[54] While many factors have contributed to the escalating violence, security analysts in Mexico City trace the origins of the rising scourge to the unraveling of a longtime implicit arrangement between narcotics traffickers and governments controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which began to lose its grip on political power in the late 1980s.

There were no large-scale, high-profile military operations against their core structures in urban areas until the 2000 Mexican election when the right-wing PAN party gained the presidency and started a crackdown on cartels on their turf.

[68] In 2012, newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto, from the PRI party, emphasized that he did not support the involvement of armed American agents in Mexico and was only interested in training Mexican forces in counter-insurgency tactics.

[69] Peña Nieto stated that he planned to de-escalate the conflict, focusing on lowering criminal violence rates, as opposed to the previous policy of attacking drug-trafficking organizations by arresting or killing the most-wanted drug lords and intercepting their shipments.

[74] Peña Nieto's handling of the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping and the 2015 escape of drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán from the Altiplano maximum security prison sparked international criticism.

[94] On October 17, 2019, based on an extradition request sent to Mexico by a Washington, D.C. judge,[95] a failed operation to capture alleged kingpin Ovidio Guzmán López was carried out by the Mexican National Guard, in which fourteen people died (mostly from the armed forces and cartel enforcers and one civilian bystander).

[127][130] This has led to a surplus of cocaine, which has resulted in local Mexican dealers attempting to offload extra narcotics along trafficking routes, especially in border areas popular among North American tourists.

[153] The Guadalajara Cartel suffered a major blow in 1985 when the group's co-founder Rafael Caro Quintero was captured, and later convicted, for the murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.

According to Peter Dale Scott, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), under its chief Miguel Nazar Haro.

[201] In 2009–10, a counter-narcotics offensive by Mexican and U.S. government agencies produced the arrest of at least 345 suspected La Familia members in the U.S., and the incorrectly presumed death[204] of one of the cartel's founders, Nazario Moreno González, on December 9, 2010.

[208] The Cartel is headed by Enrique Plancarte Solís and Servando Gómez Martínez who formed the Knights Templar due to differences with José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, who had assumed leadership of La Familia Michoacana.

[218] Through online videos, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has tried to seek society's approval and tacit consent from the Mexican government to confront Los Zetas by posing as a "righteous" and "nationalistic" group.

[231] In 2011, then President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) met with Mexico's major media outlets to discuss their role in what he argued was sensationalizing the violence and providing free press coverage to cartels and their messages.

[235][236] Women officials, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, paralegals,[237] reporters, business owners, social media influencers, teachers, and non-governmental organizations directors and workers have also been involved in different capacities.

[272] In February 2011, it brought about a scandal when the project was accused of accomplishing the opposite by ATF permitting and facilitating "straw purchase" firearm sales to traffickers, and allowing the guns to "walk" and be transported to Mexico.

These aggressive methods have resulted in public killings and torture from both the cartels and the country's own government forces, which aids in perpetuating the fear and apprehension that the citizens of Mexico have regarding the war on drugs and its negative stigma.

Calderón's military forces have yet to yield significant results in dealing with the violent cartels due in part to the fact that many police working for the Mexican government are suspected of corruption.

[neutrality is disputed] In April 2008, General Sergio Aponte, the man in charge of the anti-drug campaign in the state of Baja California, made a number of allegations of corruption against the police forces in the region.

Among his allegations, Aponte stated that he believed Baja California's anti-kidnapping squad was actually a kidnapping team working in conjunction with organized crime, and that bribed police units were used as bodyguards for drug traffickers.

[293] According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican cartels are the predominant smugglers and wholesale distributors of South American cocaine and Mexico-produced cannabis, methamphetamine and heroin.

Seizures and arrests have jumped since Calderón took office in December 2006, and Mexico has extradited more than 100 people wanted in the U.S.[citation needed] On July 10, 2008, the Mexican government announced plans to nearly double the size of its Federal Police force to reduce the role of the military in combating drug trafficking.

[citation needed] On July 16, 2008, the Mexican Navy intercepted a 10-meter long narco-submarine travelling about 200 kilometers off the southwest of Oaxaca; in a raid, Special Forces rappelled from a helicopter onto the deck of the submarine and arrested four smugglers before they could scuttle their vessel.

[123] Under the 'Cleanup Operation' performed in 2008, several agents and high-ranking officials have been arrested and charged with selling information or protection to drug cartels;[329][330] some high-profile arrests were: Victor Gerardo Garay Cadena,[331] (chief of the Federal Police), Noé Ramírez Mandujano (ex-chief of the Organized Crime Division (SEIDO)), José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos (ex-chief of the Organized Crime Division (SEIDO)), and Ricardo Gutiérrez Vargas who is the ex-director of Mexico's Interpol office.

[358] In the first years of the 21st century, Mexico was considered the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism, according to groups like the National Human Rights Commission, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

[388] Improved cooperation between Mexico and the U.S. has led to the arrests of hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel suspects in U.S. cities and towns, but the U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S.

Those that have been most investigated include top underworld figures such as: Ridouan Taghi, Ricardo Riquelme Vega, aka El Rico, caged assassin Noufal Fassih and Italian Camorra boss Raffaele Imperiale.

The Mexican Army crackdown has driven some cartels to seek a safer location for their operations across the border in Guatemala, attracted by corruption, weak policing and its position on the overland smuggling route.

[416] The U.S. Joint Forces Command noted in a December 2008 report that in terms of worst-case scenarios, Mexico bears some consideration for sudden collapse in the next two decades as the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels.

According to the three men, the CIA was collaborating with drug traffickers moving cocaine and marijuana to the United States, and using its share of the profits to finance Nicaraguan Contra rebels attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

[443] In June 2010, Calderón "announced strict limits on the amount in U.S. dollars that can be deposited or exchanged in banks",[443] but the proposed restrictions to financial institutions are facing tough opposition in the Mexican legislature.