From Social to Societal Networks: Tracking Drug Cartels example

This is how the Social Network of a Cartel looks like:

http://www.edge.org/documents/Edge-Serpentine-MapsGallery/high-res/salcedo.jpeg

Mexico and United States governments are aware that drug dealers are becoming more sophisticated in their modus operandi. They recruit through social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, post videos on youtube, and use Twitter to warn their members about drugs raids. Moreover, some people perceive them as modern Robin Hoods, making their relationships loyal and long-lasting. An example of this situation happened last October when the Cartel called “La Familia”, posted "The largest scheduled shootout in the history of Reynosa will be tomorrow or Sunday, send this message to people you trust that tomorrow a convoy of 60 trucks full of cartel hitmen from the Michoacan Family together with members of the Gulf Cartel are coming to take the city and take everyone out alive or dead!". The next day schools and business were closed.

Hence, police systems must move to the next level; understanding social networks to apprehend those that represent “nodes” and sources of information to go after the heads.

In an interview with MIT News, Diane Davis, professor of political sociology in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, mentioned that drug groups can be seen as self-sustaining networks rather than anti-state insurgents. Criminal groups capitalize themselves from their different economic networks. Cartels are comprised of people in human-trafficking, selling piracy products, extorting businessmen to pay monthly protection fees, etc. She also mentioned that the attention on drug cartels is turning to Latin America. On one hand, although Mexico has been in a bloody war, still needs economic development and change its current lack of long perspective. In addition, she states that a paradigm shift is needed to reach the root of the transnational smuggling.

Personally I partly agree that police system, especially in Mexico and Central America, have to evolve in order to be able to really win the war against the drug dealers. However, in a business which just in Mexico represents 10 and 25 billion dollars per year (similar to the GDP of Panama, or Cameroon), the ball is not in Latin America side, but also in the United States where drug dealers’ networks are present. Just some months ago Bloomberg published that Wells Fargo and Bank of America admitted not to have applied proper security measures against laundry activities. As consequence a cartel group transferred funds in the US for buying an airplane DC-9 used for transporting 5.7 tons of cocaine.

Recently, Eduardo Salcedo created for the governmental security agencies the imaged presented above that represents the Social Network of the drug cartel called “La Familia” located in Michoacan, Mexico. In this map it is possible to see the in- and outflows of the relationships of this group, and the main nodes in the network. Here the acronym NAR corresponds to “La Familia”, PRI for privates, and FUN to governmental agencies. Although access to the report is restricted, it provides a clear understanding that relationships of this cartel are partially centralized. That represents an opportunity for focusing economic sources for apprehending specific people and then tracking the leaders of such organizations.

According to Andy Miller from the Economist, the next step beyond mapping relationships of individuals is to map relationships of segments (societal network). This is what many universities are developing nowadays. For example, Carnegie Melon researchers are looking data from the last years related to people reactions after elections, corruption cases, economic activity and many other variables. They say that once all the data is accurately mapped, riots, bloody elections, and so forth could be actually forecasted.

Summarizing, I believe social network analysis is achieving more and more the category of discipline. It is cross functional with disciplines like Marketing for advertising, Economics for understanding behaviors, Psychology for the human interaction, and with many other topics. As presented here, social networks are likely to be used for activities such as capturing drug dealers, but also from drug dealers to keep their operations and avoid being captured. The question would be how to control social networks for getting the positives and not the negatives?

Sources

The Social Network of the Mexican drug cartel “ La Familia Michoacana”)

http://tommytoy.typepad.com/tommy-toy-pbt-consultin/2010/11/the-social-network-of-the-mexican-drug-crtel-la-familia-michoacana-michoacan-family.html

Untangling the social web

http://www.economist.com/node/16910031

To Battle Cartels, Mexico Weighs Twitter Crackdown

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1981607,00.html

Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html

What Do Social Media and Drug Dealing have in Common?

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/debraellis/169378/what-do-social-media-and-drug-dealing-have-common

An altered state

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/irregular-forces-0419.html

Mexican Drug Cartels Avoid Police With Social Networking

http://www.artipot.com/articles/573880/mexican-drug-cartels-avoid-police-with-social-networking.htm

List of countries by GDP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

Angel Baca