As a former recipient of marijuana and cocaine from Mexico, it is great to finally see who was sending the stuff up here! Only question is, was it the Gulf Cartel or the Sinaloa Federation that was the usual source for north Texas? I would guess probably both, with the latter gradually gaining the upper hand?
I assume all of the red is the Sinaloa executing a Risk-style takeover of the map?

Mexican drug organizations are not “cartels” in the Colombian sense. My limited counternarcotics experience there ended in early ‘97, but at that time what made Mexican drug gangs unique was their willingness to cooperate. As drugs moved across the country, they passed from the hands of one organization to another, until they reached the “gate keepers” on the border, who passed them through to the U.S. Yes, there was a deadly rivalry between two major organizations, but otherwise, it was cooperation. Anyone who applies the Colombian template to Mexico will seriously misunderstand the dimensions of the challenge. Colombia’s “ungoverned spaces” (a misnomer, by the way) are the legacy of “la violencia” and subsequent guerrilla wars. Mexico is governed, albeit badly in some key areas.

There are certainly places where key people are on the take, as well as places where the authorities have been intimidated into silence or cooperation. (Nuevo Laredo comes to mind). Back in the 80’s, the Mexican government viewed drugs as an American problem. Once they realized that weapons could flow south by the very conduits that took drugs north, they began to get more cooperative. Yet, they face the same problems U.S. authorities do. There is no “war on drugs”. It is a law enforcement campaign, which by its nature requires different rules of engagement. This is then compounded by the nature of Mexican politics and the federal nature of their republic. They can send in the Army before U.S. authorities would be able to do so, but the military is a last resort, and is only used after all poltiical and judicial attempts have failed.