New Report: CJNG and Sinaloa DTO's the Most Powerful

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from Riodoce

Demand for Heroin UP 300%

By: Miguel Ángel Vega
July 10, 2017

New Report by the Office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ( UNODC) concludes: 

The escalation of the Mexican drug trafficking organization (DTO's) is influenced by a 300% increase in the demand for HEROIN.

The Sinaloa cartel along the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), ousted criminal organizations in China and Italy as the most powerful criminal groups in the world, according to a new report from the Office of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ( UNODC).

This information would place the Sinaloa cartel at the same level as the mafias in Russia and Japan, among the groups most capable of corruption on the planet, even with the absence of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who was extradited to the United States earlier this year, and even when control and territorial disputes inside continue to rise.

According to the report, this escalation would have been influenced by the fact that Mexico became the third largest producer of heroin in the world in 2016, surpassed only by Afghanistan and Myanmar, and that the increase in consumption of the drug which grew in the United States and Europe.

"Although cocaine use has prevailed in countries of Europe and North America, it is clear that the use of heroin increased 300 percent between 2011 and 2016," reveals the report published in late June.

Regions in Guerrero, Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua remain the places where poppy crops are  grown, although there are other states across the Sierras Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental, including Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and Puebla, where no poppy used to be  grown, but in recent years it has begun to gain notoriety for planting the crop.

White Gold and Black Gold

In a quick survey by Ríodoce in the mountainous area of Sinaloa, for the common farmer, planting poppy represents the only livelihood option and thus get around the lack of social and economic development there in the mountains of Badiraguato.

"A kilo of gum (opium) sells for  35, 000 pesos, and if a plot of a quarter hectare gives you a four kilos of gum, then you already have nearly 140, 000 pesos to live on for the year" says a poppy grower who asked us not to reveal his name, nor the place where he lives in the Sierra de Badiraguato, Sinaloa.

This sower is the third generation of poppy farmers, explains how planting marijuana migrated eight years ago, a poppy, and makes clear that everything has been part of the demand that has occurred in the United States.

  

"They keep asking for "mota", but it does not pay as well as before; instead the "chiva" is better paid , "he said, referring to the drop in prices of marijuana, whose price in 2009 was 500 thousand, while today they buy it 400 pesos.

Clandestine Heroin "Cooking" Facility/Lab or "Cocina''

Once the farmer sells the opium gum, the trafficker sends it to be processed by a heroin cook, who needs ten kilograms of rubber to process one kilo of white heroin for the black market in New York or Pennsylvania  and it would cost approximately $48 thousand dollars.

"I charge $2000 US dollars per kilo of chiva white," said a  cook interviewed in the Sierra  Badiraguato, after explaining that in recent years the demand has  increased by 300 percent  for that comodity.

According to the same report by the UNODC, the territorial radius planted in Mexico is equivalent to the land area of Washington DC, which is equivalent to 177 square kilometers, planted in full, ie, almost the size of Culiacan and Angostura together.

Area Outlined in PINK shows Poppy Growing Regions

That great an area of sown land puts Mexico as the third largest producer of heroin in the world which,  added to the  traffic of other illegal drugs like cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines, and given the proximity to the US makes the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel have grown to nearly  the same level as mafias in Russia and Japan.

A Country of the Strong

But while Sinaloa and Jalisco are strengthened, the Mexican federal government managed to reduce the power of five other cartels, says Antonio Luigi Mazzitelli, head of UNODC in Mexico.

"These five groups are the Arellano Félix, La Familia Michoacana, the Knights Templar, the Juarez Cartel and Los Zetas," the official said.

This has not been the case with the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, who have maintained their power to interact with institutional, political, economic and social groups at all levels.

Criminal groups like  Beltrán Leyva and the Gulf Cartel, however, have maintained a stable capability, despite the capture or death of their main leaders, although that situation has prompted new groups emerging in different parts of the country, including Sinaloa.

In the case of Sinaloa, a study published last May states that at present, the violence that exists in that entity is due to ten criminal cells disputing territorial control of the Sinaloa Cartel, and that many of them go unnoticed because of the war that the sons  of  "El Chapo" are fighting  with the faction of Dámaso López , "El Licenciado".

The violence seems to take new directions, as talk of a possible alliance between the remnants of the Damasos with CJNG, as happened in Tijuana, where that  cartel (CJNG) joined  Arellano Félix to start a common front against the Sinaloa Cartel, according to several narcomantas found in that city that until a few months ago, was controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel.