INVASION OF THE DRUG CARTELS

YUKON NORTHWEST TERRITORIES NUNAVUT

Far from being a south-of-the-U.S.-Mexico-border problem alone, at least 1,000 U.S. cities reported the presence of at least one of four Mexican cartels in 2010. Meanwhile, south of the border, the machinery of drug creation and facilitation grinds away, spitting out addicts in the U.S. and more than 50,000 dead bodies in Mexico since 2006. The cartels are looking to spread their tentacles wider.
At the end of last month, a video emerged of members of the Mexican Gulf cartel using machetes to behead five men from the rival Zetas gang. The month before, a Zetas gang member dumped 49 mutilated bodies in a northern Mexico town square. This week alone, seven police officers died when they were ambushed by a drug cartel, and the newspaper El Manana, in the city of Nuevo Laredo, announced it was stopping coverage of the drug-related bloodshed after grenades damaged its offices for the second time this year (in one recent incident, 14 severed heads were dumped on the street close to Nuevo Laredos town hall in ice boxes). In Mexico, murders, beheadings, kidnappings and torture are all too common as gangs protect their turf and try to increase their share of a drugs trade worth an estimated $13-billion annually. In the past few years, authorities have killed or captured 22 of the highest-ranking drug generals and seized more than $10.9-billion worth of drugs. There have been more than 55,000 drug-related killings and more than 6,000 disappearances during President Felipe Calderons six-year offensive against the cartels.
FEDERATION CARTEL

But a recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice says drug demand is increasing and Mexican cartels who dominate the supply, trafficking and wholesale distribution of the trade are positioned to meet the rise and keep the drugs flowing across the U.S. border. The seven Mexican drug cartels will

solidify their positions with U.S. gangs who sell the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine on the streets of more than a thousand U.S. cities, says the report. The gangs proficiency will ensure that the drugs remain readily available in markets throughout the United States.
UNKNOWN AFFILIATION

CITIES REPORTING THE PRESENCE OF MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS SINCE 2008

Calgary Vancouver BRITISH COLUMBIA ALBERTA Regina Seattle Tacoma
WASHINGTON

TIJUANA CARTEL

JUAREZ CARTEL

GULF CARTEL

SASKATCHEWAN

ONTARIO Winnipeg MANITOBA Thunder Bay Sault Ste. Marie

NORTH DAKOTA MINNESOTA

QUEBEC Quebec City

MAINE

CANADA

Montreal Ottawa ONTARIO

Bangor

Portland Salem Eugene OREGON Boise

MONTANA

Bismark Billings Minneapolis

WISCONSIN

NEW YORK

Manchester Boston Providence New York City

Toronto Buffalo
MICHIGAN

Albany Hartford

IDAHO

Sarnia
PENNSYLVANIA

WYOMING

SOUTH DAKOTA

Milwaukee

Detroit

Pittsburgh Des Moines

IOWA

Atlantic City

Rock Springs
NEBRASKA NEVADA Reno

Chicago
ILLINOIS INDIANA

OHIO

Omaha Lincoln

Columbus
WEST VIRGINIA

Dover Baltimore Washington, D.C. Richmond

VIRGINIA

Sacramento

Salt Lake City

Springfield St.Louis Kansas City

MISSOURI

Indianapolis Louisville
KENTUCKY

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA San Francisco

CALIFORNIA UTAH

Denver
COLORADO KANSAS

Topeka

Raleigh NORTH CAROLINA

Porterville Las Vegas

ARIZONA

Nashville TENNESSEE Columbia

OKLAHOMA ARKANSAS

Memphis Atlanta
ALABAMA

SOUTH CAROLINA

Los Angeles San Diego Tijuana

San Bernardino Mexicali Phoenix

Albuquerque

Oklahoma City

Little Rock
MISSISSIPPI

GEORGIA

NEW MEXICO

Birmingham Fort Worth

LOUISIANA

Jackson

Jacksonville

*TIJUANA CARTEL BAJA

Tucson Juarez

Dallas El Paso
TEXAS

FLORIDA

New Orleans Houston

Tampa

MEXICAN DRUG ROUTES

HEROIN MARIJUANA COCAINE METHAMPHETAMINES ALL DRUGS SPREAD OF CARTEL INFLUENCE INTO U.S. BAJA SUR

SONORA

CHIHUAHUA Chihuahua *JUAREZ CARTEL COAHUILA

San Antonio

MEXICAN BORDER DRUG SEIZURES

METH
4,486 2,706 449

HEROIN
905

MARIJUANA
1,545,138 1,046,419

Miami BAHAMAS

Mazatlan Torreon DURANGO ZACATECAS MEXICO SAN LUIS POTOSI Guadalajara JALISCO Mexico City Manzanillo MICHOACAN *FEDERATION GUERRERO CARTEL Lazaro Cardenas Acapulco Leon NUEVO LEON Monterrey Matamoros

TAM AULI PAS

SINALOA *FEDERATION CARTEL Culiacan La Paz

CUBA
2006 2010 2006 2010 2006 2010

*GULF CARTEL

Mazatlan
TH AM PH ME ET E TH MIN AM ES PH ET EM INE S ME

Merida Tampico YUCATAN

Cancun

JAMAICA

Velacruz Tuxtla Gutirrez CHIAPAS

CAM

PEC

HE

Puerto Vallarta

*FEDERATION CARTEL

BELIZE

OAXACA

GUATEMALA

HONDURAS

CO CA

THE DRUGS AND WHERE THEY COME FROM

METHAMPHETAMINES Methamphetamines have become a sophisticated international business, which includes securing supplies from as far away as Asia, processing the methamphetamine in large, elaborate labs in Mexico, and transporting the drugs across the U.S. border via tunnels, commercial vehicles or human mules. Mexico is estimated to supply 70% of the methamphetamine consumed in the United States. MARIJUANA Mexican marijuana production is concentrated in nine states: Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango. Guerrero, Nayarit and Michoacan are the traditional production areas, but U.S. intelligence reports say large cartels have shifted their grow-ops to avoid increasing eradication efforts by the Mexican government and to get closer to the United States. The cartels also operate large, open-air grow-ops in the western U.S. and increasingly in more northerly states, such as Oregon and Washington. There are reports cartels are increasingly building connections to groups east of the Mississippi River. EL SALVADOR

INE

NICARAGUA

COC

AIN E

COSTA RICA
HER O
NOTE: Regions of Cartel control are fluid and are not as clearly defined as the ovals placed on the map suggest.

PANAMA
IN
CA INE

CO

COCAINE Cocaine is the most lucrative of illegal drugs. The United Nations estimates that sales of the drug net $88-billion a year on the street. Most shipments of cocaine involve numerous parts of the cartel federations. While the largest federations were once Colombian, now it appears they are Mexican. The UN estimates two-thirds of the cocaine that left the Andean region of South America for the United States in 2008 passed through the hands of Mexican cartels.

MONTHLY DEATH TOLL IN MEXICO

1400 1200 1000 800

CO CA INE
HEROIN Most Colombian heroin flows to the United States directly via commercial airlines primarily to New York and Miami. The Central America-Mexican corridor appears to serve as a secondary transit route for South American heroin. The drug is moved by cartels to northern Mexico for smuggling across the U.S.s southwest border in vehicles or on foot.

15

NO DATA

600 400 200 0 2007 2008 2009 2010

JOURNALISTS ASSASSINATED IN MEXICO

4 2 0 2012 1999 1 2 0 0

10 7 7 8 6 8

MAYORS ASSASSINATED IN MEXICO

5 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 2011 3 6

2011

2011

1999

CALIFORNIA

DEATH TOLLS IN MEXICOS DRUG WAR BY STATE 2006 TO (JULY 6) 2012 WOMEN KILLED
ARIZONA NEW MEXICO UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DECAPITATIONS
2012 MONTHLY
78 68

2012 MONTHLY
71 56 54 57

109

Baja California 1,787 Sonora 938 Chihuahua 9,851

TEXAS

Coahuila 1,421

54 40

47

44

47

Jan.

Feb. March April

May June

Jan.

Feb. March April

May June

Nuevo Len 3,505

POLICE KILLED
2012 MONTHLY
152

TORTURED BEFORE DEATH

2012 MONTHLY
136 150 114 96 147 129

TEXAS

Baja California Sur 25 Sinaloa 6,210 Zacatecas 335

28

44 24

44

43

Jan.

Feb. March April

May June

Jan.

Feb. March April

May June

MONTHLY MEXICAN DRUG DEATH TOLL BY REGION

800 700 600 500 400 300

Durango 3,168
MEXICO

Tamaulipas 2,020

Campeche 17 Tabasco 214 Queretaro 66 Tlaxcala 19

NON-BORDER REGIONS

Aguascalientes 157 Nayarit 482 Guanajuato 386 Jalisco 2,191 Edomex 2,029 Colima 294

San Luis Potosi 383 Hidalgo 213 Distrito Federal 1,079

Yucatan 21 Quintana Roo 205

BELIZE

BORDER REGIONS
200 100

NO DATA

Michoacn 2,126
GUATEMALA

Guerrero 4,362 2012 1-100 101-200

0 2007 2008

Morelos 627

Puebla Oaxaca 163 217

Veracruz 687

Chiapas 330

HONDURAS

2009

2010

2011

NUMBER OF ANNUAL DRUG-RELATED SLAYINGS IN MEXICO, BY STATE

2006 2007 2008

201-1,000

1,001-2,000

OVER 2,000

2009

2010

2011

2012 (as of July 6, 2012)

SOURCES: U.S. NATIONAL DRUG INTELLIGENCE CENTER REPORT 2011, THE U.S. NATIONAL SEIZURE SYSTEM, AND THE JUSTICE IN MEXICO PROJECT

JONATHAN RIVAIT AND RICHARD JOHNSON / NATIONAL POST