Types of Crimes
June 1, 2025
Trafficing: Heroin
June 1, 2025
Cocaine
Part1
Main transnational organized crime threat A great deal of international attention has been placed on the drug-related violence in Mexico, with some even arguing that the country is in danger of being severely destabilized.
Less attention has been placed on Central America, where the murder rates are four to five times higher than in Mexico, and where both the economy and the state are far less robust and resilient.
While the drug violence has been intense in places like Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s overall murder rate remains moderate compared to many other countries afflicted by the drug trade.
On the other hand, the Mexican cocaine traffickers appear to be evolving into multi-crime groups, with the ability to shift investment to other areas if the cocaine trade declines.
Unlike Mexico, the Central American countries have high levels of violence unrelated to the drug trade – a legacy of longstanding social divisions and decades of civil war.
The highest murder rates in these countries are seen not in the largest cities, but in provinces with a special role in the drug trade, often ports or border crossing points.
For example, the rural Petén province in Guatemala, particularly affected by the drug trade, has the highest murder rate in the country.
The death count has risen over time, as a growing share of cocaine trafficking is conducted through this region.
The territory of Mexico has long been used by traffickers as a conduit for cocaine destined for the USA, but as noted above, the groups in Mexico have progressively wrested control of this flow from their Colombian suppliers over time.
Today, some 180 tons of cocaine, bringing about US$6 billion to the regional cartels, transits Central America and Mexico annually.
A sudden drop in consumption in the United States after 2006 (Figure 14), almost certainly related to loss of supply, has rendered competition for the remaining market even more intense. It may also be prompting trafficking organizations to diversify their operations.
The wealth associated with cocaine trafficking has created large and powerful organized crime groups. These groups command manpower and weaponry sufficient to challenge the state when threatened, including access to military arms and explosives.
They also have the funds to sow widespread and high-level corruption.
In Mexico, the cocaine trade is now dominated by a number of “cartels” who compete to control border crossings and transportation routes.
The leadership, turf, and structure of these groups has shifted over time as conflict both within and between the cartels, as well as enforcement efforts, force realignments.
As of early 2010, the dominant cartels were the following: • The Sinaloa Federation, led by billionaire, and Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman; •
The Gulf Cartel, once the most powerful criminal organization in Mexico, now greatly weakened by the defection of Los Zetas.
Part2
Los Zetas, founded when a group of special forces soldiers defected to the Gulf Cartel and now operating as a trafficking organization in its own right; •
The Juarez Cartel, also known as the Carrillo Fuentes Organization, which is struggling to maintain control over its plaza (smuggling turf) in Ciudad Juarez, the city most affected by cartel violence.
The Tijuana Cartel, also known as the Arellano Felix Organization, which is similarly struggling to maintain control over the Tijuana Plaza.
The Beltran Leyva Organization, a breakaway from the Sinaloa cartel, now weakened by the police killing of its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, on 19 December 2009.
La Familia Michoacana, a Zetas breakaway based in Michoacan but expanding, renowned for its penchant for beheadings, quasi-religious ideology, and domination of methamphetamine production
Perhaps due to the recent slump in the cocaine trade, these groups are progressively engaging in a number of other organized crime activities, including migrant smuggling, kidnapping, and extortion (including “taxing” businesses) – all crimes that were prevalent in Mexico before cartel involvement
La Familia, which espouses a bizarre ideology combining aspects of evangelical Christianity with revolutionary populism, provides the most extreme example, “taxing” businesses in the areas they control and engaging in very public displays of violence to soften resistance.
Though the total flow has declined, the share of northbound cocaine passing through Central America (particularly Guatemala and Honduras) appears to have increased.
The groups involved in this region are less well defined. For most forms of crime in the region, the blame often falls on two street gang confederations founded by deportees from the USA: Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and Calle 18 (M18).
But there is little evidence that these groups, comprised of street youths intensely focused on neighbourhood issues, are widely engaged in large-scale transnational drug trafficking.
Most are based in inland cities, far from the maritime routes along which most cocaine flows before arriving in Mexico.
They are certainly culpable in street sales in the areas they control, but their capacity to engage in bulk transnational smuggling is questionable.
Some may be recruited as hit men by the Mexican organizations, but as they frequently tattoo their faces as a sign of their commitment to the gang, they are ill-suited for any operation involving possible contact with the public or the authorities.
The maras have engaged in demonstrative violence in the past, including the random killing of civilians, but there is little to indicate they have any kind of political agenda, aside from avoiding police interference with their affairs
The repeated arrests of high-level officials in the police and the military, in contrast, suggest that the main traffickers in Central America are far more sophisticated than street gangsters, and are tied to some members of the ruling elites, rather than the underclass.
There is also growing evidence of Mexican cartel penetration into Central America, particularly regarding Los Zetas in Guatemala and the Sinaloa Federation in Honduras.
Part3
The stability/governance situation
The Northern Triangle of Central America is still reeling from the brutal civil wars in Guatemala (1960-1996) and El Salvador (1980-1992). The region suffers from having one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world, comparable only to southern Africa or the Andean region.
Small elites working with strong militaries have long dominated countries in this region, exporting agricultural commodities, as well as engaging in other labour-intensive enterprises.
All countries in this region score poorly in governance indicators, particularly about the rule of law and the threat of renewed instability and conflict remains. Guatemala has long had a problem with vigilante justice, a response to a lack of police presence in much of the country.
Honduras experienced a coup d’état in 2009, when the serving president attempted to attain public support for an extended term of office. As a result of this legacy of violence, instability, and inequality, the Northern Triangle of Central America has the highest murder rate of any region in the world, and very high rates of other forms of violent crime
It has also experienced political violence, and at times the distinction between criminal and political violence can be difficult to discern. Street gangs appear to be a symptom, rather than a driving cause, of this underlying violence. Mexico is very different from her southern neighbours, having a much larger and diversified economy, a stronger government, and milder social divisions.
Nonetheless, insecurity in some parts of the country has become intense, and drug-related corruption has had an impact on national institutions. III. Linkages between TOC and stability threats Organized crime threatens stability, to varying degrees, in both Mexico and the northern triangle of Central America.
In some areas, the civilian police have been both corrupted and outgunned, and the military has been brought into recapture territory lost to criminal groups. These groups have gone on the offensive, murdering several prominent law enforcement officials who dared to oppose them.
For example, in December 2009, the head of the Honduran anti-drug agency was murdered, as was Mexico’s federal police chief in 2008. Organized criminals also target rank-and-file police officers for retaliatory killings.
In June 2009, 12 federal police agents were tortured, killed, and their bodies dumped when the Mexican police arrested a high-ranking member of La Familia Michoacana. Civilians have also been targeted for demonstrative attacks, such as 2008 Independence Day grenade attacks in Morelia.
In all these countries, corruption at the highest levels, on occasion including the national heads of police and drug enforcement agencies, has been detected. For example, in Guatemala in August 2009, President Colom fired the director general of the national police, his deputy, his operations head, and his investigations head after a large amount of cocaine and cash went missing.
This was far from the first such purging in Guatemala in recent years. In 2005, the head of the drug enforcement agency, his deputy, and another top drugs official were arrested for drug trafficking after being lured to the USA on pretence of training. The drug enforcement branch they commanded was itself a reworking of a previous agency, which had been disbanded following arrests of members for similar diversions.
The agency has been reworked yet again in 2009. Similarly, in August 2008, the Mexican Government launched “Operation Cleanup”, aimed at purging the top ranks of the police of drug cartel corruption. The operation resulted in the jailing of both the interim commissioner of the Federal Police and the acting head of the counternarcotics division, among others.
Part4
The same month, El Salvador’s chief of police resigned when two top aides were accused of drug links. The corruption extends outside the police, and has implicated other criminal justice officials, legislators, and members of state and local government but this situation is complicated: accusations of drug complicity can be used to take out opponents, and some of those assassinated by the traffickers may have been erstwhile collaborators.
The fact that high level corruption continues to be detected and the officials removed shows the struggle is very much alive and that progress is being made. The complexity of the situation is perhaps best illustrated by a drug scandal that began on 19 February 2007, when three Salvadoran representatives to the Central American parliament (Parlacen) in Guatemala were killed after inexplicably departing from their motorcade.
Their murderers were quickly identified as the head of Guatemala’s criminal investigations division and three of his men. One of these arrestees claimed they had been hired to hijack the car, which was allegedly carrying cocaine worth US$5 million.
The arrestees were never able to elaborate, however, as they were all shot dead while in custody in a high-security prison on 25 February.
This incident led the serving Interior Minister to tender his resignation. Since then, two key investigators have been murdered, and the United Nations International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) has accused the Attorney General of interfering in the investigation of one of these cases.
Aside from its corrosive effect on law enforcement integrity, the cocaine trade has also propelled the murder rate in the northern triangle of Central America to the highest in the world.
Contrary to what would be expected, in none of these countries is the highest murder rate found in the largest cities: rather, it is found in provinces that have strategic value to drug traffickers.
For example, Guatemala’s Petén province is rural and largely indigenous, two variables that negatively correlate with violence elsewhere in the country.
But it is also a major drug trafficking zone, where jungle landing strips provide easy access to the Mexican border. Consequently, it has the highest murder rates in the country. Other provinces have the misfortune of containing key trafficking ports, such as the provinces of Atlántida in Honduras,
Sonsonate in El Salvador, Escuintla in Guatemala and Michoacán in Mexico. Honduras has the unfortunate distinction of having the fastest growing murder rate in the region, which may be associated with its increased use of the country as landing site for cocaine-laden aircraft from Colombia and Venezuela.
It also hosts the province with the single highest murder rate in the region: Atlántida, where one out of every 1000 people was murdered last year.
The capital of Atlántida is La Ceiba, a well-known cocaine trafficking port, and the site of clandestine landing strips.24 As mentioned above, in December 2009, General Aristides Gonzales, director general of the national office for combating drug trafficking, was murdered.
The General had gone on a campaign against the unauthorised airports found across the country, some of which are said to be linked to the Sinaloa cartel.
Just before his murder, he had seized a major strip and threatened to take action against all property owners on whose land the strips were found.
Some have argued that the violence in Mexico is tied to the Government’s efforts to stop the drug trade, not the drug trade itself.
Part5
While it is true that enforcement can create instability in drug markets that can lead to violence, enforcement in countries like Guatemala is much weaker, and the murder rate is at least four times higher.
In addition, most of the deaths in the “cartel wars” are of cartel mem beers themselves, fighting over trafficking routes.
These groups have shown their willingness to diversify into other areas of crime, and recent losses in cocaine revenues seems only to have intensified the violence.
A policy of appeasement is impractical: these people, and corrupt officials who support them, cannot be allowed to remain in place.
The treatment is painful, but the alternative is to lose the patient itself. This may sound like an exaggeration, but many who have worked closely with law enforcement in the region concur. In December 2008, the head of UN CICIG said, “If the Guatemalan authorities are unable to stop the infiltration of Mexican drug cartels, in two years they could take over Guatemala City.”
Part6
President Colom has issued a series of “state of prevention” orders in response to the violence in which constitutional liberties are restricted for a period of time in certain parts of the country, and there have been a series of attacks against labour union leaders, environmentalists, and human rights defenders.
While Guatemala appears to be the most affected, its problems are not unique, and the stability of all countries in this region requires that transnational organized crime be controlled.
To do this, the states need support in strengthening local law enforcement and governance. But even more important, they need the assistance of the international community in addressing the transnational flows affecting their countries.
The drug wars they face are fuelled by a cocaine trade that runs the length of the region.
Mexico’s killers are armed largely by weapons trafficked from the north, but also from the south. Dealing with these threats will require both national institutions building and a global strategy to address the relevant trafficking flows.
