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The new Popular Front on the Mexican Cartels operating as Narco Militias with Ed Calderon was fantastic https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jake-hanrahan/popular-front/e/66140765
Biggest takeaways were that legalization of pot in Cali moved suppliers into heroin and fentanyl and the rise of the CJNG after El Chapo’s capture https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/vb5xnb/el-mencho-wants-to-replace-el-chapo-and-hes-killing-mexican-cops-at-will
The strategy of taking out the cartel capos has lead to a splintering of the way the groups are structured. CJNG works more in autonomous cells with a leader who was specifically recruited to run an independent operation.
When California legalized marijuana, demand plummeted and the focus moved to heroin, but the quality was poor, so Chinese fentanyl was added to supplement it.
Fentanyl eventually became the entire market—it’s profitable beyond imagine (a ~$35k production can net more than $2 million in sales). Eventually production moved to Mexico.
So now you have more autonomous independent cells producing fentanyl in small labs rather than production being done in sequence by large swaths of the organization.
“The days of the the Mexican cartel as ‘a monolithic vertically structured criminal group’ are ending”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-drugs-20190706-story.html%3f_amp=true
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-drugs-20190706-story.html%3f_amp=true
Will be interesting to see if there is a push for a tactical shift into more continuous rolling raids from the decapitation strategy.
U.S. arrests hundreds in show of force against Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation cartel [CJNG] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/jalisco-new-generation-mexico-cartel-dea-arrests/2020/03/11/ffd8ce0a-639a-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
Coronavirus hampers Mexican drug cartels https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/how-the-coronavirus-lockdown-is-hitting-mexicos-drug-cartels/a-53001784
