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Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Violence
Mexico’s Antidrug Strategy and Reaction 163
President Calderón’s military-led crackdown on the drug trafficking organizations was at the
center of his domestic policy, having launched his aggressive approach almost immediately after
coming to office in December 2006. In the course of his campaign, he deployed 50,000 Mexican
military forces—at its height in 2011 reportedly 96,000 troops were engaged—and thousands of
federal police around the country to combat the DTOs. 164 A leading element of the strategy was to
confront and dismantle the drug trafficking organizations by going after the high-value targets:
the leadership of the major DTOs.
The DTOs fought back vigorously, refusing to allow law enforcement actions to take place and
making an all-out effort to neutralize repressive measures. The DTOs also demonstrated an
unanticipated resilience as their leadership was arrested or killed. Mexico’s former Secretary of
Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna, and others acknowledged that removing the high-value
targets or kingpins at the top of the organizations did not succeed in paralyzing the DTOs because
in most cases the organizations simply transferred power to new and sometimes more violent
leaders. 165
An additional complexity was that the drug organizations were adapting and transforming
themselves from hierarchical and vertical organizations to become more multi-nodal and
horizontal in their structure. Some of the DTOs adopted a more decentralized and networked
model with independent cell-like structures that made it harder for law enforcement to
dismantle. 166 As the Mexican military shifted resources to pursue leaders of the DTOs, the
military appeared to have fewer resources to devote to older missions such as eradication efforts.
This may have contributed to increases in the cultivation of opium and marijuana, and production
of heroin and methamphetamine, which, unfortunately, increased the income for the DTOs.
163 For a fuller discussion of the Calderón government’s strategy see CRS Report RL32724, Mexico and the 112th
Congress, by Clare Ribando Seelke. The report identifies a broad-based strategy that included (1) carrying out joint
police-military operations to support local authorities and citizens; (2) increasing the operational and technical
capacities of the state; (3) initiating legal and institutional reforms; (4) strengthening crime prevention and social
programs; and (5) strengthening international cooperation (such as the Mérida Initiative and Beyond Mérida).
164 Ken Ellingwood, “An Agony of Its Own; Some See a Colombian Parallel to Mexico’s Drug Violence. But as the
U.S. Considers Its Options, It’s the Differences that Will Count,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2010; Randal C.
Archibold, “Adding to Unease of a Drug War Alliance,” New York Times, May 30, 2012; Claire O’Neill McCleskey,
“Mexican Generals Charged with Drug Trafficking,” In Sight Crime: Organized Crime in the Americas, August 1,
2012. The last article notes that the 50,000 troops deployed by President Calderón since 2006 were sent to 14 of
Mexico’s 32 states. See also, International Crisis Group, Peña Nieto’s Challenge: Criminal Cartels and Rule of Law in
Mexico. In this 2013 report, the authors state that in 2011 96,000 Mexican troops were engaged, roughly 40% of all
active personnel.
165 One former drug operative in Mexico described the dilemma in an interview. “Trying to stop the gangsters ‘is like
mowing the grass….You can cut it down. But it always grows back.’” See “Under the Volcano,” Economist, October
16, 2010. See also Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Long War of Genaro Garcia Luna,” New York Times, July 13, 2008.
166 The evolution is described by Luis Astorga and David Shirk as a move from centralized, hierarchical structures to
“an increasingly multi-polar constellation of trafficking organizations with varying specializations and capacities in the
late 1990s and 2000s.” Luis Astorga and David A. Shirk, Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies
in the U.S.-Mexican Context, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Mexico Institute, Working Paper
Series on U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation, May 2010, p. 25. See also Juan Carlos Garzón, Mafia & Co.: The
Criminal Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, June 2008.
This evolution in the structure of criminal groups to new models is also described in CRS Report R41547, Organized
Crime: An Evolving Challenge for U.S. Law Enforcement, by Jerome P. Bjelopera and Kristin M. Finklea.
Congressional Research Service 33