Crisis By Cartel
Mexico’s cartels are migrating into the capital, and many of the inhabitants are struggling to keep up.
Words Francisco Serrano
Illustration Shannon Lea
For a taxi driver, Francisco Preciado knows very few addresses and almost refuses my fare out of cordiality. “Some clients get irritated because I can’t find the streets, so I am always anxious,” he explains. When trying to get around the Distrito Federal, Mexico City’s centre, now home to about 9 million people, there is only so much you can learn in a week. That’s how long Mr. Preciado, at 66, has been driving a taxi.
Not long ago he tended to his convenience shop on the city’s outskirts, but the Familia Michoacana, one of the country’s most violent drug cartels, demanded a 10,000 peso (around $650) monthly payment, threatening to kill his family if he refused. He decided to close shop and move away with his wife and two daughters, closer to the city centre. “There was no way to keep my business running and pay the cartel.”
The cartel that harassed Mr. Preciado emerged out of the State of Michoacan, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Mixing a message of divine inspiration for justice with the trafficking of cocaine from South America, the group has a penchant for violent displays of force against its enemies, striving to act as a parallel state in areas under its control by enforcing security, resolving community disputes and collecting taxes. It is just one of many similar groups operating in Mexico today.
Cartels in the country came to prominence during the 1980s. With US law enforcement agencies pressuring traditional cocaine trafficking routes between Colombia and the US, Colombian traffickers started to use Mexican gangs as intermediaries, particularly the Guadalajara Cartel, which was already shipping marijuana and heroin north of the border. Collaboration with Colombian drug traffickers allowed the Mexican groups to prosper and eventually take control of specific areas throughout Mexico.
As a result, rival gangs emerged: the Sinaloa and the Tijuana cartels were created after the collapse of the Guadalajara Cartel. The Gulf Cartel, out of the state of Tamaulipas, ruled parts of east Mexico and even employed its own armed unit, the Zetas, made up of elite soldiers who were deserters from the Mexican army. The Zetas eventually split from the Gulf Cartel to form their own organisation and dispute control of Mexican drug routes.
“There was this idea that organised crime was something that happened in the regions, but there are signs that the drug cartels are becoming more present in the city.”
Besides cocaine, cartels also deal in home-grown heroin and marijuana, as well as methamphetamine. But their increasing use of extortion and kidnapping as additional sources of income is making their impact on local populations increasingly visible.
Headlines about Mexico’s ongoing internal conflict normally mention the northern cities of Tijuana and Juarez, or states like Jalisco where, in early May, a skirmish between the security forces and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel led to an army helicopter being shot down by men armed with an RPG. But now, albeit more discreetly, cartels are making their presence felt within the capital city and its surrounding areas. “There was this idea that organised crime was something that happened somewhere else in Mexico, in the regions. But there are rising signs that the drug cartels are becoming more present in the city,” says Lorena Becerra, a researcher at the Centre for Development Research (CIDAC), a think tank based in Mexico City.
For years, Becerra has been investigating the prevalence of criminality across Mexico. She believes that crimes such as homicide, extortion and kidnappings have become more common in and around the capital, pointing to the influence of cartels. Extortion is just one an example of an intensifying problem. “To control a certain area, demand payment from businesses, enforce punishment when needed and keep other cartels away — all this requires an organised structure.”
Despite reductions in violent crime statistics over the last decade, Mexico City can still be a dangerous place. During 2014 there were 8.4 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the capital, but this is still lower than crime rates in other areas of the country; in the state of Guerrero for instance, the murder rate reached 76.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012. Statistically, Mexico City is still safer than Chicago and Detroit in the USA. However, the nature of the criminality affecting Mexico’s megacity is evolving, and is now less to do with petty crime and related to the country’s drug problem.
Latin America is a region plagued by capital cities with high homicide rates. The Igarapé Institute estimates that 33% of the total 437,000 homicides that took place globally in 2012 happened in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although megacities can be more violent, size does not always mean higher homicide rates. The greater metropolitan area of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, with a population of over 15 million people, had a murder rate of 6.08 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013. Caracas, home to only 5.3 million people, was ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with a rate of 134 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013.
Publicly, Mexican authorities are reluctant to admit the presence of drug-related crime in the capital, and government statistics are sometimes contested as being too conservative. In late 2014, general prosecutor Rodolfo Ríos Gaza told reporters that members of organised crime gangs were at best vacationing in the capital, and certainly not operating.
“Mexican authorities are reluctant to admit the presence of drug-related crime in the capital, but this narrative has been repeatedly contradicted.”
But this narrative has been repeatedly contradicted. A handful of heavyweight cartel members were captured in and around the city in recent years. In 2012, a skirmish between security agents at the capital’s international airport left three police agents dead and exposed a cocaine trafficking ring using the airport to smuggle Peruvian drugs with the participation of Mexican Federal Agents. The following year, a group of 12 youngsters were kidnapped by cartel members from a bar in a central district of the city. Their bodies were reportedly found on a farm outside the city, months later.
Part of Mexico City’s problem is related to geography. The wider metropolitan area is almost completely surrounded by the State of Mexico, statistically one of the nation’s worst in terms of crime. Here newspaper reports regularly chronicle the murder of business owners unwilling to pay money to the cartels. A 2013 government study on crime perception estimated that 73.5% of crimes in the State of Mexico go unreported; higher than the national average of 69.1%.
The area is also bordered by the states of Guerrero, Morelos and Michoacán, which together accounted for 31% of the 11,881 homicides that took place in Mexico during the first nine months of 2014, as well as 43% of the 1,698 kidnappings reported in 2013. Researchers and security experts point to a spillover effect from these neighbours that is progressively engulfing the city.
The difficulty with tackling cartels lies mainly with their ability to regenerate. Once cartel leaders have been killed or arrested by police, gangs generally split, leading to violent disputes and more aggressive actions to conquer and maintain territory. “Government pressure has led the cartels to new areas,” says Becerra. “More than just a steep increase in criminality in and around the city, I think that some of the groups have become more violent as they move to control territory they didn’t control before.”
“Kidnapping and extortion have become profitable businesses to fall back on, with ransom payments sometimes as little as $300.”
Mexico City houses a significant part of the country’s economic activity, meaning ample opportunity for organised crime. Running extensive networks to control areas of the city and its outskirts, cartels have found ways to diversify their activities. Kidnapping and extortion have become profitable businesses to fall back on, with ransom payments sometimes as little as 5,000 pesos (around $300). The low amounts point to a change in the dynamics of kidnappings in the city, where ransoming of well-off individuals for large sums has typically made headlines. The willingness of cartels to accept lower financial rewards allows kidnapping rings to target a larger fraction of the population and at the same time reduce risk: poorer citizens lack the ability to pay for security mechanisms to protect themselves. Disputes for urban drug markets have also become more visible, with a rising number of narco-tienditas — drug retailing outlets disguised as simple convenience stores that sell directly to consumers — appearing in different neighbourhoods of the capital.
Now the expansion of cartels is having a direct impact on the city’s economy. A 2012 study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that municipalities with more homicides had consequently lower rates of employment and business ownership. “There was a case where a cartel demanded 2000 pesos a week to a taco stand,” says Becerra. “People prefer not to work rather than pay the cartels, because they can’t keep up.”
Francisco Preciado is one of many Mexicans forced to move home and career in order to reduce exposure to cartel violence, but for those unable to move away from crime-ridden areas, only a government policy that effectively reduces extortion, kidnapping and homicide will protect them. For now this seems beyond the reach of the authorities, and in the meantime, organised crime will continue to threaten the citizens and businesses of the Mexican capital.
This is article is from Weapons of Reason’s second issue: Megacities.
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