When envisioning cartels, Tony Montana’s violent, drug-lord lifestyle is what comes to mind for many: a distant stylized life of crime and deception far removed from us. And while Scarface is an entertaining film, its depiction of cartels is a perfect example of Hollywood’s misleading portrayal of an increasingly real problem throughout the world.
In the last decade, Mexico has been torn apart by the rise of numerous cartels. Over 60,000 people have been killed as the Mexican military, police force, cartels and vigilantes continue to fight one another. With the introduction of a new President three years ago, Mexico saw a shift in cartel power when two major cartel leaders were arrested. However, with the leaders gone, cartels fight for territory, with the byproduct being an increase in extortion and kidnapping. So what can the Mexican government do to prevent cartel crimes?
Thetus decided to take a closer look at the nature of cartels and how they operate. With Savanna, our all-source analysis software, and the powerful data analysis capability of IBM’s Analyst’s Notebook, we investigated cartel operations and tactics to determine potential prevention strategies.
To begin, we built a Crumbnet, Savanna’s narrative analysis tool, to outline cartel alliances in Mexico, focusing on relationships and connections between the 7 major cartels. Savanna’s dynamic Occurrence dossiers helped us gather existing information on each Mexican cartel and its relationships, with connections to related events and participants. Through Savanna’s powerful Search tool, we found an existing Analyst’s Notebook Chart that outlined the leadership change in the Los Antrax cartel and its connections to the Sinaloa cartel. We then uploaded Instagram hashtag data to the Map tool to get a geospatial view of the presence and influence of Los Antrax in Mexico. At this point, it was clear that the connections between cartels and the consequences of these relationships required further investigation, so we built a report in Savanna’s Note tool to share with team members and send to investigators for further action.
View each step of our cartel analysis in the demo below.
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