1. Viva la Violencia: A Research Study on
Increasing Organized Crime-related Violence in
Mexico
Audrey Moore
Munck
IR 466
May 1, 2015

2. 1
It is the early 1990s. Journalists, police, and high-profile public leaders are trapped
between serving their civic duty to society and salvaging their own lives as the Cali and Medellín
drug cartels terrorize Colombia. Citizens live in constant fear, unsure of whether to rely on the
most powerful organized crime groups the world has yet seen for protection, or the legitimate
and democratic government these cartels increasingly infiltrate and undermine.
Today, the hardline policies and combined Colombia-U.S. efforts have since shut down
the two cartels and turned these scenes into faded recollections of a more dangerous time. As a
prime example, Medellín has reduced its homicide rate by over eighty percent since 1991 when it
was still under the control of kingpin Pablo Escobar (Brodzinsky).
Yet the plata o plomo mindset continues to plague public officials and security forces
elsewhere in Latin America; amidst Colombia’s slow-growing emergence as a safer state comes
now the downfall of a northern neighbor undergoing similar conditions. Nearly 3,000 miles
away, Mexico is caught in the middle of the same serious security threat. As prominent drug
cartels battle for control over prime trafficking routes and border crossings into the U.S., the
country has tried to mimic Colombia’s successful mano dura policies to settle its own security
dilemmas and reestablish order across the state. Public approval for such actions kept former
Presidents like Felipe Calderón popular, as citizens grew fearful over the bloodshed in their
country and anxious for any action or response to quickly fix the problem.
The plight in Mexico poses two critical questions, however. Firstly, are these policies
addressing the correct issues? Given the widespread epidemic of the organized crime-related
violence facing Mexico, it would appear that the root causes for such violence must be
reevaluated in order to understand how these security threats have escalated to their current state
today. And despite the popularity of such measures, have they been truly effective? An

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exasperated public may plead for action, but a Band-Aid solution can only do so much for a
gushing, bloody wound.
After thoroughly researching the issue by carefully reading numerous articles from
prominent scholars and media sources, I hope to shed light on answers to the above questions by
first exploring the primary three root causes to the drug-related disorder.
For the first of these, I evaluate how both past and present ties to the Colombian drug-
trade have dramatically increased the presence of drugs in Mexico, as trafficking routes and
production factories increasingly arose within the country. Then, I go on to discuss how
government policies and operations themselves have inadvertently caused increased competition
amongst the cartels, leading to greater fighting and security concerns. Finally, I discuss a
number of dilemmas within the social structure of Mexican society, creating obstacles for many
citizens of the lower-classes that are more easily surmounted by joining organized crime and the
drug-trafficking trade.
Once the foundational issues arising to the organized crime-related violence in Mexico
have been conferred, I then go on to explain why the Mexican government’s current policies
have been so unsuccessful in deterring the violence. This is largely accomplished by presenting
empirical evidence that demonstrates how, in many ways, the violence has not subsided, but
actually increased instead due to the legislative measures Mexico has implemented (such as
cracking down on the cartels with military force). Issues regarding impunity and a lack of
organization has also hindered the effectiveness of Mexico’s hardline response, I go on to argue.
Finally, I touch on whether the approach of Peña Nieto’s administration has been any more
effective than that of his predecessors, noting the progress made by the country in capturing
many prominent cartel kingpins.

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Seeking Out the Source: Causes for the Current Mexican Violence
If there is one thing for certain when it comes to Mexico’s response, it is that the root issues of
the violence are not being adequately evaluated, and as a result Mexican policy confronting the
drug-trafficking security dilemma has remained largely unsuccessful. With a greater
understanding of three key factors leading up to the current violence, Mexico will be able to
better survey the prevailing situation and brainstorm more effective solutions to tackling the
violence caused by organized crime.
Colombian Impact
While Mexico had been already been smuggling a variety of black market goods into the U.S.
from the beginning of the twentieth century (namely marijuana, heroin, and alcohol during
Prohibition (O’Neil 66)), organized crime in Mexico truly gained momentum when Colombia hit
its peak period for producing and distributing cocaine to the U.S. Although Colombian cartels
had used a variety of transportation methods to smuggle the drug across borders, the major
means of getting it into the country involved distribution through the Bahamas or landing
modified propeller planes in Florida via direct flights from Colombia itself (Bonner 36). After
the U.S. legislature passed get-tough policies in the mid-1980s to limit cocaine imports through
these two locations, however, Colombian cartels were forced to shift their trafficking routes to
land passages through Mexico. To acquire the necessary Mexican support, the drug lords offered
willing Mexican citizens $1,000 for every kilogram of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. (Bonner
36).

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Drug presence in Mexico skyrocketed, and brought with it the seedlings of the current
violence present in Mexico today. Whereas in 1991 only fifty percent of cocaine destined for the
U.S. passed through Mexico, by 2004 that same number had jumped to an astonishing ninety
percent (O’Neil 66).
The benefits of
border sharing and
lucrativeness of the
trade undoubtedly
appealed to many
Mexican citizens
looking for quick and easy (albeit risky) money. This increase in cocaine coyotes, as it were, soon
led to a substantial amount of traffickers available, all competing to close a deal with the
Colombian drug lords. After all, a typical cocaine drop into Mexico from Colombia during the
late 1980s and early 1990s contained 600 to 800 kilos of cocaine (Bonner 37), amounting anywhere
from $600,000 to $800,000 in gross profits. With such high stakes at hand, the competition became
cutthroat – literally. As Miron and Zweibel point out, “Because participants in the illegal drug
trade cannot use the legal and judicial system, the marginal benefits to using violence to resolve
disputes increases” (177).
Another reason for the increased drug presence and violent cartel competition dealt with
Mexico’s growing role as a cocaine supplier, as opposed to simply transporting the drug. Given
its immense success in trafficking, Colombian drug lords started to pay Mexican trafficking
organizations not in cash, but in powder cocaine. This paved the way for Mexico to
revolutionize itself into a major cocaine distributor as well as trafficker, allowing it to eventually

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eclipse Colombian prominence in the region (Bonner 37). In order to compete and maintain their
new role as distributors, drug-trafficking organizations needed to revamp their organizational
structure into something more refined. As a result, the door was opened to the highly
sophisticated, vertically organized drug cartel, capable of mass violence as seen today.
The Price of Politics
Just as government policies indirectly affected Mexico’s exposure to drug-trafficking and cartels,
they also directly affected organized crime-related violence through a variety of legislative
measures and government operations.
Crossing over
Specifically, tougher U.S. anti-drug policies not only made land passages through Mexico
more lucrative, but border crossings more valuable – and violent – as well. With both the U.S.
and Mexico clamping down on air drop locations in Florida and the Bahamas in the mid-1980s,
as well as border crossing zones in the 1990s and early 2000s, drug smuggling across the border
became a much more difficult, risky task. With greater risk comes greater value to the prime
border crossing zones, as the stakes for smuggling are raised. This had led to mass bloodshed as
cartels fight to intimidate citizens, security forces, and each other in order to gain control of
major border cities. Take for example the massacres at: Tijuana, coveted by both the Sinaloa and
Tijuana cartels; Ciudad Juárez and the ongoing battle between the Sinaloa, Tijuana, and Juárez
cartels which resulted in a homicide rate of 143 per 100,000 in 2009; as well as Nuevo Laredo,
sought after by the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels and resulting in 180 dead shortly after the conflict
began in 2005 (O’Neil 68-69).

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Democracy-driven violence
The grave amounts of deaths that have occurred in places like Ciudad Juárez are not solely tied
to tough U.S. border control policies, however.
Under the long single-party rule of the PRI, government officials had taken advantage of
the dangerous – but profitable – opportunities impunity provided them, hindering any real
effective judicial reaction from the government in regards to the drug cartels. In 1985, a head
government official, or comandante, could be paid off by a cartel in return for leniency for a
hefty sum of several million dollars each (Bronner 38). Once enough officials had been bought
off, the cartels were generally left to do as they pleased, facing no real governmental threats. As
a result, while inter-cartel violence might have still taken place, violent attacks between
government security forces and drug cartel members generally declined.
All of this changed in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, however. While the
election of a PAN member to the presidency was considered a great feat in the realm of
democracy for Mexico, it signaled a struggle to come for control over organized crime. Shannon
O’Neil, a Latin American specialist and Senior Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations,
attributes increased violence to the fact that the cartels could now act completely autonomously
of the government, breaking ties and dependencies from the previous federal government under
the PRI and establishing impunity at the local levels instead (65). However, given the new
federal officials’ fervent ideological platform on shutting down the cartels their opposition had
so dishonorably supported, it is highly likely the cartels would attempt to gain their support as
well, and that renewed conflict arose between the cartels and those officials who preferred plomo
instead. Examples of this can be found in Ciudad Juárez, where mass conflict and violence arose

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during a time when the city was governed by a PAN official even after Chihuahua was again
under the control of the PRI. The election of the PAN into executive office also caused a great
deal of political gridlock, halting any efforts made to quell the angst and surge in violence caused
by the cartels (O’Neil 65). Thus, while the election of a new political party to office provided
hope for a more open, transparent, and tough democratic government in the face of the drug
cartels, the surge in attacks and organized crime-related violence that ensued sent a different
message instead.
Stagnance on the Socio-economic Ladder
Although the Mexican government has been highly responsive to the direct causes of organized
crime-related violence – namely, the drug cartels themselves – it has done little in the ways of
rectifying the indirect, and perhaps more pertinent structural issues that have led to increased
participation in organized crime and thus organized crime-related violence.
Namely, poverty and a lack of opportunities have played an important role in increasing
drug cartel membership and violence. As mentioned in the UNDP Regional Development
Report 2013-14, “The crisis of confidence that both the Latin American police forces and the
justice systems are facing has
led citizens to search for
alternative methods for
procuring security” (10). The
report goes on to mention how
this security vacuum most
greatly impacts Latin America’s
poor. This makes sense, in that

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the poor are often marginalized in Latin American society and thus receive little governmental
support, or in this case, protection. As result, many impoverished communities have established
their own anti-organized crime vigilante groups, which in turn only increase the bloodshed
between everyday Mexican citizens and the members of drug cartels (Munck).
A second factor that has greatly limited the opportunities for upward mobility for many
Mexicans in the lower socio-economic classes is a lack of education. It is common amongst
impoverished families in Mexico to utilize all family members as breadwinners as soon as they
are able in order to support family survival. This is particularly common amongst agrarian
workers, whose job requires little educational training and a lot of manual labor time. However,
in a cruel catch-22, as young family members are pulled out of school to help earn a living for
the family, they are denied the opportunity to gain new knowledge and skills that could
ultimately advance them into a higher socio-economic status (with the ability to work higher-
paying, skilled jobs). With little opportunities to advance socially via legal means and immense
temptation of the profitability of the drug-trafficking business, many uneducated Mexican
citizens turn to the industry in order to make a living and climb the ranks of the social ladder.
The UNDP Regional Development Report for 2013-14 also supports this, noting that 85.9
percent of incarcerated Mexican citizens had completed less than twelve years of schooling and
51.1 percent of inmates had completed less than nine years of schooling (9). Faced with a lack
of opportunities to turn elsewhere and a hands-off approach by their government, the poor
working-class citizens often find themselves involved with a cartel simply in order to survive.
Ironically, the organizations that so drastically have threatened the people’s physical integrity
and right to life have become their economic and social saviors.

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The Ends Justify the Means?
Up until the election of Enrique Peña Nieto as President in 2012, Mexican leaders have done
little in the way of proactively addressing the problem of drug-related violence and have instead
focused on hardline reactive policies. While this may have worked for a variety of reasons in
Colombia, it has failed in the case of Mexico. The UNDP Regional Development Report for
2013-14 notes that Latin America was the only region of the world where lethal violence increased
between 2000 and 2010 (1), and Mexico was
no exception. Between 2005 and 2010, the
Report shows, the homicide rate in Mexico
more than doubled, shooting from less than 10
homicides per 100,000 inhabitants to nearly
25, and the greatest perceived threat to
Mexican citizens in 2012 was organized crime
(2). While tough-on-drugs politicians assure
their constituents that this dilemma must
unfortunately get worse first in order to get better, many Mexican nationals are left wondering
whether this “worse” period is truly worth the promised solution that has still yet to arrive.
Hardline Causing Hard Times
Contrasting Colombia
If hardline policies worked so well in Colombia in the 1990s, why then have they failed to
adequately secure stability for Mexican nationals throughout the 2000s?

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To begin, the Mexican government has lacked a clear, unified goal and organizational
strategy in eliminating the drug cartels. Instead, it has taken an apparent blanket approach to
confronting organized crime: destroy it, wherever, and whenever. Former Administrator of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (1990 to 1993) Robert C. Bonner argues six key points
related to this issue, focusing on a lack of organization, strategy, and strength on part of the
Mexican government. In Colombia, he notes, there was a clear goal centered around destroying
the drug cartels (rather than an expansive policy on drug-trafficking prevention), a one-at-a-time
strategy that focused on eliminating cartel kingpins, and a strong governmental response that
incorporated support from multiple levels of security forces (both local forces as well as the
military) along with international military and intelligence support (namely from the U.S.) (42-
4). Mexico has failed to accomplish most of these; especially pertinent in its case is the strategy
of handling one cartel at a time.
Unlike Colombia,
Mexico is plagued by a large
number of cartels, which when
combined, encompass nearly
the entire country under their
control. Any attempts to
dissolve all of the cartels
simultaneously would be –
and have proven – futile.
Instead of weakening the drug-trafficking organizations, this strategy has instead resulted in an
effect akin to poking an angry bear with a very short stick. Under Felipe Calderón’s mano dura

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policies, Mexico faced over 10,000 drug-related homicides between the time of his inauguration
in 2006 to 2009, with 6,000 of those occurring in 2008 alone (O’Neil 63). At the same time, it is
uncertain that taking the one-at-a-time approach would be much more effective, as the vast
amount of cartels existing in Mexico make it probable that with the fall of one, the others will
simply fight amongst each other for control of the former cartel’s territory.
However, in contrast to Bonner’s argument, there exists little support in Mexico’s case to
focus on capturing kingpins to halt the violence. While kingpins may be the experienced ring-
leaders that Bonner portrays, to think that they have not thoroughly trained a second- or third-in-
command to manage cartel operations in their absence or in the case of their arrest is a rather
short-sited approach. Arresting kingpins has actually been attributed to increasing organized
crime-related violence, since the newer second and third generations of leaders then engage in
bloody power struggles to fill the void left by their former leaders (O’Neil 67-8).
Corruption and the loss of legitimate power
Furthering this counterargument is the inherent issue of impunity within the Mexican justice
system. Unless extradited to the U.S.,
Mexican drug lords and cartel leaders
are often still able to regulate their
respective businesses and call for
violent attacks against other cartels,
security forces, or citizens when
necessary. Corruption has in fact
become so entrenched in Mexican
government that 57.6 percent of

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incarcerated inmates say they received a weapon from a friend or from the police themselves
within just six months prior to their arrest, according to the UNDP Regional Development
Report for 2013-14 (2). The lack of data beyond those six months puts into question how many
more inmates with older weapons received those weapons from governmental security forces.
This, along with the violence the security forces themselves have perpetrated across the state, has
led to a lack of perceived legitimate power of the government by its people. Not only has the
government indirectly perpetrated some of these homicides by protecting the cartels through
corruption, but policies enacted by leaders such as Calderón have allowed the Mexican military
and government to engage in questionable acts resulting in human rights violations.
As the UNDP Regional Development Report for 2013-14 mentions, “Iron fist
policies…have…had a deep negative impact on democratic coexistence and respect for human
rights, which are at the heart of human development” (13). When the military, not as well-
trained to handle domestic affairs, carries out bloody acts of violence in the form of human rights
violations, it loses all sources of legitimacy with the citizens, causing them to take up arms and
do the same for the purpose of self-defense (this stems back into the causal issues of organized
crime-related violence mentioned earlier). Governments ought to lead by example. Mexico’s
example would appear to proclaim, “¡Viva la violencia!”
Changing Times?
With a new, more progressive PRI leader in the executive office, many Mexicans are hoping for
some signs of change and reduction in the widespread organized crime-related violence. Indeed,
Peña Nieto, while still in support of the U.S.-backed Plan Mérida, has called for more proactive
measures in dealing with the cartels in order to reduce the bloodshed of his citizens. Given the

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strong past connections between the PRI and drug cartels of the 1990s, however, many question
whether any change will be brought about at all on this issue.
To be sure, Peña Nieto has already budgeted $9 billion dollars to preventative programs
focusing on issues such as education and social justice in order to deter citizen recruitment and
participation in organized crime. Furthermore, after holding office for only six months, the
Mexican Interior Ministry reported that organized crime-related violence had fallen by 16.5
percent within the country (Seelke 7). However, these numbers may be challenged due to the
increase or same levels of violence in particular
regions of the country, such as Michoacán.
Ironically, it was also estimated that 6,000
organized crime-related deaths took place in the
same first six months of Peña Nieto’s term
(Seelke 15).
If anything, Peña Nieto’s administration
has found success in arresting multiple kingpins
from major drug cartels. Big names like Jesús Salas Aguayo of the Juárez Cartel and José Tiburcio
Hernández Fuentes of the Gulf Cartel include just two of the major kingpins captured by the
Mexican government this year (in fact, on the same day) (Malkin).
Thus, the overall success of Peña Nieto’s more progressive policies remains questionable,
with uncertain outcomes to be awaited in the future.
Conclusions
After reanalyzing its history and past ties with coca-producing countries like Colombia, it
becomes apparent that the student state has learned well from and even outdone its southern

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professor, developing vastly more drug cartels with a widespread reach that extends across the
entire country. Government approaches to tackle the issue have failed to quell the violence and
in some cases have even increased it, whether intentionally (as with the case of impunity) or not
(as with the case of democratic change in 2000). The hardline policies of Calderón left an
estimated 60,000 people dead in their wake (Seelke 15), some of which were the result of bloody
human rights violations perpetrated by the government itself, causing citizens to mistrust the
very forces that should be protecting them and leading to an increase in vigilante movements for
self-defense.
Amidst all this bloodshed, Peña Nieto’s new progressive platform shows some signs of
hope in addressing the structural and social issues that are often overlooked in causing much of
this mass violence; however, without similar backing of these projects by the U.S. and with
much of the militant strategies still in need of reform, Peña Nieto’s success in reducing organized
crime-related violence will be an uncertain variable and a challenging feat to accomplish.
One thing is for certain: if the past strategies Mexico has been employing remain
unchanged, it is highly likely that citizens will only continue to suffer from the anxiety and
insecurity that afflict them already, and the hard-fought democracy that Mexico finally fully
achieved in 2000 could once again be eroded away.

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Works Cited
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Affairs 89.4 (2010): 35-47. Web.
Brodzinsky, Sibylla. "From Murder Capital to Model City: Is Medellín's Miracle Show or
Substance?" The Guardian 17 Apr. 2014: n. pag. Print.
Malkin, Elisabeth. "Mexican Police Capture Leader of Juárez Cartel." New York Times. N.p., 19
Apr. 2015. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
Miron, Jeffrey A., and Jeffrey Zwiebel. "The Economic Case Against Drug Prohibition." The
Journal of Economic Perspectives 9.4 (1995): 175-92. Web.
Munck, Gerardo. "IR 466 - The Current Violence: Crime and Drugs." 13 Apr. 2015. Lecture.
O'Neil, Shannon. "The Real War in Mexico: How Democracy Can Defeat the Drug
Cartels." Foreign Affairs 88.4 (2009): 63-77. Web.
Seelke, Clare R. Mexico’s Peña Nieto Administration: Priorities and Key Issues in U.S.-Mexican
Relations. Rep. no. R42917. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2013.
Print.
UNDP, Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014. Citizen Security with a Human Face:
Evidence and Proposals for Latin America. Executive Summary. New York: UNDP,
2013. Print.