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.
The Juarez Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are two of the major drug trafficking groups in Mexico, and the clashes between them have caused thousands of deaths since 2004. The Juarez Cartel has since the late 1980s controlled the drug trade in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua State. Ciudad Juárez has been one of the most important border cities along the main drug trafficking routes from Mexico to the U.S, and has as such been the scene of bloody turf battles between different groups. The Juarez Cartel was allied with the Sinaloa Cartel for many years, but when Rodolfo Carillo Fuentes from the Juarez Cartel was murdered in 2004 and El Chapo Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, was suspected to be behind the killing, the alliance began to break down. The final break came in 2007 when acting Sinaloa leader Ismael Zambada refused to pay taxes to the Juarez Cartel for smuggling drugs through their territory. In 2008 the streets of Ciudad Juarez were ravaged by fights between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel, and since then the violence in Juarez has reached extreme levels. In 2010, official reports estimated that 36% of the over 30 000 deaths attributed to drug-related violence since 2006 resulted from the Juarez-Sinaloa conflict.
Most of the fighting has been carried out by the cartels' enforcement gangs, La Linea and Los Aztecas fighting for the Juarez Cartel, and Los Mexicles, Artistas Asesinos and Gente Nueva fighting for the Sinaloa Cartel.
Both sides have used methods such as torture, decapitations, and mutilations of the victims' bodies, but regular shootouts have also taken place. Threatening messages to the group's leaders were often attached to the victims' bodies or found nearby. In July 2010, the Juarez Cartel used a car bomb for the first time, and reports warned of a new dimension of terror in Ciudad Juarez.
In mid-2010, reports said that the Juarez Cartel had lost the war in Ciudad Juarez to the Sinaloa Cartel. But although the Juarez Cartel has been weakened in recent years, violence continued unabated. 2011 saw decreasing levels of violence, but Ciudad Juarez continued to be the most violent city in Mexico.
Fighting continued between the Juarez Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel in 2012 throughout Chihuahua including in Ciudad Juarez, the fighting in Ciudad Juarez at a significantly reduced level than in years past. In 2012 inter-cartel violence resulted in hundreds of deaths in the city but this represented a de-escalation of the conflict when compared to the thousands killed annually in years past. Still violence and kidnappings continued throughout the years as cartels may have shifted their focus towards extorting the local population in order to gain money and power through ways other than drug trafficking. Since 2013 violence has spread to the southern areas of Chihuahua state, for instance the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo has been severely hit by the violence.
The non-state conflict between the Juarez Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel was first included in UCDP data in 2004. In August of that year, clashes had resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths.
