Stratfor Mexico Security Analyst Tristan Reed describes the new cartel map, which reflects the importance of regional-based organized crime groups in Mexico.
Video Transcript
Every year Mexican cartels expand their control over the global drug trade, yet organized crime becomes more divided with crime bosses quickly rising and falling. Adding to the confusion, the alliances and rivalries among the groups that impact security can shift overnight. Now, in 2015 there are dozens of individual Mexican crime groups, each with their own niche of organized crime activities.
We have therefore had to change the way we think and write about Mexican organized crime. This radical change is now apparent in our popular cartel map.
Despite the numerous different groups that exist in Mexico, we can attribute the behavior and overall evolution of virtually all of them to three geographic areas of the country: crime groups led from Tamaulipas state, Sinaloa state, and crime groups led from the Tierra Caliente region in Mexico’s southwest.
Mexico Cartel Map 2015
Video Transcript
Every year Mexican cartels expand their control over the global drug trade, yet organized crime becomes more divided with crime bosses quickly rising and falling. Adding to the confusion, the alliances and rivalries among the groups that impact security can shift overnight. Now, in 2015 there are dozens of individual Mexican crime groups, each with their own niche of organized crime activities.
We have therefore had to change the way we think and write about Mexican organized crime. This radical change is now apparent in our popular cartel map.
Despite the numerous different groups that exist in Mexico, we can attribute the behavior and overall evolution of virtually all of them to three geographic areas of the country: crime groups led from Tamaulipas state, Sinaloa state, and crime groups led from the Tierra Caliente region in Mexico’s southwest.
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