Sinaloa Cartel: International Drug Trafficking Group Making Youth Their Target - Essay Sample

Introduction

Sinaloa Cartel is an international crime organization whose main job is drug trafficking. The cartel is based in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in Mexico. The gang has been disturbing the governments over a long period. They have become so powerful and experiential in their trafficking. What makes the group durable is the fact that it has established its branches in several countries in the world. Their primary target is the youth whom they sell the drugs to. They have succeeded several times in overcoming the authorities and even fighting the police. As the UN regulation, drug trafficking is termed as a crime because the drug hurts the users. Governments have the responsibility of ensuring that they are eliminated in the country. The drug in question here is amazingly marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, among other drugs. Sinaloa Cartel has grown to become so big and posing to be a challenge, especially in Mexico.

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History

The Sinaloa Cartel history is traced back to the mother cartel, Guadalajara, which was the first drug cartel in Mexico in the 1980s (Ortiz, 2017). During the same period, the US drug enforcement agencies joined forces with the Mexican authorities to fight the gang. The carte crumbled and broke into smaller groups as they were being overpowered. Sinaloa is one of the cities which hosted one of the groups which broke from Guadalajara. The reason for this was because initially, the supply of marijuana and poppy crop was from this very same state. Some of the Guadalajara key leaders also came from Sinaloa, and therefore, forming the Sinaloa cartel was not a tricky thing.

The Colombian and Caribbean cartels were also breaking at the moment because of the efforts of the US army. This strengthened the small cartels in Mexico, especially the Sinaloa cartel, as they smuggled the drugs using tunnels and bribes. The leader, Guzman, was arrested for twenty years, but when he came out of prison, he continued with the drugs and later grew to be the leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Violence ensured in Mexico as the battles against drugs became tough. In the late twenty-first century, the Sinaloa cartel had taken hold of fifty states in the United States. Reports have it that by 2015, the Sinaloa cartel controlled most of the drugs in the United States (Ortiz, 2015). The other small organizations which broke apart went into human trafficking and extortion, but Sinaloa Cartel was still sticking to drug trafficking.

Leadership

The Sinaloa Cartel was previously known as La Alianza de Sangre, translated as Blood Alliance. Hector Luis Palma Salazar nicknamed El Guiro Palma got arrested on 23 June 1995 by the Mexican Army, and his coworker Joaquin Guzman Loera took the leadership of the cartel (U.S Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration, 2017). Guzman was apprehended in Guatemala on 9 June 1993 and deported to Mexico, where he served his jail term in a maximum security prison. Still, Guzman absconded and recommenced his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel on 19 January 2001.

Guzman had two close acquaintances, Ismael Zambada Garcia and Ignacio Coronel Villarreal. Guzman and Zambada grew to become top drug kingpins in Mexico's in 2003, after the detention of their opponent Osiel Cardenas belonging to the Gulf Cartel. Another adjacent sub, Javier Torres Felix, was detained and repatriated to the U.S. in December 2006 (Beittel, 2019). On 29 July 2010, Ignacio Coronel was killed in a shootout with the military of the Mexican government in Zapopan, Jalisco.

Guzman was seized on 22 February 2014 by American and Mexican experts overnight. He, however, run away from the Federal Social Readaption Center number one, which is a maximum-security prison situated in the State of Mexico (Beittel, 2013). He escaped through a tunnel in his jail cell. Guzman continued his leadership in the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzman was arrested again when they had gone for a raid on a home in the urban of Los Mochis, located in the home state of Guzman's, Sinaloa. Following this arrest, Joaquin Guzman Loera and Ismael Zambada were most likely to undertake control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Current Dealings

In 2014, the leader, Guzman, was arrested and thrown to prison. However, he managed to escape, causing alarm to Mexicans for the safety of drug trafficking. The police hunted him until he was found. He was then judged guilty of several crimes in the United States in 2016 and was jailed. The cartel is then believed to be taken over by his son, and therefore maintaining the cartel to be so strong. The cartel is primarily involved in the supply of fentanyl, which is contributing to the growth of opioids in the United States of America.

Current Dealings and Countries They Have Managed to Do Dealings With

The cartel has established its presence in seventeen Mexican states and having a significant dominance in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Toluca, and Zacatecas. The group cartel works with a group known as Herrera Organization, which is responsible for transporting tins of drugs from southern amerce to Guatemala. Other drugs are obtained from Colombia and are taken across the US border and are taken to distribution cells. The distribution locations are located in Texas, New York, Arizona, California, and Illinois. Zamada, one of the leaders, was the one who was responsible for the drugs being smuggled to the United States. The drug dealers used mainly rail cars, flights, container ships, buses, and boats, among other travel mediums. The gang when it was at its peak.

The United States drug enforcement administration believes that the gang is the biggest, in the manner of Medellin. The cartel mainly smuggled the drugs through underground tunnels, which were later discovered. The Sinaloa cartel took over all the drug trafficking routes in the border of Arizona and adopted the small groups in Arizona, mainly the Jalisco, Sonora, and Milenio. The gang became more dangerous in 2008 when they started murdering people, including beheading and dissolving people in alkali and posting them social media (Felbab-Brown, 2019). The reason for this was to threaten rival gangs so that they take over. The cartel has its main transshipment distribution in Tuson, Phoenix, and Arizona, and Atlanta serves as the main distribution centers to the southeast US.

The Sinaloa Cartel has established operations in the Philippines as a trans-shipment destination for drugs that are being smuggled to the United States. The cartel has been carrying out its activities in the Philippines after the Lipa ranch was raided. A statement by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) director general Arthur Cacdac, suggested that Sinaloa has come into the country without anyone noticing. President Rodrigo Duterte additionally confirmed the existence of the Sinaloa Cartel in the Philippines, stating that the cartel is in the country to use it as a trans-shipment point for drugs being smuggled into the United States. The appearance of the cartel in the Philippines has deteriorated the current war between drug lords, the government in that country, and the drug cartels.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) destroyed a prominent Mexican drug operation in Chicago on 20 August 2009 (DEA Intelligence Report, 2015). They also exposed a chief distribution link operated by the Flores crew and led by the twin brothers, Margarito and Pedro Flores, who previously worked there. The drug operation purportedly brought in 1.5 to 2 tons of cocaine each month to Chicago, being shipped from Mexico and transacted millions of dollars to the southern part of the border. The delivery was mostly purchased from the Sinaloa Cartel and other times from the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, and it is presumed that both cartels endangered the Flores crew with violence if they took over any other opposing drug organizations.

The Secretary of National Defense of Mexican reported on the arrest of Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez, and El Muneco, who was recognized as the present lieutenant of the South Pacific Cartel in Sonora State. As Sedona states, El Muneco functioned as an administrator under Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and is believed to be accountable for the death of the activist Nepomuceno Moreno. Jesus Alfredo Salazar Ramirez was arrested on first November 2012 in the municipality of Huixquilucan. The arrest was by military staff working with the Mexican Attorney General's office.

El Muneco is reflected to be among of the most vital lieutenants of Joaquin Guzman Loera. This is evident from the control he had on the production, planting, and drug trafficking in both Sonora and in the mountains of Chihuahua, which were sent principally to the US. He is associated with various homicides; among them is the assassination of lawyer Ruben Alejandro Cepeda Leos, who was found dead on 20 December 2011 in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua. According to the secretary general, he is the supposed assassin of activist Nepomuceno Moreno Nunez, whose death was discovered, occurred 28 November 2011 (Dean et al., 2012). Nepomuceno Moreno worked as an activist who wanted justice for the vanishing of his son and suspected to have joined the Mexican Indignados Movement, which is led by poet Javier Sicilia.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Sinaloa cartel has recorded a history of being one of the most dangerous cartels. The presence of the cartel in many countries with very stubborn leaders makes the situation even worse. The issue of drug trafficking has been fought for years, and it seems that it is not working or reducing. The splitting of the groups makes it even more dangerous as the government would take time to identify their existence. They become more powerful and robust as they can access most of the weapons. What makes the all situation so devastating is the fact that some of the authorities are reported to take bribes from these individuals and, therefore, making it harder for the department dealing with crime to handle the drug cartels. Their long existence in society gives very little hope to those fighting to combat it. It is recommended that as much as the government and authorities fight these groups, it would be prudent for them to also teach the youth against drug abuse so that the drugs lose markets and force the drug users to stop selling them.

References

Beittel, S.J., 2013. Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Violence. Congressional Research Service

Beittel, J. S. (2019). Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations. Current Politics and Economics of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, 21(2), 181-223.

Dean, W., Derouin, L., Fogel, M., Kania, E., Keefe, T., McCune, J., ... & Trinh, M. (2012). The War on Mexican Cartels: Options for US and Mexican Policy-Makers.

DEA Intelligence Report. 2015. United States; Areas of Influence of Major Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations

Felbab-Brown, V. (2019). Mexico's out-of-control criminal market. In Foreign policy at Brookings working paper. Brookings.

Ortiz, A. (2017). Sinaloa Incorporated: Understanding The Sinaloa Cartel Like A Corporation To Reduce Violence In Mexico.

U.S Department of Justice Drug Enforment Administration, 2017. National Drug Threats Assessment.