In fact, it was a quasi-family-run organization that never successfully achieved the vertical integration of its drug production, transportation and marketing processes, nor did it implement well-defined rules for its members or create a hierarchical structure to reach consensual decisions.For further discussion regarding the architecture of drug trafficking groups in Latin America, with a special focus on Colombians, see: Michael Kenney, “The Architecture of Drug Trafficking: Network Forms of Organization in the Colombian Cocaine Trade”, Global Crime 8, No. Smith, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade (London: Ebury Press, 2021) Jack Pannell, “‘Cartels’ in Mexico: The Origins of a Categorization” (Master’s Thesis, University of Oxford, 2020) Luis Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2003) Diego Enrique Osorno, El cártel de Sinaloa: Una historia del uso político del narco (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2009). The most recent academic research into the alleged Guadalajara Cartel coincides with the idea that it was actually a much less powerful group than that shown in television series.Benjamin T. The problem with this story, which has permeated throughout public opinion in Mexico and has been subsequently portrayed in series, movies and books, is that, essentially, it is false. How a drug-trafficking network that no-one referred to as a cartel during its alleged lifespan became one of the most ubiquitous benchmarks in the history of drug trafficking in Mexico?įélix Gallardo’s group, according to this narrative, provided the blueprint of its business model and organizational structure to what we now know to be the Sinaloa Cartel, the progeny of the Guadalajara Cartel. This is, in more than one sense of the word, the archetypal organization that carried out, knew and controlled everything. Until now.Īccording to the hegemonic narrative – first established by police forces in the United States and then picked up by bestsellers, newspapers, academic articles of dubious quality, and, years later, broadcasted around the world by Netflix – the alleged Guadalajara Cartel was, under the supervision of Sinaloa-born drug trafficker Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the first organization in Mexico capable of controlling cocaine imports and exports, as well as the majority of marijuana production around the country. Its omnipresence in our contemporary history is so pervasive that almost no-one has ever questioned the possibility of whether, in fact, it actually existed. Everyone in Mexico has heard of the Guadalajara Cartel ( Cartel de Guadalajara in Spanish), an organization that, from the beginning of the 1980’s and as part of an alleged alliance with high-ranking police officers and politicians, dominated, for almost a decade, the drug market in Mexico.
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