Two days ago an investigative NPR report proposed that the war on drugs favors the Siñaloa drug gang, headed by the infamous ‘Chapo’ Guzmán. Arrests of suspected Siñaloa members account for about 12% of all gang-related arrests since 2006, on par with other major syndicates. (The Gulf Cartel has suffered the brunt of arrests, 44%.
However, when it comes to arrests around Cuidad Juárez since the Mexican army arrived to restore order in March 2008 the numbers are skewed. Sixteen persons with links to Siñaloa have been arrested, but 88 with ties to the Juárez gang have been taken into custody. Says one native of Siñaloa state, “The Calderon government has been fighting organized crime in many parts of the republic, but has not touched Siñaloa…It is like we’re trimming the branches of a tree, when we should be tearing it out by the roots.”
There seems a rather obvious explanation for this trend, but it receives rather short shrift by the NPR report: Can’t part of the discrepancy be chalked up to the larger and more established presence of Juárez gang?
To help make sense of the rivalries that welter Mexico check out an infographic recently published by Americas Quarterly. It provides a rundown of the key players in each gang and charts interesting comparisons to the drug violence that enwrapped Colombia.
