Arpegio recomienda "Polarization and Sustained Violence in Mexico's Cartel War" 3era Parte

Government Strategy in 2012

There is no indication of a major shift in the Mexican government's overarching security strategy for 2012; Calderon will continue to use the military against the cartels throughout the year (a new president will be elected in July, but Calderon's term does not conclude until the end of 2012). This strategy of taking out cartel leaders has resulted in the disruption of the cartel balance of power in the past, which tends to lead to more violence as groups scramble to fill the resultant power vacuum. Mexican operations may further disrupt that balance in 2012, but while government operations have broken apart some cartel organizations, the combination of military and law enforcement resources has been unable to dislodge cartel influence from the areas it targets. They can break specific criminal organizations, but the lucrative smuggling corridors into the United States will continue to exist, even after the organizations controlling them are taken down. And as long as the smuggling corridors exist, and provide access to so much money, other organizations will inevitably fight to assume control over them.

Some 45,000 Mexican troops are actively involved in domestic counter-cartel operations. These troops work alongside state and federal law enforcement officers and in some cases have replaced fired municipal police officers. They are spread across a large country with high levels of violence in most major cities, and their presence in these cities is essential for maintaining what security has been achieved.
While this number of troops represents only about a quarter of the overall Mexican army's manpower -- troops are often supplemented by deployments of Mexican marines -- it also represents the bulk of applicable Mexican military ground combat strength. Meager and poorly maintained reserve forces do not appear to be a meaningful supplemental resource.

In short, if the current conditions persist, it does not appear that the Mexican government can redeploy troops to conduct meaningful offensive operations in new areas of Mexico in 2012 without jeopardizing the gains it has already made. The government cannot eliminate the cartels any more than it can end the drug trade. The only way the Mexican government can bring the violence down to what would be considered an acceptable level is for it to allow one cartel group to become dominant throughout the country -- something that does not appear to be plausible in the near term -- or for some sort of truce to be reached between the country's two cartel hegemons, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Federation.

Such scenarios are not unprecedented. At one time the Guadalajara cartel controlled virtually all of Mexico's drug trade, and it was only the dissolution of that organization that led to its regional branches subsequently becoming what we now know as the Sinaloa Federation, AFO, VCF and CDG. There have also been periods of cartel truces in the past between the various regional cartel groups, although they tend to be short-lived.

With the current levels of violence, a government-brokered truce between Los Zetas and Sinaloa will be no easy task, given the level of animosity and mistrust that exists between the two organizations. This means that it is unlikely that such a truce will be brokered in 2012, but we expect to see more rhetoric in support of a truce as a way to reduce violence.

Leido en http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/