Mexico's Drugwar Violence Continues Despite Arrests Of Senior Cartel Leaders

Over the last few days Mexican authorities have detained the leaders of both the Juarez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, groups that have historically controlled drug trafficking in Ciudad Juarez and eastern Mexico. Mexican agents captured the Juarez Cartel’s alleged leader Jesús Salas Aguayo and the Gulf Cartel’s boss José Tiburcio Hernández Fuentes on April 17. The arrests continue a pattern of top-level narco arrests during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, a strategy that echoes the “kingpin” takedown tactics implemented by his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. As cartel leadership structures have crumbled, security has improved in former turf war zones such as Ciudad Juarez, Monterrey, and Acapulco. Narco violence has been largely pushed to urban peripheries and into the mountains far away from cities.