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 last decades. During the 1980s, there was a loose network of drug smugglers controlling their own "plaza" for drug trafficking. Governmental authority was highly centralized under PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Institutional Revolutionary Party) rule and by bribing high officials, the drug smugglers could control their businesses without getting interrupted by the authorities. When single-party rule started to give way to local opposition these networks and relationships were transformed, to the advantage of some actors but to the disadvantage of others. The drug cartels started to fight each other for control over territory and previous alliances fell apart.
Los Zetas, with its origin in the Gulf Cartel, had experienced few instances of infighting within the cartel compared to its parent organization. However, as several leaders of Los Zetas were arrested and extradited to the US, the cartel became more unstable and struggles for power within the organization or over different geographical areas increased. Arguably, the most devastating arrests was that of Los Zetas’ leader Miguel Treviño Morales in July 2013, as well as the arrest of his successor Omar Treviño Morales in March 2015.
The two Los Zetas factions, the Cártel del Noreste faction, and the Old School Zetas faction, got involved in a deadly fight for the control over territory and drug trade in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, in the beginning of 2016. One of the most common methods for the factions to use in their fight against each other was to leave the mutilated and decapitated bodies of their opponents on the streets of Ciudad Victoria alongside with threatening messages, so-called narcomantas.
The non-state conflict between Los Zetas – Cártel del Noreste faction and Los Zetas – Old School Zetas faction was first included in UCDP data in 2016. In July that year, fighting between the two factions for the control of Ciudad Victoria city resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths.
