History of Organized Crime in Mexico Research Paper

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Due to Mexico’s 1,969-mile-long shared border with the United States, transnational organized crime networks have long existed. Moreover, Mexican organized crime has long been tied to its modern political system. In fact, the Mexico’s modern political system emerged alongside the rise of organized crime. This research paper examines the century-long organized crime from the period of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921) to the present.

Guns And Drugs: The Mexican Revolution

Organized crime in Mexico is as diverse as in the United States because of Mexico’s proximity to the United States and due to the flows of people from other parts of the world to Mexico during the nineteenth and twentieth century. In Mexico, Chinese organized crime has played a role since the 1800s. With the passage of the US Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese migrants sought to gain entry into Mexico in order to pass through its unpatrolled border. Chinese tongs operated in Mexico beginning in the 1800s. Even prior to 1882, the Mexican government approached the Chee Kung Tong in San Francisco to recruit and acculturate Chinese workers to work in the “hot lands” of northern Mexico. With the passage of the US Chinese Exclusion Act, tongs based in San Francisco operated a human smuggling network that moved people from China to the United States, Mexico, and Cuba due in part to a continued presence of Chinese in Mexico.

Mexico’s organized crime emerged before the Mexican Revolution and at times with the consent of the Mexican government. During the Revolution, military figures saw forms of crime as a means to accumulate wealth and materials to supply their armies but also as a means to create political power structures that endured after the fighting had ceased.

Even prior to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921), antidrug crusaders recognized the logistical importance of Mexico to the international drug trade. Beginning in 1908, Canadian and US officials criticized Mexican port security that allowed an array of commodities to enter the country to be transshipped north to the United States. Significantly too, Mexican revolutionary figures had tapped into illicit flows of firearms that moved guns from north to south. Pancho Villa was one such smuggler who emerged as a northern cacique (boss). After his 1916 raid of Columbus New Mexico, Villa became a criminal in the United States, but in retrospect his criminal activities were far milder than some of his contemporaries. Villa was a and bandit, but he was also one of the most successive military generals of the Mexican Revolution.

Other revolutionary leaders, such as Colonel Esteban Cantu´ , sought profits through racketeering. Cantu´ extorted poppy growers and opium producers in the state of Baja California and subsequently went into the business himself. Another military leader, General Abelardo L. Rodr´ıguez, displaced Cantu´ and took control of the border state just as Prohibition began in the United States. Rodr´ıguez made a fortune in the vice boom that emerged to serve the thirsty and bored Americans who came south looking for drink and distraction. In the 1920s, the jefe maximo President Plutarco El´ıas Calls, from the state of Sonora, placated US demands regarding the control of narcotics, while his son-in-law was intimately involved in drug trafficking. Calles waged a battle against Catholicism as well as against Chinese. In both cases, these battles were for power. To Calles, from the state of Sonora, the church undermined modernization and national control. Sonoroan Chinese undermined Mexican-owned development. The Anti-Chinese movement of the 1920s portrayed Chinese Mexicans as drug-addicted traffickers. While Calles officially left the government in 1928, he controlled it until 1935. Rodr´ıguez led the state of Baja California until 1929 until he became a cabinet minister in the administration of Pascual Ortiz Rubio until he abruptly became president of Mexico in 1932.

In other Mexican states, the profitability of narcotics allowed for the consolidation of power into political dynasties, and the generals who emerged as political bosses and governors continued to be involved in organized crime such as prostitution as well as the narcotics industry. In Chihuahua, for example, General Rodrigo M. Quevedo created a political dynasty that held power for decades. Quevedo was part of a group of cacique governors who engaged in political power plays supported by illicit activities such as drugs, smuggling alcohol, prostitution, or extortion. President Manuel A´ vila Camacho (1940–1946) worked closely with the United States in poppy crop eradication in states such as Sinaloa, Durango, Jalisco, and Baja California. During WWII, he arrested drug traffickers due to the pressure of the United States and jailed them without due process. All this took place while his brother Maximino was one of the cacique governors of the state of Puebla who also dabbled in the drug trade.

During prohibition, Mexicans in various positions of power recognized the opportunity to make money by supplying alcohol to the north. Mexicans on the US border resented Anglo laws that interfered with their of use of and profits from alcohol consumption and some went into the moonshine business in cities such as San Diego, Albuquerque, and Houston. Others smuggled alcohol along the US-Mexico border. In Texas, tequila smugglers gained a romantic foothold – they are remembered in song and popular culture on the border. The tequileros brought tequila from the agave producing areas of central Mexico, while Tejanos (Texans of Mexican heritage) served as guides in Texas. The tequileros sold to bootleggers who distributed the tequila to cities throughout the USA – the profits were enormous for the time.

For the political elites in Mexico, prohibition in the USA combined with the vice districts in Mexico created great profits. Bars, cantinas, and hotels as well as sex shows and prostitution became features of Mexican border towns. The governors of border states offered thirsty Americans a place to drink and indulge corporal pleasures. Profits lined the pockets of governors, narcotics agents, and police. Citizen groups routinely complained about the vice districts, but they were complaining to the very people who had the most interest in those industries.

The First War On Drugs

With the end of prohibition, it appeared that Mexican organized crime might suffer irreparable harm. But the routes created to supply bootleggers were converted to offer greater supplies of other commodities in demand: marijuana, morphine, and heroin. During the 1930s, struggles ensued between native Mexican drug traffickers and Chinese organized crime syndicates for control of the lucrative trade. Chinese Tongs also bribed the police to target other tong competitors for deportation. Chinese involvement in drug trafficking provided the Mexican government with a scapegoat for the country’s role in the international narcotics trade. This led to raids of Chinese businesses and deportations. Nevertheless, the drug industry flourished and then grew exponentially into the 1940s.

In the 1930s, Jewish organized crime groups operated in Mexico – Mexico City had a Jewish immigrant community that dated from colonial times. Mexican Jewish groups transshipped Asian and European drugs through Mexico. Frequently, Jewish criminals repackaged foreign morphine and heroin supplies in Mexico. This counterfeit medicinal morphine or heroin was then smuggled across the US-Mexico border. The Mexican branches of Jewish organized crime supplied their distributors in cities throughout the USA. As in the USA, Mexican Jewish organized crime demonstrated cross-class and cross-ethnic alliances.

In striking contrast to the USA, women emerged as recognized bosses in cities such as Mexico City and Ciudad Jua´rez. Mar´ıa Dolores Estevez Zuleta, known as “Lola la Chata,” became a subject for American beat writer William Burroughs. And she had her husband Enrique Jaramillo, an ex-police officer, built a successful transnational trafficking organization that had labs and distribution sites in three Mexican states. Ignacia Jasso, la viuda de Gonza´lez, who some scholars argue created the first cartel, lived and worked in the border town of Ciudad Jua´rez but had fields of poppy and processing labs in multiple Mexican states. Her location on the border gave her direct access to the US market across the R´ıo Grande.

The drug trade from Asia and Europe was disrupted by World War II, creating greater opportunity for Mexican traffickers whose heroin was found beyond its traditional domains of the US Southwest. Mexican narcotics in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, and New York revealed alliances between Mexican and US organized crime.

Post-WWII

During the 1940s, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN, predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), routinely requested names and information about narcotics traffickers and dealers operating in Mexico. Officials pressured the Mexican government to arrest traffickers and at times demanded their extradition. In 1947, the Mexican government established the Direccion Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate; DFS) in part as a response to growing US pressure. Organized similar to the FBI, the DFS was responsible for dealing with political insurgents as well as criminals. For much of its almost 40 years of existence, the agency developed a reputation for security failures and egregious human rights violations. Though the DFS was to fight organized crime, throughout the 1940s and 1950, Mexican organized crime families flourished. In Tijuana, for example, “Big Mike” Barragan and his wife Ismelda Galindo controlled heroin flows into San Digeo and supplied dealers as far away as Houston. They controlled bordellos, the dog racing track, and a taxi business. In 1955, Mexican traffickers such as Jasso and the Barragans became the subject of US senate hearings.

Emerging New Players

The 1960s and increased drug use led to greater wealth and new players entered the business. While many drug traffickers had enriched themselves, the 1960s and early 1970s marked a change in the levels of wealth, corruption, and transnational ties. Drugs continued to flow, and the ties between policing agents, government officials, and organized crime increased. Top commanders of the DFS were found to have become involved with the criminal drug organizations offering protection and information.

In the 1970s, it was apparent that the drug rings were becoming highly sophisticated. Cuban national Alberto Sicilia Falco´ n, a successful marijuana and cocaine trafficker, built a highly sophisticated organization that moved in elite circles and across borders. The US senate investigation into Silicia Falco´ n’s organization revealed information regarding the US arms traffic to Mexico. He had become so wealthy that he had attempted to gain the rights to manufacture certain US firearms in Mexico in clear violation of the country’s laws. The only reason that deal fell through was that Silicia Falco´ n was arrested. The senate hearings demonstrated that Falco´ n’s wealth gave him access to business people on both sides of the border.

Investigations into the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was stationed at the Guadalajara regional office, implicated a major trafficker, Miguel Angel Fe´lix Gallardo and his lieutenant Rafael Caro Quintero. Evidence suggested that Caro Quintero had planned Camarena’s murder. When he was arrested, Caro Quintero possessed a DFS identification card.

Transnational Organized Crime

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mexican organized crime diversified: In addition to heroin, cartels controlled marijuana, methamphetamines, and cocaine, and some branched into the human trafficking working with Salvadoran gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha or MS 13. In the 1990s, further evidence of ties between narcotraficantes and the political elite emerged. During his presidency, Carlos Salinas’ family members were indicted on drug trafficking charges. In the mid-1990s, governors of the states of Morelos, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipas were acknowledged to be involved in drug trafficking. Jesu´ s Gutie´rrez Rebollo, director of the National Institute to Combat Drugs, was arrested on corruption charges. He protected Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the “Lord of the Skies” and his Jua´rez cartel while pursuing their competitors, the Tijuana (Arellano Fe´lix) cartel. Rebollo was sentenced to a prison sentence of 40 years.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations control most of the US drug market and have established varied transportation routes, advanced communications capabilities, and strong affiliations with gangs in the United States, overseeing drug distribution in US cities.

In 2007, President Felipe Caldero´ n declared a war on drugs with the military playing a key role. He extradited Mexican drug kingpins to the United States and purged police departments of corrupt officers or disarmed them leaving little protection for citizens. The Mexican government’s military response has resulted in fierce gun battles with cartel gunmen who have refused to surrender and have ambushed soldiers and police officers.

The Caldero´ n and G.W. Bush administrations signed the Merida Initiative, a partnership between the two countries to fight organized crime by offering equipment and training to Mexican law enforcement. In 2008, Mexico received 400 million to combat the cartels. With Calderon’s war on drugs and the Merida Initiative, the drug violence continued to escalate growing more brutal and violent with public displays of decapitated bodies, brazen recruitment efforts by cartels, and strategic killings of journalists, nongovernmental activists, and politicians. The 2012 election of Enrique Pen˜ a Nieto confounded US observers when the candidate routinely sidestepped direct questions regarding how he would handle Mexico’s most vexing problems: drugs and organized crime.

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