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The Strategic Implications of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion
Nathan P . Jones
Journal of Strategic Security, 2018
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Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Violence
June Beittel
2013
This report provides background on drug trafficking in Mexico: it identifies the major drug trafficking organizations (DTOs); how the organized crime “landscape” has been altered by fragmentation; and analyzes the context, scope, and scale of the violence. It examines current trends of the violence, analyzes prospects for curbing violence in the future, and compares it with violence in Colombia.
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From business to war: Causes of transitional violence by the Mexican drug cartels
Bettina Schorr
Behemoth : a Journal on Civilisation, 2013
From business to war: Although illicit markets are generally peaceful, at times they burst into massive transitional violence. One example for such an upsurge in violence is Mexico where the drug cartels are engaged in a bloody war. The Mexican case reveals that two interrelated factors can incite transitional illegal violence. First, market changes that close or open up business opportunities can lead to violent criminal competition. Second, political changes can cause or increase criminal violence. When collusive state-crime relations erode and the state increases law enforcement against criminal groups, they are likely to fight back. Both factors are tightly connected: criminal competition may erode protection rackets and incite harsher law enforcement. Law enforcement in turn may lead to the fragmentation of crime groups and cause more violent competition. Massive criminal violence is fed by further factors such as the easy availability of both weapons and specialists in violenc...
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Terrorism Studies Dissertation Thesis (St Andrews, 2012)
Mabel González Bustelo
This paper addresses the war on drugs waged in Colombia and Mexico and how it affects the dynamics and internal structures of the criminal organizations involved in the illegal drug market.
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Mexico's Drug Trafficking Organizations: Source and Scope of the Rising Violence
June Beittel
2011
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Ruling Violently: The exercise of criminal governance by the Mexican Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG)
Revista Científica General José María Córdova (Revista Colombiana de Estudios Militares y Estratégicos)
Revista Científica General José María Córdova, 2023
This article analyzes the criminal governance exercised by the Mexican criminal organ-ization Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), contributing to the scarce information available on this topic. Specifically, we ask how the CJNG has exercised territorial control to ensure the operation of its businesses, mostly concentrated in the production and sale of illegal drugs. Based on a small number of existing studies and publicly available information, we argue that the CJNG relies on a dual system of territorial control consisting of the prioritization of violent coercion vis-à-vis its opponents together with a discourse of protecting Mexicans sustained by selected initiatives to provide security and other basic services to the population to gain legitimacy. This combination has allowed the cartel to grow and expand rapidly over the last decade.
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Asylum for Former Mexican Police Officers Persecuted by the Narcos
Sergio Garcia
BC Third World LJ, 2011
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A Social Network Analysis of Mexico's Dark Network Alliance Structure
Nathan P . Jones, Daniel Weisz Argomedo, John P. Sullivan
Journal of Strategic Security, 2022
This article assesses Mexico's organized crime alliance and subgroup network structures. Through social network analysis (SNA) of data from Lantia Consultores, a consulting firm in Mexico that specializes in the analysis of public policies, it demonstrates differential alliance structures within Mexico's bipolar illicit network system. The Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación's (CJNG) alliance structure is top-down and hierarchical, while the Sinaloa Cartel is denser, particularly in the broader Tierra Caliente region. Additionally, our analysis found a sparse overall network with many isolates (groups with no relations to other groups) and disconnected components. Further, we identified organized crime networks that might fill future power vacuums based on their network positions, following state or rival high-value targeting of major cartels. The implications of these findings are discussed, and policy recommendations are provided.
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Ruling Violently: The exercise of criminal governance by the Mexican Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) Miles Doctus
Carolina Sampó
Revista Cordova, 2023
his article analyzes the criminal governance exercised by the Mexican criminal organ-ization Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), contributing to the scarce information available on this topic. Specifically, we ask how the CJNG has exercised territorial control to ensure the operation of its businesses, mostly concentrated in the production and sale of illegal drugs. Based on a small number of existing studies and publicly available information, we argue that the CJNG relies on a dual system of territorial control consisting of the prioritization of violent coercion vis-à-vis its opponents together with a discourse of protecting Mexicans sustained by selected initiatives to provide security and other basic services to the population to gain legitimacy. This combination has allowed the cartel to grow and expand rapidly over the last decade
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Bacterial Conjugation as a Framework for the Homogenization of Tactics in Mexican Organized Crime
Nathan P . Jones
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2019
This article posits a competitive bacterial ecology as a framework for Mexican drug trafficking with a novel focus on bacterial conjugation (one type of horizontal gene transmission) to explain tactical homogenization. Individual drug traffickers consciously switch between Mexican organized crime groups sometimes three and four times, much like individual bacteria exchange their DNA in a horizontal genetic transfer that allows rapid evolution and resilience. Bacterial conjugation is a useful amplifying variable for understanding the homogenization of violence and this article probes its plausibility by providing examples of traffickers switching groups and taking tactics with them. Drawing on examples of traffickers and cells from the Arellano Felix Organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the Viagras, Zetas, and the Gulf Cartels, this article traces the genealogy of violent tactics, techniques, and procedures such as dissolving bodies in acid, asphyxiation, and infantry tactics, through individual traffickers into new groups drawn generally in the direction of more powerful, proximate, and similar trafficking groups.
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