In Mexico, in not all locations but some, the Cartels or Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO's) are sometimes seen as folk heroes or at least an existing force in a Country who has a long history of one group or another subjugating the population.
Currently there is an effort by the new Administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and the Cartels to control the news media reports of continued violence, be it Cartel on Cartel, Cartel on Mexican law enforcement or military, or murders of prominent Mexicans like journalists or politicians.
While Mexico, especially the Northern border adjacent to the U.S. states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is basically a failed state, there is no immediate danger of the Cartels exporting violence into the U.S. in any large degree. In fact, there have only been a couple of high profile cases where Cartels conducted murders inside the U.S. The DTO's know that the U.S. is a sleeping giant and could bring a lot of resources to bear on the problem if violence impacting American citizens.
However, any American collapse, be it hyper-inflation, death of the dollar, economic collapse, large scale terrorist attack and/or total infrastructure failure would note only affect Mexico as well, but would more severely degrade the Mexican Government's ability to fight the Cartels, than it would the Cartels ability to continue the status quo. In fact, any U.S. collapse and the follow on repercussions on Mexico would emboldened the Cartels.
Mexican cartels are highly armed having automatic weapons (usually AK's and M-4 variants), rocket propelled grenade launchers (RPG-7's), belt and box fed machine guns, hand grenades and .50 caliber sniper rifles. And, contrary to liberal media reports, the major supply train for this weaponry is through theft, barter and gift from the Mexican and Guatemalan militaries as well as through clandestine importation through Central America.
The often media reported links between the Cartels and Islamic Terrorists groups and foreign countries hostile towards the U.S. (Cuba, Venezula) is not good. One of the indications of this would be an increasing sophisication and use of explosive devices which are not widely used in Mexico as they are in the Middle East. This capability would wrech havoc on the U.S. Law Enforcemnt and presumably the U.S. military deployingto the border areas, if the Cartels began overt operations, in the U.S. during a large collapse scenario.
One of Rawles' last novels he integrated a story of a Houston based Street gang using their existing organization and resources to basically grow a small army and become maruders through Texas and New Mexico. This is not all that far fetched. All of the Mexican based Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) have links to U.S. based street gangs. This is common sense for the DTO's as they add resources who are normally U.S. citizens, are geographically knowledgeable and understand the U.S. based Law enforcement agencies and their capabilities.
U.S. based street gangs, to me, is the bigger threat. Maybe you have heard of some of these gangs: Barrio Aztecas; Latin Kings; Mexican Mafia; Mara Salvatrucha MS-13; Surenos; Tango Blast; Texas Syndicate. All of these have varying degrees of affiliation and loyalty to the major Mexican Cartels: Gulf Cartel; Los Zetas; Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Cartel; Sinaloa Cartel; and the Tijuana Cartel - which are the cartels who control the northern Mexican border.
In a collapse, it is probable that the U.S. based street gangs would move to control the U.S. urban areas cutting off the Cartels from resources that they do not want to share.
My thoughts above are not considering Street Gangs and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs who are not normally associated with Mexican Cartels. These would include: Hells Angels; Bandidos; Mongols; Bloods; Crips, Gangster Disciples; Vice Lords; and others. And still we haven't included gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood and their various off shoots and the minority ethnic Asian gangs.
So what can we do? We can can understand the threat based on our geographic area. We can prepare well, develop a organized survival team and stay on top of indicators of threat groups operating in or near our areas.
