En México hay 148 grupos criminales: CIDE
El Financiero — Bloomberg TV
En México hay 148 grupos criminales: CIDE
El Financiero — Bloomberg TV (Television Interview) November 15, 2020 · Mexico Photo: El Financiero / Bloomberg
El Número que el Gobierno no Tenía
In this El Financiero — Bloomberg TV segment, I led with my headline finding: 148 criminal groups active across Mexican territory at the close of 2019, the first systematic count of its kind, built from open-source intelligence, press communiqués, and quantitative text analysis.
I also surfaced 17 newly identified groups that complicate the standard cartel taxonomy: “Identificamos 17 grupos que van desde exmiembros de cárteles de la droga, como el CJNG, hasta expolicías.” The actors fueling regional violence don’t all come from the criminal world; many come from the institutions meant to suppress them.
Un Problema de Fragmentación
This early-pandemic broadcast landed my 148-group figure on national TV just as the federal government was claiming organized crime was under control. The number is the rebuttal: Mexico doesn’t have a “cartel problem” of a handful of large actors, it has a fragmentation problem of dozens of regional cells in fluid alliances, with real consequences for how the state defines its targets and how violence spreads.