Mexico: New Drug Gang Alliances May Spread Overseas
7 August 2002
Summary

Mexico's drug-trafficking industry is evolving into smaller, more compartmentalized and discreet criminal enterprises in which alliances between rival gangs are being viewed as more profitable than trying to kill each other off. This new preference for alliances instead of gunplay may soon lead to expanded associations between Mexican gangs and organized criminal groups from other Latin American countries as well as Europe, Russia and Asia.

Analysis

Mexico's illegal drug-trafficking industry is restructuring rapidly into smaller, lower-profile criminal organizations following the death earlier this year of Ramon Arellano Felix -- leader of the Tijuana drug cartel -- and arrest of his brother Benjamin, The Associated Press reported Aug. 3. At the same time, the center of power of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry has moved from Tijuana in Baja, Calif. to Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Mexico's evolving drug-trafficking organizations are smaller, more compact networks in which competing drug lords now seek to work cooperatively instead of killing their rivals, as the Arellano Felix brothers were fond of doing. Moreover, the shift in power to Ciudad Juarez means there likely will be a significant surge in narcotics smuggling from north-central and northeastern Mexico into the states of Texas and New Mexico. But southern California may see a drop in narcotics smuggling from Tijuana.
http://www.stratfor.com/fib/fib_view.php?ID=205628
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art I: Violence-Prone Netwars
Chapter Two: The Networking of Terror in the Information Age
Chapter Three: Transnational Criminal Networks
Chapter Four: Gangs, Hooligans, and Anarchists - The Vanguard of Netwar In the Streets
Part II: Social Netwars
Chapter Five: Networking Dissent: Cyber Activists Use the Internet to Promote Democracy In Burma
Chapter Six: Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar
FROM
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/
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