Drug Cartels And The United States - 1688 Words

The situation in Mexico regarding the Drug Cartels has been an ongoing battle that has taken the life of between 30,000 to 40,000 civilians, cartels henchmen and federal employees. The violence has evolved into something new in recent years. The brutality contributed by the drug cartels could potentially be labeled as terrorist acts. The strong domestic conflict surrounding the drug cartel in Mexico has boiled over the border and into the United States. Illegal drugs enter the United States through various openings along the U.S- Mexican Border. There are nine important crossings, such as Tijuana-San Diego, Mexicali, and Ciudad Juarez-El Paso. From Texas to Southern California, these drugs are handed out throughout the United States via†¦show more content†¦The Gulf cartel is struggling to maintain its territory on the eastern coast of Mexico and has become brutal. The Beltran Leyva brothers, leaders of their drug cartel, have been high profile targets of the CalderoÃŒ n pr esidency. Their death has thrown the cartel into confusion, and neighboring groups have been moving to absorb the Beltran Leyva territory. La Familia Michoacan was a new cartel which quickly gained a reputation for being violent. After the deaths of the main leaders of this group, a power struggle left the cartel in the hands of new leaders who renamed it The Knights Templar. Their organization is incorporated with an abnormal evangelical message and remains among the most violent of the cartels. As the war against the drug trading organizations continues, there seem to be two reasonable options. In the first, the major cartels are targeted. The Sinaloa and Gulf cartels will lose their clasp on the borders and be consumed by smaller scale operations. This will leave the Mexican government with a bigger number of cartels, but each will have smaller areas of influence and fewer people on the ground. Whether that type of situation is easier to deal with than the one currently facing the Mexican government is up to debate. In the second outcome, the opposite chain of events occurs. The central government targets smaller, weaker groups, disbanding them. This would allow for the big