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For many decades a war has been taking place in Mexico between rival drug cartels who are
competing for land, resources and reputation and the US and Mexican governments who are
trying to stop them.
Mexico's drug cartels are highly organised criminal groups that control the trafficking
of drugs from South America to the US. Between them they have thousands of gun men as well
as loads of cash and weapons. The majority of these weapons have been smuggled in from
the US and are military grade but the cartels crimes extend well beyond drug trafficking.
They also conduct mass kidnappings, force local businesses to pay them protection money,
steal from the states oil industry and are involved in human smuggling, piracy, car robbery
and weapons trafficking.
In fact the cartels are so powerful and have been involved in so many horrific crimes that
they've even been referred to as para-militaries or terrorists.
The cartels are in constant and bloody competition with each other and many videos have emerged
showing members of one cartel executing members of another. Alliances and rivalries between
the different groups are constantly shifting while each cartel is always suffering from
savage in-fighting and facing the prospect of splitting up into smaller fractions or
regrouping into a larger cartel.
In addition to this, while some groups control large parts of Mexico's territory, others
a little more than just local gangs. Because of this it is difficult to work out just how
many cartels are operating in Mexico at any one time. But recent estimates have put it
somewhere between 60 and 80. For several years the two main players in all of this have been
the Sinaloa and the Zetas cartels. Each of these groups control huge areas of land. The
Sinaloa controlling much of Western Mexico and the Zetas controlling much of the East.
The Sinaloa cartel is much older than the Zetas and has a long history of drug smuggling.
It's controlled by veteran kingpins including Mexico's most infamous drug trafficker Joaquín
'El Chapo' Guzmán. In fact Guzmán is so famous that he's even made it onto the Forbes
Billionaire's list the the Times 100 list.
The Sinaloa cartel is also richer than the Zetas and has made most of its money from
actual narcotics rather than other criminal activity. While the Sinaloa may be richer
however the Zetas have youth, land and training on its side. It operates in more areas of
Mexico than any other cartel and counts many ex-soldiers and police soldiers among its
ranks. In fact some of its founding members were elite Mexican troops who had been trained
by none other than the US military but as a younger and far less established cartel
the Zetas has had to rely on crimes other than drug trafficking, far more than some
other groups and has become notorious for its use of extreme violence to control turf.
It is accused of the country's worst drug violence including the massacre of 72 migrants
from the town of San Fernando, the dumping of 49 decapitated victims near Cadereyta and
the dumping of hundreds of bodies in mass graves.
But the Zetas has been weakened in recent months by in-fighting and splits and has also
suffered two dramatic losses within its leadership. In October 2012 its founder and then leader,
Heriberto Lazcano known as the executioner was killed in a shoot-out with Mexican marines.
Then in July 2013 his successor Miguel Angel Treviño Morales who was known for burning
his victims alive was captured, also by the marines. In part 3 we'll look at the many
many victims who have died at the hands of these cartels and the authorities chasing
them.