Summary: “Map of Mexican drug cartels… in Central America”

07/03/13
Ashley Badesch
Latin America and the Caribbean
U.S. Policy, Drug Trade

This post was written with CIP intern Ashley Badesch

Mexican news website Animal Político published an article on Mexican drug cartel activity in Central America. The security situation has significantly worsened in the region in recent years as U.S.-backed counternarcotics operations that first pushed the drug trade and related violence from Colombia into Mexico, have now squeezed organized crime into Central America.

While the proposed U.S. security assistance to many countries in Latin America, like Colombia and Mexico, decreased in the 2014 budget request (PDF), funds for the Central America Regional Security Initiative increased by about $26 million. Many political institutions throughout the region are struggling to deal with the increase in violence and are rife with corruption, which the United States Congress has expressed concern over, in light of the increase in assistance.

According to the article, 90 percent of Mexico’s cocaine trafficking operations to the United States now pass through Guatemala, where the major Mexican drug cartels, the Zetas and the Pacific Cartel, are vying for territorial control. Belize is considered Zeta territory, while in El Salvador the main drug trafficking organization works for the Pacific Cartel. Much of the violence is said to be a product of infighting among local gangs that are now working with these larger competing drug cartels.

The majority of the information used in the article came from last year’s UN report, “ Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean.” The UN report concludes that the principal motivation for violence in Central America “is not cocaine, but change: change in the negotiated power relations negotiated between and within (criminal) groups, and with the state.”

Here are some key findings of the article:

Guatemala

  • A gang linked to the Zetas known as the Lorenzanas now controls cocaine trafficking through five of the largest provinces of Guatemala: Peten, Huhuetenanago, Quiché, Alta Verapaz, and Zapaca, on a route that crosses the country, from the border with Honduras to the border with Mexico.
  • The struggle for control over specific points in Guatemala, particularly those bordering Honduras and El Salvador, has turned these two countries into the those “with the highest homicide rates in the world (82 in Honduras and 65 in El Salvador for every 100,000 in habitants in 2010),” according to the UN. “Given the competition between groups allied with the Zetas and the Pacific Cartel, it’s highly likely that these deaths are attributable to disputes over contraband and trafficking routes.“

Honduras:

  • After Guatemala, the Central American country with the highest importance to Mexican gangs is Honduras, where the nation's military coup in 2009 triggered "a kind of gold rush" of cocaine, as described by the United Nations. In fact, it is estimated that in 2010, about 15 percent of the cocaine shipped by air to the United States stopped in Honduras, where drugs also arrive by sea, and was then sent to the north of the continent in small aircraft.
  • Of the 330 tons of cocaine that entered Mexico from Guatemala in 2010, 267 first went through Honduras, where 62 clandestine airstrips were detected in 2012 alone.

Belize:

  • Due to the increase in cocaine seizures in Belize, the UN report states, "it is believed that the Zetas are active (in this country)," whose border with Guatemala is controlled almost entirely by the Mexican group. And while cocaine trafficking in Belize is "secondary," notes the UN, it’s valued over $74 million, representing 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2010.
  • Also in 2010, Belize was designated the country with the eighth highest murder rate in the world (42 per 100,000 inhabitants).

El Salvador

  • In El Salvador, the main narcotrafficking group, the Perrones, maintains an alliance with the Pacific Cartel, which worked to transfer cocaine from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. This group also carries money from Chapo to Panama.
  • Another group of carriers based in El Salvador is the Texis Cartel, which works on requests for both Mexican cartels and is noted "for its extensive network of complicity with senior politicians, security officials, judges and prosecutors."

The article can be read on the Animal Político website (in Spanish) or the InSight Crime website (in English).