So, the cartel is getting an entire Sureno gang's turf for drug sales, and la Eme is getting...a cut of the profits? When, 10 years ago, the Sureno gang on that turf took home the profits from that neighborhood minus their tribute upstairs? Seems the Sureno gangs on these turfs weren't thought of when this agreement was made. Thus, still looks like a game changer.

Well, to say an entire turf might be a bit extreme. Some gang turfs can be pretty big, there's going to be some piasas selling, doesn't mean they have the entire turf to themselves though.

I could remember when one of the Eme Bosses of Florencia 13, Arturo Castellano, sent out a letter to his gang telling them to leave the piasas alone, that he's tired of hearing about them being abused, even told them to "get a job" instead.

Cocaine and heroin have been illegal for over 100 years. What makes you think this is going to happen now all of a sudden?

Like I said, it's in only in some neighborhoods that cartel doesn't use Carnales and Camaradas as middle men, but they use their own people for the drugs. As far as calling the shots? EME does that, not the cartels. I think that a carnal who's locked up in the SHU and knows that he's never getting out, figures it's more important that he can issue a murder than get some money in commissary. Not saying it's the same case with everyone, but hey, I believe most are mainly about power and not money, because they can't use the money either way.


As far as EME-cartels relationship goes? Jose "Bat" Marquez had/has strong connections and tried to recruit other carnales in deep with the cartels, so they can get cheaper drugs. David Barron Corona was used as a bodyguard for the leaders of Tijuana cartel before he was killed in a shoot out, protecting the leaders.

Sure, some gangs have branched out into other things at times - identity theft, sex trafficking, weapons trafficking, etc. But you can look at the vast majority of cases involving street gangs, prison gangs, and OMG's. Virtually across the board their core business, often their only business, revolves around the drug trade.



"Not sure if there's any direct evidence of the cartels being involved in that..."

So why mention it?

It's not that we haven't seen cases of political and police corruption involving Hispanic OC groups. The Cuban Corporation and certain Latino areas of New Jersey had this. But it was on a limited scale and not the kind of institutionalized corruption that the Mafia was able to take advantage of. That kind of corruption, at least in relation to organized crime, doesn't exist in the US anymore. Law enforcement is entirely different now and there is much more transparency in politics.



The parallel only goes as far as alcohol and drugs. Have we seen cartels here in the US become diversified like the Mafia did, ie not only being involved in narcotics but gambling, loansharking, extortion, fraud, labor racketeering, infiltration of legitimate businesses, etc?

The answer is no.

In Mexico itself we have seen the Zetas and some smaller cartels diversify into other things like kidnapping, extortion, immigrant smuggling, etc. But Chapo reportedly kept his Sinaloa group for doing this, choosing to focus on drug trafficking alone. Easier to do when you have the biggest slice of the pie.



So let me get this straight. We've seen far more sophisticated, far more powerful and connected, and far richer DTO's in the past not be able to duplicate the kind of wide-ranging influence the Mafia has had, but MS-13 is going to come along and somehow accomplish this? It's not going to happen. Some of you guys spend to much time in dream land, where wild theories, conjecture, and "what ifs" rule, and not enough time in reality.

To be fair, the Mafia was forced out of the bootlegging business in 1933. As of today, gangs/cartels don't have much incentive to diversify their rackets. Talk all you want about the Mafia's diverse crimes but at the end of the day, the families that gained control of the bootlegging rackets were the ones the flourished when prohibition ended. It would be interesting to see what all these gangs and cartels would do if drugs became legalized. What crimes would they branch out to?

For the record, even during Prohibition the mob was already involved in other crimes like gambling, extortion, prostitution, and was starting to get into the labor rackets.

It's obviously a hypothetical but the gangs obviously wouldn't have the benefit the Mafia did of lax law enforcement and institutionalized political corruption. Nor would they have the same opportunities for labor racketeering and infiltration of legitimate businesses that the mob did.

In my opinion, many of the gangs would simply dry up without the drug trade. Their bread and butter would be gone and those left would be dependent on robberies, burglaries, stolen goods, etc. Some of the more enterprising ones would probably get more involved in the sex trade or some types of fraud.

Of course, I'm not arguing for legalization of drugs at all. There's a better way to go about it. But even if it was legalized in the US (which will never happen with hard drugs), the cartels would still have some markets in other countries. But obviously their main one would be gone and that would likely lead to them shrinking and fighting over what was left, as well as engaging more in those other crimes I mentioned.

Yeah lol, add to that the fact that they're letting their members assault, and sometimes murder murder innocent citizens pointlessly such as in the Bologna family killings, or the foiled attempt to murder some kid in high school with machetes and shotguns. That's not exactly the staple of an high-end criminal enterprise if you're going to tolerate such idiotic actions from members.

I basically almost hope they try to organize this into a nationwide syndicate, from the way they behave that would probably make them a far easier target for the feds.