En México operaron 148 cárteles, 34 son brazos armados
La Prensa — Honduras
En México operaron 148 cárteles, 34 son brazos armados
La Prensa — Honduras (International Press) 2021 · Honduras Photo: SIPA / Associated Press
The Citation
La Prensa of Honduras picked up my count: 148 criminal groups in Mexico, 34 of them armed wings of larger cartels, framed within Central American security and the spillover into the Northern Triangle.
Photo: AFP via Getty Images
What the Article Reported
My count covers between 2018 and 2019, the handover from Peña Nieto to López Obrador: at least 148 criminal groups operating across Mexico, a snapshot of a security environment in transition.
The key ratio: about 6 brazos armados per criminal group on average. Quoted directly: “On average, per criminal group, we are counting six armed wings — those groups dedicated to inflicting violence.” The Sinaloa Cartel alone deploys 11 armed wings, the highest count in my dataset, a more dispersed, franchise-style structure than older coverage assumed.
Photo: Getty Images
For a Honduran outlet, leading with this figure carries regional weight: armed wings and splinter groups are exactly the actors most likely to spill into Central American transit corridors. The security environment shaping daily life in Honduras is, in part, downstream of the count I put on the page.