International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 90

Criminal Networks: The Forgotten Actors of International Politics
diminishing demand, addiction is rapidly built and our consumerist society has
trivialized its consumption. 8 Production and transport costs are minimal, margins
are huge. A kilo of cocaine is sold $1,600 in Colombia, $30,000 in Senegal,
and $77,000 in the UK (UNODC 2016). A gram of cocaine is sold $61 in Lisbon
and $166 in Luxembourg. UNODC and Mafia experts also agree that cocaine is
increasingly cut in the main distribution markets, meaning that profits are multiplicated
(UNODC 2016). Roberto Saviano points out that in 2012, a person investing
US$1,000 in Apple stocks, the best performance of financial markets that
year, obtained $1,670 at the end of the year, while a criminal investing US$1,000 in
cocaine possibly acquired $182,000, a hundred times more (Saviano 2014).
The origins and actors of this success story illustrate Mafias’ economic power
and comparative advantage in a globalized market economy. In Mexico, during
the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. army, in need of more morphine, asked Mexican
farmers to grow more opium, a product imported in the region by Chinese workers
in the late nineteenth century. Felix Gallardo, aka El Padrino, a former judiciary
police officer, quickly became the main actor of heroin trafficking in Mexico
and created a highly efficient criminal centralized system, determining uniform
negotiations’ modalities between drug producers, intermediaries, and dealers.
Newly born Mexican cartels quickly attempted to diversify from heroin and marijuana
production and distribution, by climbing the cocaine trafficking food chain
by becoming indispensable partners to the Colombian cartels. In the late 1980s,
the Cartel de Medellin controlled over 80% of the cocaine trafficking on Earth
(Saviano 2014). An agreement was soon reached, as Escobar’ boats and submarines
were increasingly intercepted by the DEA on the Caribbean route to Florida,
he needed a new secured route to smuggle cocaine to the United States. Mexican
cartels’ ascension could start and 25 years later bosses like Joaquin Guzman Lora,
aka El Chapo, would become one of Mexico’s richest billionaires and U.S. enemy
number one (Woody 2016).
Following El Padrino’ arrest and the fall of its centralized system, a lack of
overarching leadership led to a bloody territorial war between cartels. However,
the human and logistical costs of this drug war do not seem to be stopping the
progression of Mexican cartels, which have expanded all over the United States,
Australia, South America, and Africa, and are at the forefront of new illicit activity
such as methamphetamine trafficking (Suo 2016). Mexican cartels’ current target
seems to be Europe, where 80% of cocaine trafficking is owed by the Ndrangheta,
the other major global player in this business (Sergi 2015). The gateway to Europe
for Mexican cartels is Spain, Mafias Eldorado since the fall of General Franco’s
regime (Resa-Nestares 1999). Thanks to their control of the Guinean narco-States
and their alliance with Galician Barons, the Mexican cartels started to expand in
Spain around 2007 (Nealer 2013). The seizure of 3.4 tons of cocaine in the port of
8 Cocaine has evocating nicknames: haven dust, blow, take-away, devil dandruffs, or Florida snow.
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