President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that both the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel ( CJNG ) and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel were created during the neoliberal period; that is, from Carlos Salinas de Gortari to Enrique Peña Nieto. In Politico MX we show you the chronology of the emergence of the most important and powerful criminal groups in the country by six-year term.
JUAREZ CARTEL
We started with the Juarez Cartel that was founded in the early seventies, just when Luis Echeverría came to the presidency of Mexico after Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. The criminal group was led by Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, Gilberto Ontiveros, “El Greñas”, and the Muñoz Talavera brothers, after their death and arrest, it was headed by Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, “Don Neto” , the uncle of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who would become “The Lord of the Skies” and one of the most wanted drug traffickers in Mexico and the US The drug lord allegedly died during plastic surgery at a hospital in Mexico City, on July 4, 1997. After his death, the cartel went into decline.
TIJUANA CARTEL
A decade later, in 1980 during the government of José López Portillo, another of the most important drug trafficking groups emerged in Mexico; It was the Tijuana Cartel, founded by the brothers Ramón and Benjamín Arellano Félix, who controlled the transfer of marijuana and cocaine in the border city of Baja California to enter the United States. The Arellano Félix Organization was considered one of the largest and most powerful of the nineties.
GUADALAJARA CARTEL
The criminal group, which in its time was considered one of the largest, most powerful and most influential, was the Guadalajara Cartel, founded by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as “El Jefe de Jefes”, Rafael Caro Quintero, “ The Prince ”and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo,“ Don Neto ”. This organization was created in the government of Luis Echeverría, and some sources even speak of its relationship with some spheres of the Federal Government, which would have facilitated its activity throughout the national territory.
The Guadalajara Cartel was a hegemonic group that initially controlled marijuana and opium trafficking, but later it would also include cocaine and heroin. Félix Gallardo was the great support for the growth of the Tijuana Cartel. After the capture of all the founders in 1989 by the murder of the DEA agent, Kiki Camarena, the cartel fragmented, giving rise to other organizations that in the 90s positioned themselves and wished a war in the country.
GULF CARTEL
But before the fractions, we have the Gulf Cartel, the oldest criminal organization in Mexico, which during its beginnings in the 1930s focused on the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco. But it was until the six-year term of Miguel de la Madrid, in 1984, with its leader José García Abrego, that the organized crime group began to rise since it ventured into the trafficking of marijuana and cocaine to the United States in coordination with the Cartel of Cali, an adversary of the Colombian drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar. Since then, the Gulf Cartel has positioned itself as one of the most important and most violent in the country. In the subsequent six-year terms, he maintained a war with the other criminal organizations that to date continue to fight for control of the territory.
SINALOA CARTEL
After the incarceration of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the Guadalajara Cartel was divided to allegedly maintain control of drug trafficking in Mexico, especially in cities bordering the United States. In 1989, Félix Gallardo sent Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán and his partner, Héctor Luis “el Güero” Palma Salazar, to Sinaloa, and from that moment on, one of the most influential cartels was formed not only in the country, but in the world. The Sinaloa Cartel had an exponential growth during the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, when El Chapo was arrested and imprisoned for the first time, to position himself even more with Vicente Fox in 2000, he escaped for the first time from prison within a vehicle with dirty clothes, and with Felipe Calderón in 2006, the year in which the famous war against drugs began, an alliance began with the Beltrán Leyva brothers, who supposedly had strong ties with the Federal Government.
With Enrique Peña Nieto, the third and last apprehension of Chapo took place, since he was extradited and imprisoned in a prison in the United States; however, the cartel has not lost power or presence.
THE ZETAS
Later, in 1997, 31 members of an elite group of the Army, the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFES), deserted and began working as hitmen, bodyguards and transporters in 1999 for the Gulf Cartel and its boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, right in the final stretch of the administration of Ernesto Zedillo and a year before the entry into the Presidency of Vicente Fox, six-year term in which this criminal group began to increase its illegal activities. The original leader of the armed group, Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán Decenas, alias “Z1”, died in 2002. After the capture and extradition of Cárdenas Guillén, in 2003; The Zetas seized the opportunity to become independent and under the leadership of Heriberto Lazcano, “El Lazca” or “Z3”, they established their own independent human trafficking and arms and drug trafficking networks. Their illicit activities extended until the Calderón government when a new group called “Los Mata Zetas” emerged.
CJNG
Just with this organization, allegedly created to end Los Zetas, who were in charge of carrying out kidnappings, extortion and other crimes in some states of the country, it began in 2009, during the administration of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the president who declared war on him. to the drug cartels; even in 2010, this group decided to be another of the armed arms of the Sinaloa Cartel. But it was not until the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, that the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) officially emerged, headed by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho”, and which ended up separating from the Pacific Cartel to become an independent cartel.
The power and presence of the CJNG began to rise, to such a degree that the territories were disputed with the El Chapo cartel, sowing terror and violence due to the number of executions between the two criminal organizations. Currently, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mencho criminal group is present in 25 states of the Republic; as well as in 25 cities in the United States, others in Latin America and Europe; even in China.
LA FAMILIA MICHOACANA
Before the CJNG, the criminal organization called La Familia Michoacana was formed, led by Nazario Moreno González, “El Chayo” or “El Más Loco”, who was in charge of drug and arms trafficking activities in the Tierra Caliente area. . This organization was created in the government of Fox Quesada as a self-defense group that sought to remove Los Zetas from the entity, a fact that it achieved, but later it became a local cartel that would later grow towards the State of Mexico and Mexico City. . In 2010, during the Calderón administration, it was said that the cartel had been extinguished with the alleged dejection of its leader during a confrontation with the Armed Forces, but it was not true, since “El Chayo” was assassinated until 2014, with Peña Nieto and last year of fame for La Familia Michoacana.
SANTA ROSA DE LIMA CARTEL
Finally, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, originally from Guanajuato, was founded in 2014, during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto and the boom in fuel theft in the country. This organization was led by José Antonio Yépez Ortiz alias “El Marro”, who was captured in 2020, López Obrador’s second year. He was in charge of milking fuel in the municipalities of the entity, as well as in neighboring parts of the state with Querétaro and Michoacán Other activities carried out are extortion of small and medium-sized businesses in cities such as Celaya, Irapuato, and Salamanca.
Source: politico.mx
