Mexican Drug Cartels Have Become Fifth-Largest Employers In The Country: Study

A new study published in the journal Science has shed light on how organised criminal groups have been affecting Mexico. It revealed that Mexican drug cartels are the fifth-biggest employers in the country and recruit hundreds of people every week.

The researchers analysed data on homicides, missing people, imprisonment, and news reports for their analysis and found that between 160,000 and 185,000 people work for these crime groups in the country.

Recently, a report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration revealed that Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation are the two largest cartels in the country and employ around 44,800 people.

There are other cartels as well, such as the Noreste cartel, which controls a part of Nuevo Leon, and the Gulf cartel in Tamaulipas.

Cartel-related violence has become an everyday experience for Mexicans since 2006. In 2018, the US Department of State issued "do not travel" advisories for five Mexican states, warning its citizens to completely avoid these regions.

Tamaulipas on the US border and Sinaloa, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero on the Pacific coast have been put under the most dangerous places, mostly because they either host trafficking routes or have widespread drug-crop cultivation.

The state of Sinaloa has been a crime spot, but since the 2016 arrest of the drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and his successful extradition to the US, the region has witnessed a surge in the violence rate with the drug cartels battling to establish their empire.

Guerrero is also among those places that have witnessed lawlessness for years. But it reached the height of notoriousness in 2014 after 43 students went missing on September 26, 2014, when they were abducted in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state.

The country recorded as many as 34,523 assassinations in 2020 alone. The paper claims that the best way to reduce the crime rate is by ensuring that fewer people are recruited by these cartels.

"We have a recruiting machine where people between 12 and 15 years old are seduced or forced into the group . . . in 10 years there's a high likelihood they will be arrested or dead," said Rafael Prieto-Curiel, one of the authors.

In 2016, a survey ranked the drug war in Mexico as the second deadliest conflict in the world. It said that the violence between cartel members and state forces claimed 23,000 lives.

One of the most violent regions in Mexico is Michoacan. In 2018, the US government put it on the list of the most dangerous places in the country. In recent years, it has suffered some of the worst drug-related violence that has plagued Mexico.

At least 20 people were killed in a mass shooting in Michoacan earlier this year. It was one of the deadliest attacks to have taken place in recent years. The gunmen targeted a gathering in the town of Las Tinajas in Michoacan State, which has also been plagued by turf wars between rival gangs.