10 Shocking Mexican Drug Cartel Facts

Expendables

One of the scariest things about the cartels is that nobody is safe from their reach. Lately, they’ve been using their deep pockets to recruit American children to do their dirty work. Known as “The Expendables,” six major cartels have started paying Texas teenagers cash money to perform simple tasks. Cops busted a 12-year-old in Laredo driving a stolen pickup truck with 800 pounds of marijuana, and say that hundreds of U.S. kids take odd jobs from Mexican cartels every year. Because they’re not in on any information, the kids aren’t a big loss if they’re busted. 

Narco Submarines

The cartels use all kinds of methods to get drugs across the border, but did you know that they build their own submarines? Colombian smugglers working with Mexican cartels were crippled by the introduction of radar, which could detect their boats. Their solution was to build “narco-subs,” fully submersible vessels capable of transporting cocaine by the ton. Each one costs around $2,000,000 to build, and they’re assembled piece by piece in the jungle before being filled with their payload and sent to Mexico. Amazingly enough, they’re often abandoned to rust away in the ocean after a single successful delivery. Considering that their payload is worth around $400 million, that’s a reasonable sacrifice.

Forbes Billionaire’s List

2012 marked a fairly shocking moment in world economic history, as it was the first time that Forbes Magazine included a Mexican drug lord on their list of the world’s billionaires. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera made the list because of his stranglehold over the drug traffic from Mexico to the States. Some estimates say 25 percent of the smuggling over the border is controlled by Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. Since escaping, his grip over his cartel hasn’t lessened, and they’re considered one of the most dangerous groups operating today.

Nuevo Laredo’s Bloody May

The central highway that runs from Mexico to the United States crosses through the town of Nuevo Laredo, and the vast majority of road cargo between the two countries passes through there. That makes it a very desirable piece of turf for cartels. The Sinaloa cartel and the offshoot Zeta gang are engaged in a running struggle for control of Nuevo Laredo, and on a May weekend in 2012, things got really ugly. First, drivers spotted nine people hanging from a bridge, and then police found 14 headless men in a van. They later found the heads in 14 individual coolers. Just days later, police found 49 mutilated bodies dumped by the side of a highway. 

Federal Corruption

The primary agency investigating the cartels is the Federal Investigations Agency or AFI. Needless to say, all of that drug money works its way up the channel and makes good cops go bad. The extent of the corruption in the agency is shocking, however. A 2005 probe revealed that out of the 7,000 agents currently active, over 1,500 of them were currently under investigation for collaborating with one organized crime group or another. Facing such insane levels of graft, the AFI was dissolved in 2009 and restructured into the Ministerial Federal Police.

40,000 Deaths

In 2006, the Mexican government announced that they were cracking down on the drug business, with newly-elected President Felipe Calderon sending the army out to Michoacan in the first of many operations to reduce cartel power. The end result of that action? Over 40,000 deaths in the next five years. Calderon’s strategy of direct confrontation has backfired on him, as every time they arrest a high-ranking cartel officer, a power struggle kicks off that leaves even more bodies on the street. 

The Godfather

So how did all this cartel nonsense get started? With one man. Ironically, a government man. Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was a Mexican Judicial Federal Police agent who realized that there was way more money and fun to be had on the other side of the law. He funded the Guadalajara Cartel in 1980 and consolidated power, being the first Mexican to link up with the Colombian cartels to smuggle cocaine. They enjoyed the protection of the Mexican intelligence agency DFS, but after a bust in 1985, Gallardo decided to split up the business, creating the five major cartels that are still in business today. And just in time too, as he was arrested a few years later.

The Saint Of Dealers

In a heavily Catholic nation like Mexico, there’s a patron saint for everything, even drug dealers. Jesus Malverde isn’t technically recognized as a saint by the Church, but in the state of Sinaloa, he’s just as good as one. Details on the real Malverde -- if there even was one -- are sketchy at best, but the general consensus is that he was a bandit who died in 1909, shot down by the cops. Since then, he’s been adopted as the spiritual protector for people involved in the illegal drug trade, and busts of his visage are often kept in Cartel businesses.