CGW4U – MR.LAMBERT
JANUARY 20, 2014
What's really amazing about this course is that a lot of variety of topics and issues are discussed that happen around the world. The Mexican Drug Cartel is one of the few topics that haven't been discussed and that's what is being written about today. The Mexican Drug Cartel is basically a mini war that goes among rival drug cartels fighting each other for territory and control of traffic. Mexico has a geographically perfect location to stage and ship narcotics, illegal immigrants and contraband, and they've been doing it for a long time. It all started back in the 1920's when Mexico smuggled alcohol during prohibition. After the prohibition ended, drugs started to get smuggled all the way up until 1980 when it started going into a large scale. Today, Mexico grows cannabis and makes meth while Columbia makes cocaine. Mexico has the better geographic location so they do most of the shipping. The large scale drug movement all really started in the 1980's. A guy named Miguel “The Godfather” Gallardo, leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, controlled all illegal drug trade at the time in Mexico. He started off with drugs like marijuana and opium. A couple years later he got in contact with the biggest cartel in Columbia which was led by a man named Pablo Escobar. Gallardo then started shipping Pablo's product into the US. After a few years trafficking became too much due to many arrests and deaths of cartel leaders. Gallardo decided to split up his massive cartel into 8 smaller ones so it would be a harder time for the cops to bust all them all. However this took its toll too because individual cartel leader started taking the business personally and each one wanted to the biggest cartel, resulting to the on-going war we have today.
The locations of the cartels that are present today are on the outside of Mexico because it's easier to make shipments and its closer to the ocean. Cartels are