Ioan Grillo: Mexico's New, Deadlier Crime Warlords

In this tepid capital of the Mexican state of Guerrero, government security spokesman Roberto Alvarez describes the complexity of the local crime map, from its Sierra Madre mountains to its Pacific coast.

Going north to the mineral-rich city of Iguala, he says, the area is dominated by gangsters who call themselves the "Guerreros Unidos," or Warriors United, a fragment of the older Beltran Leyva cartel, which is a break-off from the more notorious Sinaloa cartel. Turning west from Iguala, the highway then crosses into the territory of the so-called La Familia cartel, led by a local mobster nicknamed "El Guero" or Whitey, who is reported to be barely in his 20s.

This cell of La Familia is also battling a splinter group known as the "Tequileros" (the Tequila drinkers), which dominates a mountainous area above the highway that is known for heroin production. Fighting between these two groups as well as government forces has caused many residents to abandon their homes, leaving phantom villages.

Following the highway south, the road then twists into the domain of the "Caballeros Templarios," or Knights Templar, a once-mighty cartel that has been largely destroyed but has a few surviving outposts. Alvarez rattles off these groups before even beginning to describe the half dozen groups fighting over the state capital Chilpancingo and the sprawling seaside resort city of Acapulco.

"It's a very complicated crime environment, and this makes it difficult to keep order," says Alvarez, who sits at meetings every few days with regional commanders of the army, marines and police forces combating the cartels. "We have to track multiple organizations fighting each other all over the state. The many frontlines lead to a very high number of homicides."

Battles among this plethora of crime groups has made Guerrero one of the most violent states in Mexico this year, with more than 1,900 murders from January to the end of October in a population of 3.3 million. Guerrero boasts a murder rate that is six times higher than that of Louisiana, the U.S. state with the highest rate of murder in 2016.

This cartel fragmentation is one of the key reasons that Mexico is suffering a new high in overall violence. The nation's total body count has topped 20,800 in the first 10 months of 2017, the highest number this century.

Other factors have also led to the rising violence, such as an increasing production of heroin in Mexico amid epidemic opioid use in the United States. As heroin-producing areas become more valuable to cartels, they have increasingly bloody fights over the spoils. Guerrero state is one of the biggest sources of the black tar heroin made here.

But while Mexican traffickers have long supplied drugs – whether cocaine, marijuana, crystal meth or black tar – to American users, it has never faced such a splintered crime map.

"Cartel fragmentation is a big part of the story of why violence is increasing," says Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former Mexican federal intelligence official. "This has really accelerated in the last couple of years. It's the changing nature of the game."

The new high in violence comes after a decade-long Mexican military crackdown on drug traffickers, which has been supported with billions of dollars' worth of U.S. equipment and training under the Mérida Initiative, a security agreement between Mexico and the U.S. aimed at tackling organized crime, including drug trafficking. That offensive has brought down thousands of traffickers but it has also helped create the new splintered crime map.

Back in 2006, Mexican drug trafficking was dominated by four major cartels, with each possessing a monopoly on a section of the U.S. border. The Tijuana cartel trafficked into California, the Sinaloa cartel into Arizona, the Juarez cartel into New Mexico and West Texas, and the Gulf cartel into East Texas.

Over the ensuing decade, soldiers and police killed or arrested the leaders of all these cartels. The strategy was known as "cartel decapitation."

As organizations were attacked, they broke apart, with lieutenants vying for pieces of the empire. Cartel employees in drug-producing areas far from the border such as Guerrero and neighboring Michoacán formed their own crime groups. As security forces continued the offensive, the new groups themselves fragmented, breaking into smaller pieces.

Many older Mexican kingpins now sit in U.S. jails. The 60-year old Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, was extradited north on Jan. 20, hours before President Donald Trump was sworn into office. The new leaders include many young hitmen, who are quicker to use violence when dealing with rivals.

With less access to international drug markets, the new crime groups also use their guns to get money locally, turning to kidnapping, shaking down businesses or stealing oil from pipelines.

In Chilpancingo, the local head of the chamber of commerce, Victor Ortega, says extortion has reached critical levels in the city. The cartels are demanding money from everyone from mom-and-pop stores to building contractors, he says. "It is already hard for small businesses to make it in Mexico's economy, but when you are forced to pay criminals it can drive people into bankruptcy."

Ortega has publicly railed against this extortion and subsequently received several death threats. He shows one that was sent by text to his phone.

Violence and insecurity has punished President Enrique Peña Nieto, who promised to reduce the murder rate when he took office in 2012. His popularity plummeted in 2014 after the disappearance of 43 student teachers in Guerrero at the hands of police officers who allegedly worked for the Guerreros Unidos cartel. During the past year, Peña Nieto's approval has languished below 30 percent, according to a poll by Reforma newspaper.

Mexico's constitution prohibits Peña Nieto from standing in Mexico's presidential race in 2018. But none of the potential candidates has offered any clear new ideas on how to tackle the violence. The front-runner, the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has focused on trying to tackle poverty but rarely mentioned the specific issue of cartels.

However, Hope, the security analyst, says the shift from huge drug cartels to dozens of smaller diverse crime groups could actually prove easier to fight in the long term. Countries such as Colombia have shown they can reduce crimes such as extortion and kidnapping with aggressive policing. "The criminals have to immerse themselves in a transaction with victims, and that is when you can arrest them," Hope says.

The older drug traffickers such as "El Chapo" Guzman also enjoyed a certain support in impoverished communities, where people saw the benefits of drug money. There are hundreds of ballads glorifying Guzman for delivering tons of cocaine to the "gringos." But the new crime warlords are unlikely to garner such backing, Hope says.

"The gangs have become more predatory and this changes the politics of crime fighting," he says. "They pose a major threat to people's life, liberty and property. The support of sections of Mexican society to drug cartels will be gone."