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Jan 27th
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Home Features Features New US report sheds light on Guadalajara’s criminal underworld

New US report sheds light on Guadalajara’s criminal underworld

Downtown Guadalajara, San Juan de Dios and Central Zapopan are “current or potential hotspots” for inter-gang violence, but the metropolitan area will remain in “relative calm” due to its low strategic value, according to a detailed report on the various drug gangs that operate at different levels in and around the city.

“Guadalajara Criminal Environment August 2012” is a 22-page study by Southern Pulse, an investigative organization founded in 2004 by journalist and author Samuel Logan, with a focus on security, politics, energy, and business in Latin America.

The report identifies Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas, as the only “tier-one” trans-national criminal organizations operating in Guadalajara and Jalisco. Although fierce rivals, both “are content with a non-confrontational coexistence in the GMA (Guadalajara metropolitan area),” the report posits.

The Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas are respectively allied with “tier-two” regional drug-trafficking organizations, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Milenio Cartel. These cartels often work as intermediaries, carrying out contracted work for their larger partners.

Below them in the narco food chain are a number of small “tier-three” gangs which deal in petty crimes such as theft, extortion, prostitution and street-level drug deals. Of these, the report identifies Wathside, Florencia 13 and Los Once/La Bajada Loca as the city’s three most notable gangs, operating respectively in the Libertad, Santa Cecilia and El Sauz neighborhoods.

The report suggests that the Milenio Cartel, acting at the behest of Los Zetas, was responsible for the 26 bodies dumped beside the Millennium Arches last November, as well as the 18 dismembered corpses left just off the Chapala highway in May.

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