BACKGROUND: Mexico's drug cartels

Nov 16, 2011, 10:04 GMT

Mexico City - Seven main cartels and a handful of 'cartelitos' compete for control of drug production and smuggling routes in and out of Mexico. With alliances in constant flux, the cartels' own turf battles and blood feuds are thought to account for many of the more than 40,000 lives lost since 2006.

- The original cartel: Mexico's cartels were born in the 1980s when Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias El Padrino (The Godfather), a former policeman and bodyguard for the Sinaloa state governor, became the Mexican point man for Colombia's Medellin cartel. Gallardo later founded his own empire, Mexico's original drug cartel, by shipping Sinaloa-produced marijuana and heroin to the US alongside Colombian cocaine.

- The war begins: After Gallardo's arrest in 1989, his deputies divvied up the operation, founding local cartels in cities and regions along the US border. A generation later, the successors of these cartels are at war, starting with the Sinaloa cartel and archrivals the Zetas.

- The Sinaloa cartel: Thought to be Mexico's largest, it commands most of Mexico's Pacific coast and trafficking routes across the country's entire north, as well as territory in Central and South America. Sinaloa boss Joaquin 'El Chapo' (Shorty) Guzman is Interpol's most wanted man. This year, Forbes magazine named Guzman 55th on its list of the world's most powerful people, and 10th on its list of Mexican billionaires.

- The Zetas: Founded as the Gulf cartel's private army but independent since a 2010 split, the Zetas have rapidly expanded operations from the Gulf coast over nearly the entire country and into Central America. They've diversified into kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking, and built a reputation for extraordinary brutality.

- The other players: The Gulf cartel, the Juarez (Carillo Fuentes) cartel, the Tijuana (Arellano Felix) cartel, the Beltran Leyva cartel and the Knights Templar control smatterings of territory and trafficking routes throughout Mexico. Their shifting alliances and rivalries - with each other, with the larger Sinaloa cartel and Zetas, and with small local 'cartelitos' - continue to fuel the drug war's violence.