#crime #mexicancartels #cartels

The drug game is bigger and faster than you imagine.

For more than a decade, Mexican cartels have become drug managers, and today their invisible hand indirectly negotiates and coordinates the different gangs of the continent towards a single objective: the shadowy sale of narcotics.

The game no longer starts in Mexico, but in South America, specifically here, in the vast fields of Colombia and the jungles of Peru and Bolivia. These 3 locations produce the most coca, a crop more precious than gold. They transport this treasure by secret routes to Ecuador and Venezuela, two key routes for the drug's destination.

From there, the shipments are sent by aircraft to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. From that moment on, the drug follows different land and sea routes to the west, center, and east of the United States, the main consumer of the product.

The sophisticated coordination of this entire process meant a business of close to 33 billion dollars for Mexican cartels in 2018. Since then, the figure has only increased, and with so much money on the table, the cartels have ventured into a new game on a global scale: money laundering.

Today, US authorities are overwhelmed trying to track the money coming from the cartels' illicit businesses, and every day they ask the same question over and over again: How do Cartels Launder $70 Million a Day Without a Trace?

📚 Sources: https://fullsendmedia.notion.site/Mex...