Sinaloa Cartel Essay

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The Sinaloa Cartel, which was formerly led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, maintains the highest presence and impact in the United States. The U.S. law enforcement agencies like Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have described this cartel as the oldest, largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere with annual earnings estimating in the billions. Mexican authorities have been attempting to combat drug cartels for over a decade with limited success. Researchers state that more than 100,000 people, including politicians, students, and journalists, who have been killed by drug cartels. Today, Sinaloa controls almost half of the territory in Mexico. After the Guadalajara cartel split, Sinaloa took one half …show more content…

drug addiction and logistics, in other words, the means of transporting bulk amounts of drugs (Mishkov, 2015; McGahan, 2013). “El Chapo” was able to successfully smuggled cocaine - 35 percent of cocaine made in Colombia is controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel - from Colombia to Mexico and other drugs from Mexico to the U.S. via air, land, water and underground tunnels. The Sinaloa cartel controls distribution routes through Chicago and other big cities in the US. In addition, there are four factors for the Sinaloa Cartel to target Chicago as the top port or transportation hub. First, it is transportation; Chicago is a day’s drive of 70 percent of the nation’s population and it is crisscrossed by six major interstate highways and six major railway lines (McGahan, 2013). Next, is the ethnic makeup in the Chicago metro area - there is a large Hispanic immigrant population, which makes it easy for traffickers to “blend in.” The third factor is the huge size of the market and demand; there has been a sales increase of Methamphetamine and Heroin. Lastly, gang culture in Chicago and law enforcement officials have stated that these gangs make it easy to meet the drug demands (McGahan, …show more content…

In his hometown Zamora Michoacán, México, Alberto Cornejo grew up Catholic and always “marveled at the beauty of the Gothic cathedral” (Marosi & Gerber, 2016). However, Cornejo and other people not only have long questioned the constant remodeling of these cathedrals, but have also argued that the Catholic Church may condemn them in public, but “collude” with the cartels (McManus, 2016). It is a challenge that the Catholic Church has struggled to face, especially as few have “given in to traffickers, either cowed or complicit in taking tainted money” (Marosi & Gerber, 2016). On the other hand, there is a “high cost” for those local priests who have faced the drug cartels. For instance, Father Gregorio Lopez, begun wearing a bulletproof vest during mass because he received numerous death threats after speaking out against the drug cartels (Marosi & Gerber, 2016). In addition, in May 1993, at an airport in Guadalajara, gunmen in three vehicles opened fired at a white Mercury Grand Marquis. These gunmen killed Juan Jesus Cardinal Posadas Ocampo, his drivers, and five other individuals (McManus, 2016). Since then, 35 priests have been killed, therefore, Mexico has replaced Colombia as the world’s most dangerous place to be a priest (McManus,

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