Mexico's Criminal Insurgency: A Small Wars Journal—El Centro Anthology

Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

A Small Wars Journal—El Centro Anthology

John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker

Primary Authors

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

A Small Wars Journal—El Centro Anthology

Copyright © 2012 by Small Wars Foundation

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-2729-0 (sc)

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iUniverse rev. date: 5/23/2012

Contents

FOREWORD: MEXICO’S CRIMINAL INSURGENCY AND SWJ EL CENTRO

Dave Dilegge

PREFACE: A SINALOAN KINGPIN, A REPORTER, AND THE REALITY OF MEXICAN STATE SOVEREIGNTY

Max G. Manwaring

1.   IRAQ & THE AMERICAS: 3 GEN GANGS LESSONS AND PROSPECTS

Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan

2.   STATE OF SIEGE: MEXICO’S CRIMINAL INSURGENCY

John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

3.   PLAZAS FOR PROFIT: MEXICO’S CRIMINAL INSURGENCY

John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

4.   FUTURE CONFLICT: CRIMINAL INSURGENCIES, GANGS AND INTELLIGENCE

John P. Sullivan

5.   THIRD-GENERATION GANGS AND CRIMINAL INSURGENCY IN LATIN AMERICA

Hal Brands

6.   A VOLATILE BREW

Robert Killebrew

7.   CARTEL V. CARTEL: MEXICO’S CRIMINAL INSURGENCY

John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

8.   CRIMINAL INSURGENCIES IN THE AMERICAS

John P. Sullivan

9.   THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ¿PLATA O PLOMO?

Pamela L. Bunker and Robert J. Bunker

10.   EXPLOSIVE ESCALATION? REFLECTIONS ON THE CAR BOMBING IN CIUDAD JUAREZ

John P. Sullivan

11.   THE US STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE MUST SHIFT FROM IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN TO MEXICO/THE AMERICAS AND THE STABILIZATION OF EUROPE

Robert J. Bunker

12.   CRIMINAL INSURGENCIES IN MEXICO: WEB AND SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES

Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan

13.   THE MEXICAN CARTEL DEBATE: AS VIEWED THROUGH FIVE DIVERGENT FIELDS OF SECURITY STUDIES

Robert J. Bunker

14.   ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS AND NEW MEDIA IN MEXICO’S DRUG WAR: A POWER AND COUNTER POWER ASSESSMENT

John P. Sullivan

15.   EXTREME BARBARISM, A DEATH CULT, AND HOLY WARRIORS IN MEXICO: SOCIETAL WARFARE SOUTH OF THE BORDER?

Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan

AFTERWORD: MEXICO: A MOSAIC CARTEL WAR

Paul Rexton Kan

NOTES

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ABOUT SMALL WARS JOURNAL 

 AND FOUNDATION

Small Wars Journal facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field. We hope this, in turn, advances the practice and effectiveness of those forces prosecuting Small Wars in the interest of self-determination, freedom, and prosperity for the population in the area of operations.

We believe that Small Wars are an enduring feature of modern politics. We do not believe that true effectiveness in Small Wars is a ‘lesser included capability’ of a force tailored for major theater war. And we never believed that ‘bypass built-up areas’ was a tenable position warranting the doctrinal primacy it has held for too long— this site is an evolution of the MOUT Homepage, Urban Operations Journal, and urbanoperations.com, all formerly run by the Small Wars Journal’s Editor-in-Chief.

The characteristics of Small Wars have evolved since the Banana Wars and Gunboat Diplomacy. War is never purely military, but today’s Small Wars are even less pure with the greater inter-connectedness of the 21st century. Their conduct typically involves the projection and employment of the full spectrum of national and coalition power by a broad community of practitioners. The military is still generally the biggest part of the pack, but there a lot of other wolves. The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

The Small Wars Journal’s founders come from the Marine Corps. Like Marines deserve to be, we are very proud of this; we are also conscious and cautious of it. This site seeks to transcend any viewpoint that is single service, and any that is purely military or naively U.S.-centric. We pursue a comprehensive approach to Small Wars, integrating the full joint, allied, and coalition military with their governments’ federal or national agencies, non-governmental agencies, and private organizations. Small Wars are big undertakings, demanding a coordinated effort from a huge community of interest.

We thank our contributors for sharing their knowledge and experience, and hope you will continue to join us as we build a resource for our community of interest to engage in a professional dialog on this painfully relevant topic. Share your thoughts, ideas, successes, and mistakes; make us all stronger.

…I know it when I see it.

Small Wars is an imperfect term used to describe a broad spectrum of spirited continuation of politics by other means, falling somewhere in the middle bit of the continuum between feisty diplomatic words and global thermonuclear war. The Small Wars Journal embraces that imperfection.

Just as friendly fire isn’t, there isn’t necessarily anything small about a Small War.

The term Small War either encompasses or overlaps with a number of familiar terms such as counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, support and stability operations, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and many flavors of intervention. Operations such as noncombatant evacuation, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance will often either be a part of a Small War, or have a Small Wars feel to them. Small Wars involve a wide spectrum of specialized tactical, technical, social, and cultural skills and expertise, requiring great ingenuity from their practitioners. The Small Wars Manual (a wonderful resource, unfortunately more often referred to than read) notes that:

Small Wars demand the highest type of leadership directed by intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Small Wars are conceived in uncertainty, are conducted often with precarious responsibility and doubtful authority, under indeterminate orders lacking specific instructions.

The three block war construct employed by General Krulak is exceptionally useful in describing the tactical and operational challenges of a Small War and of many urban operations. Its only shortcoming is that is so useful that it is often mistaken as a definition or as a type of operation.

• • •

Small Wars Journal is NOT a government, official, or big corporate site. It is run by Small Wars Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, for the benefit of the Small Wars community of interest. The site principals are Dave Dilegge (Editor-in-Chief), Bill Nagle (Publisher), Robert Haddick (Managing Editor) and Peter Munson (Editor). Dilegge, Nagle and Haddick, along with Daniel Kelly, serve as the Small Wars Foundation Board of Directors.

FOREWORD: MEXICO’S CRIMINAL 

 INSURGENCY AND SWJ EL CENTRO

Dave Dilegge

March 2012

This work is not only the first publication of a Small Wars Journal anthology but also celebrates the establishment of the SWJ El Centro forum. Contained within it are cutting edge articles pertaining to the criminal insurgency taking place in Mexico—essentially the 21st century equivalent of the small wars of the last century but undertaken by criminal organizations, both hierarchical and networked in form, rather than by traditional Maoist-like insurgents. Additional works will certainly be produced concerning this pivotal security threat to the United States and her Latin American allies as the study of the criminal insurgencies taking place in the Western Hemisphere becomes more organized and systematic under the El Centro Fellows program.

What has been confounding for some SWJ readers is our embrace of this topic as a cause célèbre since about 2008. While most eyes in the insurgency studies profession remained firmly fixed on Iraq and Afghanistan, a small yet growing group of authors have been concerned with the developing cartel and gang threat in Mexico and in other regions of Latin America. For John Sullivan and Robert Bunker, their initial gang and cartel research dates back to the mid-to-late 1990s. What many still have not grasped is that cartels, gangs, and other criminal organizations can become politicized either by purpose and intent or accidentally (de facto) with the capture of a town or city. Many of these organizations may have initially only sought governmental non-interference with their illicit narcotic and other criminal pursuits in order to operate with impunity in the territories that they held. The end result is the same though. Behind the façade of legitimate authority is that of one cartel or another wearing a ‘bloody mask’, whether it is the Gulf, Zetas, Sinaloa, La Familia, Juarez, or any of a number of other criminal organizations. With economic and military (cartel gunman) power comes political power. The cartels and paramilitaries in some cities and regions have even evolved to the point where they tax the local population, viewing themselves as benefactors offering basic services, protection, and spiritual guidance. What we are witnessing in Mexico is a fusion of local warlordism and social banditry, expanding criminal enterprise and parastate emergence— an insurgency fostered by both secular criminality and narco spirituality.

The authors in this work have been investigating the evolution of criminal insurgencies, the crime-war overlap, the barbarization of the conflict, new forms of spirituality—including Santa Muerte ritualistic killings— third generations gangs, and cartel information operations (info ops) for some years now. They have also provided us with useful tools such as new strategic perspectives, web and social media resources, and differing views on the conflict in Mexico from divergent fields of security studies. Their contribution to this field of study should not be downplayed; beyond their significant contributions to Small Wars Journal, they have also gone on to produce other important works that have begun to influence Washington perceptions, policy formulation, and decision making and have also greatly influenced the scholarly literature in the areas of US national security policy, Mexican security, transnational organized crime and in gang and cartel studies.

In sum, this anthology represents some of the best and brightest scholars of today who are writing on the evolving security environment in Mexico and the implications this may hold for the United States. They have greatly enhanced our understanding of crime wars and criminal insurgencies—21st century war and conflict waged by non-state entities— and the impact this new form of warfare is having on states. For this, we embrace them and have established the new SWJ El Centro forum found at http://smallwarsjournal.com/elcentro to further promote their professionalism and scholarship.

PREFACE: 

 A SINALOAN KINGPIN, A REPORTER, AND THE 

 REALITY OF MEXICAN STATE SOVEREIGNTY

Max G. Manwaring¹

Excerpt derived from

A ‘New’ Dynamic in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment.

Initially published in September 2009

The preface to John Sullivan and Robert Bunker’s Small Wars Journal-El Centro anthology on Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency provides rich context concerning rising cartel influence in that nation. It was originally slated to appear in the Narcos Over the Border (Routledge) edited work but was not published due to space limitations. This essay is still highly relevant because El Chapo, a Sinaloan Kingpin, figures prominently in this essay and still garners headlines. Essentially he is now considered—as of March 2012— to be more powerful than the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was during the 1980s according to a senior US Drug Enforcement Administration official.²

This vignette, taken from a very interesting and instructive article written by Guy Lawson,³ is an attempt to capture the essence of the article. The intent here, however, is to briefly examine contemporary sociopolitical life in Sinaloa with a critical eye on the reality of effective state sovereignty.

The Individual Being Interviewed: Juaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo (Shorty). El Chapo controls a Sinaloa Cartel that controls the Arizona border towns of Nogales and Mexicali. He has opposition, however. First, there are erstwhile friends who have developed a personal feud with El Chapo that seems to go on and on and become more and more violent. These antagonists are two brothers, Mochomo (Red Ant) and Barbas (the Beard), who are leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel. Then there are the seemingly ever-present Zetas agents trying to expand their own and the Gulf Cartel’s illegal drug routes into the United States. The Gulf Cartel and the Zetas appear to have teamed together with Mochomo and Barbas in an attempt to eliminate El Chapo from the market.

In the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Culiacan, El Chapo is known as a kind of folk hero— part Robin Hood, part Billy the Kid. He has more money, more women, and more weapons than any other TCO in the area—except the Zetas. Because El Chapo is relatively generous with some (actually, very little) of his money, people respect him. He grew up poor, planting corn and marijuana. Over time, he built massive underground tunnels to smuggle cocaine into Arizona, and he subsequently assembled a fleet of boats, trucks, and aircraft that made him one of the most wanted drug dealers in the world. And, he now— among other things—finances new entrepreneurs as they grow both marijuana and poppies for heroin. El Chapo, however, is most famous for his miraculous escape from a federal prison in 2001 just before he was to be extradited to the United States for trial on US drug charges. He had a plush suite in prison, complete with a personal chef, plenty of whisky, an endless supply of Viagra, and a girlfriend called Zulema. The common wisdom is that El Chapo gave all that up to go back to Sinaloa and help out his friends and neighbors.

Moreover, the people of Sinaloa are convinced that the federal government in Mexico City let El Chapo escape because he is the only drug lord who has the resources and intelligence to face up to the other cartels and to the Zetas.⁴ The argument, simply put, is that the federal government cannot do much. The police are incompetent and corrupt; laws constrain government, while a TCO can do whatever it wants; and regular army troops are a poor match for the much better armed, equipped, and trained Zetas. In short, it is better to let the TCOs destroy themselves rather than fight them directly.

…..The State of Sinaloa, Mexico. Sinaloa is a small state on the Mexican Pacific coast across the Gulf of California from the Baja California peninsula. It is situated between the sea and the almost impassable Sierra Madre Occidental on the east. There are probably not many more than a million inhabitants of the entire state, but an average of three drug-related murders are estimated to take place every day of the year in Sinaloa. That statistic explains the front-page headline of the local newspaper on the day that our American reporter arrived in Culiacan: Worse Than Iraq.

The Capital City of Culiacan, Sinaloa. That first day in Culiacan, everyone in the city was wondering what El Chapo might do to take revenge for the death of his 20-year-old son a few weeks earlier. The young man was shot and killed in broad daylight during a drive-by attack by 15 gunmen, one of whom fired a bazooka. The murder was attributed to the Beltran-Leyva cartel. Weeks later, four more decapitated bodies were dumped in the center of Culiacan with a note addressed to El Chapo, saying, You’re next. Three days later, three more bodies—this time with legs as well as heads severed—were found. Among them was a former police comandante. Within hours, another police officer was shot and killed, along with a companion and a bystander. Within another few days, two more grotesquely decapitated bodies were dumped outside a farm owned by a capo (criminal chieftain) allied with El Chapo.

That was just one series of events discussed on that first day in Culiacan. Something less important than the murder of El Chapo’s son was also a topic of conversation. Only a few days before the arrival of our reporter, a gang of gunmen pulled up in front of an auto shop in the center of the city. They opened fire with AK-47s and AR-15s. Within minutes, nine people were dead. Then, as the assailants fled along Zapata Boulevard, they gunned down two police officers. On Insurgentes Avenue, the killers opened fire on federal troops stationed outside a judicial building. There was no pursuit and no arrests. All that anyone seemed to know was that the gunmen were after a small time narcotraficante known as Alligator. A local official succinctly explained, No one will talk.

As one might have guessed,

Culiacan is a drug-industry town the way Los Angeles is an entertainment town. Every business is connected, directly or indirectly, with illegal drugs. There are narco discos and narco restaurants. In the upscale malls scattered around town, high-end jewelers sell gaudy and expensive necklaces favored by narco wives, and girlfriends, and hookers. Narco chic is Valentino and Moschino pants, ostrich-skin boots, a black belt with a narco nickname (such as ‘Alligator’) engraved on it, and a Versace hand bag big enough to hold a stash of drugs and cash needed to pay off the police.

Thus, every day, Culiacan stages a sort of ongoing