, two senior US army generals have expressed opinions which can be seen as supporting it. General John F. Kelly, the head of US Southern Command (Southcom), recently testified before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that the criminal networks transporting drugs and people to North America are “more efficient than FedEx could ever be”. Kelly warned that the drug cartels are efficient organisations and are diversifying in pursuit of profit. In his view, organised criminal gangs are smuggling not just drugs but also weapons, mineral ores and illegal timber. Kelly’s Northern Command (Northcom) colleague, General Charles Jacoby, agreed. While congratulating President Peña Nieto on the arrest of El Chapo, he warned that the Sinaloa cartel is “strong and adaptable” and that the struggle against it will be “a long and hard battle”.
A second hypothesis is that while drug-running remains massively profitable, the removal of these three top leaders will spark a new war between their successors for market share. James Creechan, a sociologist and criminologist who taught at Culiacán University (in the city where El Chapo was finally captured), has warned that, “nobody knows what is going to happen and it’s really a great period of uncertainty”. Creechan suggests that the arrest of two of Zambada’s sons on trafficking charges in the US, coupled with rumours that one of them may have been the source of information that led to El Chapo’s arrest, could complicate the Sinaloa cartel succession scenario.
In this view it is possible that an internal war could break out; and rival groups would seize upon any sign of internal weakness or division within the Sinaloa cartel. Nathan Jones from Rice University comments, “if anyone is going to smell weakness, it is going to be Los Zetas.” At present the Sinaloa cartel controls large tracts of Western Mexico, including Baja California and major drug trading routes in the north and south. The LCT cartel has been strong in Michoacán, but has been forced on the defensive as a result of attacks from rival groups in Jalisco and the spread of the self-defence militias in various parts of the state. Los Zetas control significant parts of the Gulf Coast, and other smaller groups such as the Beltrán Leyva family also hold sway over smaller pockets of territory.
Sylvia Longmire, on the other hand, is not convinced that a war between cartels is in prospect. She believes that the Sinaloa cartel remains “too large and powerful” to be a takeover target. “The violence may temporarily increase in places where (Sinaloa) is already in conflict with other cartels like Los Zetas, but I think that will ease back to normal levels once things readjust,” she said, citing areas like Nuevo Laredo where the groups are “fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling corridors.
A feature of the ‘war between rival drug cartels’ scenario is that few analysts believe it can change things in a fundamental way. To date in Mexico and elsewhere, the fortunes of individual drug cartels have ebbed and flowed but the presence of the industry has remained a constant. Drug turf wars seem to leave a trail of violence, but in the long term do not seem to challenge the business itself
A third and interesting hypothesis is that the drug cartel ‘business model’ is past its heyday, and that in future the large ‘corporate’ cartels will be replaced by smaller and more localised gangs. Various analysts suggest that this may be the way things evolve in future, but they have different views as to the factors driving such a change.
For instance, Alejandro Hope of the Instituto Mexicano de Competitividad (IMCO) doubts whether El Chapo’s main lieutenant, El Mayo Zambada, will be able to hold the Sinaloa cartel together. He sees a period of violent fragmentation and internal struggles, accompanied by a move to more local, predatory and diversified criminal organisations dealing not only in drugs but also in extortion, theft and kidnapping.
On the other hand, Dr. James Creechan, a retired academic and Mexico security specialist, thinks the Mexican government is deliberately trying to break up the big cartels into smaller gangs. He attributes this in part to the advice given to President Peña Nieto by General Oscar Naranjo, the former head of the Colombian police force. “The government is going to be quite willing to live with a lot of little cartels in the sense that these little gangs may do local damage but can’t do much warfare. In a way it’s a kind of Colombian strategy” he comments.
