Mexican authorities have recaptured Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, and the media have had a field day, but as with his escape, Mexico's cartel landscape remains relatively unchanged. Fissures and infighting among drug cartels are redefining the drug trade. Stratfor categorizes Mexican organized criminal groups by the distinct geographic areas from which they emerged, and it is clear that the trajectories of Mexico's three regional organized crime umbrellas are set.
Since the late 1980s demise of the Guadalajara cartel, which controlled drug trade routes into the United States through most of Mexico, Mexican cartels have been dividing into more geographically compact, regional crime networks. This trend, which we call "Balkanization," has continued for more than two decades and has affected all of the major crime groups in Mexico, including Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation, which until recently were the country's two most powerful cartels.
Although Mexico's many transnational criminal organizations and powerful street gangs continued to wage violent conflict against one another in 2015, the number of homicides nationwide in 2015 was comparable to that of 2014. Additionally, homicides have dropped each year since 2012. The lack of a substantial rise in reported homicides is largely due to major criminal turf wars moving away from heavily populated urban locations. Although it leads to more criminal groups, the continued Balkanization of Mexican organized crime has also led to smaller groups with fewer resources and a shorter geographic reach that are less capable of sustaining high-profile violent acts in the face of pressure by federal troops.
As Mexican organized crime continues to decentralize, the nationwide conflicts between competing crime groups such as Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel will continue to fade as turf wars become more isolated in smaller geographic areas. In other words, apparent divisions and subsequent turf wars in areas such as northern Baja California and southern Baja California Sur states do not necessarily serve as indicators of escalating violence elsewhere. Violent turf wars between La Linea and the Sinaloa cartel in rural areas of western Chihuahua continue, but security has improved, and there has been a reduction in violence in places such as Juarez despite persistent competition between crime groups.
The decentralization of organized crime-related violence will likely continue in 2016. Even Los Zetas will inevitably face the same breakdown as all other major crime groups. Homicides in Mexico could begin to escalate in 2016 as internal conflicts within Los Zetas and its rivalries with other crime groups grow. But such an uptick would be unlikely to last.
