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 the 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 fell apart.
A fracturing of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel led to a series of conflicts between cartels in 2010 and 2011 and was at the root of the Cartel Independiente de Acapulco - La Barredora fighting. Both medium size cartels battled for control over the prized port, drug distribution and logistics center in the port of Acapulco.
The conflict resulted in the weakening of the Cartel Independiente de Acapulco by the end of 2011. However, the conflict between the Cartel Independiente de Acapulco and La Barredora reignited in 2015 which lead to a significant increase of the drug-related homicides that took place in Acapulco.
By 2016 several other cartels had made advantages into Acapulco and the violence became too intricate to be able to ascribe it to certain dyads. However, it was still clear that both the Cartel Independiente de Acapulco and La Barredora continued to have a certain level of control over Acapulco's drug trade and a heavy involvement in the violence that took place in the area.
The non-state conflict between the Cartel Independiente de Acapulco and La Barredora is first included in UCDP data in 2011. In August of that year, clashes between the two groups had resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths.
