Unlike other organized crime groups that tend to concentrate in a range
of illegal activities, the Colombian and Mexican cartels focus their efforts
primarily, if not exclusively, on the drug business. The cartels have merged
corporate and criminal cultures more successfully than other groups, developing
an industry that is based on sound management principles that include specialization
and division of labor.
The main Colombian cartels are centered around various tight knit families
in Medellin and Cali. The main drug trafficking families in Columbia control
large production and distribution networks with vast agricultural
enterprises dispersed throughout the Andes mountain range. This includes
multiple laboratories and production facilities that generate over nine
hundred metric tons of cocaine per year and a distribution network that
moves raw materials and finished product by plane, ship, and every other
means imaginable to destinations on four continents. The cartels also manage
an extensive marketing operation that focuses on the United States and increasingly
major European cities. These groups maintain a sophisticated financial and
accounting system to keep track of thousands of tons of product and billions
of dollars in profit. They then launder the proceeds in the financial and
banking networks and repatriate some of the laundered funds. Much of these
funds are then invested in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
A 2,000 mile border with the United States provides Mexican organized
crime groups with a unique geographic advantage, allowing for access to
the world's largest consumer of drugs. Somewhere between 50 and 70 percent
of the South American cocaine that enters the U.S., as well as 80 percent
of the foreign grown marijuana that is consumed, is transported through
Mexico. The Mexican cartels have also become involved in opium poppy cultivation
and heroin production, currently producing 20 to 30 percent of the heroin
consumed in the U.S. Further, these criminal organizations are increasingly
dominating the manufacturering, sale, and distribution of methamphetamine,
Ecstasy, and illegal steroids.
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