Origins

The Mexican Mafia got its start in 1957 in the prisons of California. Mexican criminals, fearing for their safety, banded together for mutual protection. Gradually their group became more and more powerful in the prison system, controlling the flow of illegal weapons and drugs to prisoners. They began to call themselves the Mexican Mafia out of admiration for La Cosa Nostra. Eventually as members got out of prison and continued their illegal activities the group developed a presence on the outside. Soon they had formed alliances with criminal groups in Mexico which helped with their primary trade, the smuggling and sale of drugs. They are still a powerful force in many prisons as well and recruit most of their members from there. Potential members must be sponsored by an existing member and voted on by the rest of the gang in that prison. The members are required to kill on command without hesitation with this capacity for extreme violence being carried over to activities in the outside world. In the prisons they compete with another Hispanic gang, La Nuestra Familia. Ironically the Mexican Mafia's ally is the Aryan Brotherhood which has links to outlaw motorcycle gangs. La Nuestra Familia on the other hand is allied with the Black Guerilla Family, a Maoist oriented gang for blacks.

Today's Mexican Drug Cartels

Once they were merely known as "mules" for Colombia's powerful cocaine cartels. Today, Mexico's narcotics traffickers have grown into drug lords in their own right, and the front line of the drug war has shifted from the Andean jungles to America's front door. Mexican gangs run their own distribution networks in the United States, and they produce most of the methamphetamine used north of the border. They have even bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine directly from producers in Bolivia and Peru. Thomas Constantine, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told a congressional committee this year: "These sophisticated drug syndicate groups from Mexico have eclipsed organized crime groups from Colombia as the premier law enforcement threat facing the United States today." Because of the power shift, drug related violence and corruption regularly spills over the U.S. Mexico border, threatening historically sensitive bilateral relations. Errol Chavez, DEA special agent-in-charge in San Diego, said, "They still haven't reached the sophistication of the Colombian networks of old. But unless we stop this new threat, we are going to have a big problem next door." Mexico's drug gangs have tainted high government posts in a developing nation of some 93 million people that has recently teetered on the edge of political and economic crisis. American lawmakers cited that corruption in an unsuccessful fight to block certification of Mexico as a cooperating partner in anti-narcotics efforts. U.S. intelligence analysts say that from heavily guarded homes south of the border, the Mexican kingpins use pagers, encrypted phones and fax machines to operate new distribution networks in America's heartland. Documents filed in a federal trial this year in Miami against four alleged managers of the Cali cocaine cartel and two of its lawyers map the growth of the Mexicans' role in the drug trade. An affidavit says the Colombians shifted their routes from the Caribbean and Florida to Mexico after the cartel's top representative in Miami was arrested in 1992. It says the Cali cartel worked out a deal to use Mexico's Juarez cartel as a middleman for smuggling cocaine into the United States. The Mexican cartels do, at times, work together perhaps to lesser extent now. There is evidence that the gangs employed corrupt officials to attack their rivals. Fifteen people with suspected drug ties disappeared in January in Juarez. Witnesses said the kidnappers had "INCD" on their black uniforms the Spanish acronym for the now-defunct federal anti-drug agency. Many of the traffickers still work together on big shipments, taking advantage of the porous 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and increased commercial traffic under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to ship hundreds of tons into the United States every year. U.S. drug officials say up to 70 percent of cocaine entering the U.S. comes through Mexico. U.S. officials can search only about one of every ten vehicles crossing the border and just a fraction of cargo containers. In the United States, the Mexicans are beginning to muscle in in the Colombians' East Coast strongholds. They have also had their own long-time distribution networks in the West and the Midwest. The Mexican cartels move toward independence began several years ago when the Colombians began paying Mexican gang leader Juan Garcia Abrego with cocaine to smuggle loads of the drug for them. Convicted in Texas of trafficking and money laundering, he is now serving 11 life prison terms. Other Mexican traffickers are now routinely paid with cocaine, which they distribute in the United States and in Mexico. They also produce and market their own marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine. U.S. intelligence analysts say that now deceased Mexican drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes bypassed the Colombians several times to buy cocaine from producers in Bolivia and Peru. While the Mexicans will never match the Colombians' ability to produce cocaine, they can now compete for overall profits. Phil Jordan, a former DEA agent and retired director of the El Paso Intelligence Centre (EPIC), said: "To some degree, the Mexicans will always need the Colombians to monopolize the cocaine market. But profit-wise, they could totally eliminate the Colombian connection without suffering too much."

Structure

In America there is a general who is in overall control, with several godfathers as underlings. These men control lower rank members known in descending order of importance as captains, lieutenants, and soldados/soldiers. In Mexico the mafia is an extended family whose leaders are related by blood and marriage. There are estimated to be up to 25 families of anywhere up to 3000 members each and like other mafias often battle with each other.