SUMMARY

The outbreak of fighting between different drug-trafficking gangs in Mexico can be understood against the background of changes in the Mexican political landscape during the previous decades. During the 1980s, there was a loose network of drug smugglers who controlled separate territories, known as "plazas", which they used primarily for drug trafficking. Governmental authority was highly centralized under PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) rule and by bribing high ranking officials the drug smugglers could conduct their operations largely uninterrupted by the authorities.

When single-party rule started to give way to opposition parties in the late 1990s and early 2000s these networks and relationships were transformed, to the advantage of some actors but to the disadvantage of others. The transition from a single-party rule in the 1990s coincided with a strengthening of the cartels and a weakening of the federal police institutions. Since the early 2000s the Mexican military, itself institutionally weak, was suffering from high levels of desertion while simultaneously assuming an increasing role as the enforcer of the government’s counter-narcotics campaign. In the 2000s drug cartels started to fight each other for control over territory and previous alliances as well whole cartels routinely fell apart.

The Jalisco Cartel New Generation Cartel and the Los Caballeros Templarios Cartel, formed in 2010 and 2011. The proximity of these two cartels led to fighting and in 2012. The Jalisco Cartel New Generation and Los Caballeros Templarios fought extensively along the border between the states of Jalisco and Michoacán. Their fighting also occasionally spilled over into Guanajuato State.

The Michoacán coast and its deep-water port at Lázaro Cardenas has long been a major prize for drug traffickers who require precursor materials, which arrive via ship from Asia, for the production of methamphetamine. With the rise in the price of methamphetamine, sometimes reported to be second in value only to heroin, the corridor has seen an increase in its strategic significance.

The non-state conflict between the Jalisco Cartel New Generation and Los Caballeros Templarios is first included in UCDP data in 2012. In July of that year, fighting between the two cartels had resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths.