While cartels have risen and fallen, power is shared today between a handful of strong cartels distributed across the country. One estimate from the U.S. military indicates that these groups control one third of Mexico, with some parts completely lost from government control.

Ioan Grillo is one of a small handful of independent journalists providing thorough, English-language coverage of the Narco War (I highly recommend his Substack). He estimates control is roughly distributed according to the map below. 

The groups that the United States designated as FTOs are some of the principal players in Mexico today. They are described below.

Sinaloa Cartel

The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the oldest of the Mexico’s current cartels having formed out of the Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s. It remains one of the most powerful drug organizations in the world. It is more federated than centralized. For decades, it was largely overseen by two men—Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada—who shared power and profit. After American agents extradited El Chapo to the United States in 2017, control of his faction fell to a group of his sons (“Los Chapitos”). One of the minor sons betrayed El Mayo in July 2024 by turning him over to American agents. The Sinaloa Cartel has since been in a state of civil war that has largely consumed the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG)

The CJNG is the new kid on the block in Mexican cartels, and it has spent several years making its presence felt. It now rivals the Sinaloa Cartel as Mexico’s largest and most dangerous. Like the Sinaloa Cartel, it operates internationally. 

Although it has a singular leader, CJNG is not centralized. Rather, it operates a franchise model—smaller, local cartels ally with CJNG and receive support in exchange. The central organization is under the direct control of one man, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, who holds the entire organization together. The DEA estimates that CJNG has 19,000 members. The group has made its name by being extremely militaristic and violent. It rides around in armored vehicles, pushes propaganda videos of its sicarios (i.e., hitmen) in military uniforms, and is quick to pick fights with rivals.

Recently, Mexico was horrified to discover a CJNG training camp, where the group had taken kidnapped young men and forced them to become sicarios. The camp had cremation ovens, bones, and piles of discarded clothes—presumably of young men who failed the group’s selection process.

Cartel del Gulfo

The Gulf Cartel largely controls the Mexican state of Tamaulipas on the other side of the border from Texas’s Rio Grand Valley. The group has long held that territory, home to some of the most lucrative and hotly contested drug routes in Mexico. In the 1990s, its leader recruited a large number of veterans from the special forces of the Mexican Army to be his personal military force. This group, known as Los Zetas, was predictably brutal. Eventually it became too much for the Gulf Cartel to control.

Cartel del Noreste

After Los Zetas split from the Gulf Cartel, it went on a binge of violence contesting almost every rival cartel in its orbit. Eventually, its leaders were largely killed or arrested. The largest remaining faction settled along the border in the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo. The Northeast Cartel still controls that territory, where it predominantly engages in protection rackets rather than drug smuggling. It remains a notable regional force.

La Nueva Familia Michoacana

This group controls a portion of territory in central Mexico. Its previous iteration, La Familia Michoacana, was a dominant force in Mexico until around 2010. Today, its relationship with that original group is unclear, and it dedicates much of its resources to resistant the encroachment of CJNG from the North.

Carteles Unidos

Like La Neuva Familia, Cartels Unidos spends much of its resources defending against CJNG. Cartels Unidos includes both local cartels and citizen-organized “self-defense forces.” These groups often engage in criminal activity much like the cartels do. Among the groups that the U.S. designated as FTOs, Cartels Unidos has the smallest footprint and least history of criminal impact.