The Alliance Between Mexican and U.S. Cartels Uncovered

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The cartels that control drug trafficking in just over half of the US territory are local and not Mexican. The present work presented by Proceso reveals how many Mexican criminal organizations have formed alliances with drug traffickers in the U.S., the names of these local groups and the states in which they operate. This publication also presents Marcelo Ebrard's reflections on the bilateral fight against drug trafficking, an interview made days before he ran for the presidential candidacy.

Video translation is as follows:

In the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship, our government has been asking the U.S. for years for assistance in stopping the flow of arms from north to south. Conversely, Washington complains that Mexico continues to be the major gateway for all types of drugs into the United States. In recent years, synthetic drugs made with fentanyl cost Americans 288 lives every day. I am talking about every 24 hours.

And those are the official figures from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The government of Joe Biden has maintained a more or less stable relationship with the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in terms of security cooperation and combating drug trafficking.  However, Mexico has been asking Washington for years for assistance in stopping arms trafficking. The response from U.S. agencies such as the DEA, the FBI, and even the Pentagon is to point the finger at Mexico for the lack of strategies to root out the drug cartels.

We, Mexicans, have been asking ourselves for many years, and on the other side of the Rio Bravo to the north, who sells them, who transports them, who distributes them in the 50 states of the American Union. The answer is very simple and can be found in Proceso with its many years of investigative works. This is not the first report in which we point out that there are cartels in the United States. Not cartels as we know them in Mexico and Colombia. But they are organized crime groups very well orchestrated for all the logistics required to move drugs.

Officially, Proceso was the first media to publish in Mexico that after so many decades the DEA accepted that there are cartels in the United States. Gringo cartels. Domestic cartels as they call them. Attorney General Merrick Garland also agreed at a press conference recently with the Mexican government in a security meeting at the State Department that they have a strategy to combat the U.S. cartels. And where are the names, who are they, how many are there? That is the information that the Americans don't want to release because it would be like spitting to high heaven.

In this Proceso report you can find the names of these groups, which are not cartels like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel or the sophisticated Sinaloa Cartel. They are very practical but just as dangerous and lethal as the Mexican and Colombian ones. Why? Because they are gang members, they are motorcycle clubs with franchises in the 50 states of the United States. In towns and cities that coordinate to receive drugs from Mexican cartels on the border between the two nations.   

The job of distributing and selling them belongs to the gringo cartels. We have done a thorough investigation pointing out not only the names but the territories where they are located, how they move, and what their associations are and with which Mexican groups. Proceso's investigations have put the failures of bilateral cooperation back on the table. Because it’s not just a matter of federal legislators on Capitol Hill in Washington who are unaware of the minutiae of drug trafficking. They’re starting to point the finger at our country as the only responsible party.

In the United States, for years they have not defined a public health and education strategy to stop what seems unstoppable. The great demand and consumption of narcotics. Again they have talked in Washington of believing that they will even invade Mexico to arrest and dismantle the members of the drug cartels. But what has happened to those they arrest every day? 

In Mexico people do not know that in the United States thousands of drug traffickers are arrested every day. There are 50 states. We are talking about more than 30 million inhabitants. In this report from Proceso you will find all these details. This is the new face that we offer you in this work. And more to come for Proceso magazine.

I am Jesús Esquivel. Your correspondent in Washington for Proceso. 

Marcelo Ebrard

Proceso