Title: Mexico and the Drug Cartels: A History of Fascination | Peace Palace Library
Headings: Mexico and the Drug Cartels: A History of Fascination
Mexico and the Drug Cartels: A History of Fascination
This blog was written in honor of the farewell of Mr. Van Hoogstraten, General-Director of the Carnegie Foundation and Treasurer of The Hague Academy of International Law.
Mexico in Hollywood
Mexico, Migration and Marijuana (1870-1970)
Cross-border Cooperation and Cocaine (1970 – 1980)
A New Millennium, A New Government (2000 – 2015)
The Life in Cartel Land

Content: While the flow of cocaine from Mexico to the USA doubled between 1984 and 1986, the USA government’s desire to curb the drug trade grew equally rapidly. In 1984, the Mexican authorities discovered and destroyed a massive marijuana plantation and storage area in Chihuahua, which held thousands of tons of marijuana. This operation had such an enormous financial impact on the drug organizations that they responded by kidnapping, torturing and murdering Enrique Camarena, an undercover agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. This, in turn, lead to the publication of a list containing the names of the most important drug lords by Mexican authorities, the closing of the country’s Federal Directorate of Security which faced allegations of widespread corruption and the arrest of some of the leaders of Mexico’s most important drug cartels. Two of the three founders of the Guadalajara Cartel were arrested in 1985, while the third was arrested in 1989, for the murder of Enrique Camarena. These arrests triggered a reorganization of the Guadalajara Cartel and a division of territory among multiple smaller cartels. Important cartels included the Sinaloa cartel, the Tijuana cartel, the Juarez cartel, the Gulf cartel, the Zetas cartel, La Familia cartel and the Beltrán Leyva cartel. These smaller cartels were managed and controlled by an overarching parent organization, “The Federation”. Even though this system remained in place until the end of the 1990s, rivalries, inter-cartel killings and competing interests caused The Federation to fall apart. A New Millennium, A New Government (2000 – 2015)
A major political shift that took place in Mexico in 2000, namely the election of a new President, had an equally considerable impact on the operations of the drug cartels.