Natural Resource Theft, Huachicol, and Criminal Diversification in the War on Drugs: A Green Criminology Approach to Mexico’s Criminal Violence

Abstract

The War on Drugs in Mexico is a devastating conflict which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives since it began in 2006. Over its eighteen-year duration, however, the character of Mexico’s drug cartels, the massive criminal organizations at war with each other and the state, has fundamentally changed. Almost immediately upon the beginning of the War on Drugs, many of these groups adapted to state repression and increased competition with their peers by resorting to eco-crimes including the theft of natural resources, illegal deforestation, and occupation of agricultural lands and water resources. Their more recent takeover of huachicol, the local term for petroleum theft, best exemplifies their transformation from drug trafficking organizations to far more diverse criminal orders, especially as one such organization, the Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima, specialized so deeply in huachicol that it thereafter only minimally trafficked narcotics. The “professionalization” of eco-crime by the cartels has enhanced their financial capacity to commit violence and increased their desire to hold territory not necessarily important to the drug trade. Recognition of this ongoing transformation, however, has been slow, leaving in place damaging mischaracterizations of the conflict and the criminal organizations and economic incentives underpinning it. Utilizing both empirical findings and theoretical contributions from green criminology, this paper demonstrates the cartels’ diversification of their revenue streams to include eco-crime, using huachicol by the Cartel de los Zetas and the Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima as a detailed case study. It then comments on the consequences of these transformations for Mexican civilians, the natural environment, the War on Drugs as a policy issue, and the theoretical nature of conflict studies.