Organized crime is more powerful today than 40 years ago

The capture of Ovidio el Ratón Guzmán López is “a forceful blow to the Pacific Cartel,” the Secretary of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, said last Thursday during the press conference in which he described how the capture that same day of one of the four sons of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán who decided to follow in their father’s footsteps.

In this space I affirmed on Friday that his apprehension will not weaken that cartel or organized crime. I noted that the same thing has been said by federal and state authorities every time they have captured or killed a major criminal.

And it is that organized crime has grown and prospered since the 1970s despite the many criminal bosses who have been apprehended or killed by the government or its rivals,

In October 2015, journalist Tania Montalvo wrote an article on narcodata.animalpolitico.com entitled “Seven presidents, few results: 40 years of expansion of organized crime.”

In four paragraphs of his text he summarized what happened:

“In that 1985, the leaders Rafael Caro Quintero and Enrique Fonseca Don Neto were arrested. [dos de los tres fundadores del Cártel de Guadalajara]. In 1989, already in the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the founder of the Cartel fell: Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo.

“But these arrests did not end the criminal group, much less organized crime in the country. It hardly served to modify the map of organized crime in Mexico.

“Without the main leaders, the Guadalajara Cartel divided into three: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juárez Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel were born, which dominated organized crime activities in Mexico for decades.

“And if then the drug trafficking groups only had a presence in ten states of the country, today they are in most of the national territory and have extended their businesses to other crimes that directly affect citizens: kidnapping, extortion, robbery…”.

From the 1970s to today, in addition to the capture of the above-mentioned bosses, many of the main leaders of the Arellano Félix, Golfo, Zetas, Sinaloa, and Tijuana cartels have been arrested or killed. , from Juárez, from the Beltrán Leyva family, from the Northeast, from Jalisco Nueva Generación, from the Northeast, from Santa Rosa de Lima, from the Michoacán Family, from the Knights Templar, from the South, from Tláhuac, from the Millennium, from the Reds, from Nueva Plaza, from Colima, Independiente from Acapulco and more leaders of countless gangs.

The capture or death of many of them put an end to the organizations they headed, but not to the criminal activities they carried out, which were taken over by other organizations.

Today, organized crime in our country is stronger, richer, more diversified, transnational, violent, powerful and politically influential than 40 years ago, which shows the failure of the strategies against crime designed and implemented by the eight presidents who have governed from 1976 to date.

The worst part of the case is that no candidate for the presidency, regardless of party, has been able to tell us, until now, how they would neutralize the monster that affects us all if they win the presidential election to be held in June 2024. .

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