This work marks the 3rd Small Wars Journal—El Centro anthology. Its analyses, crafted by over thirty contributing authors, forms a compilation of the violence and corruption in Mexico plaguing the first year of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency. Instances of spillover violence in the United States and the gang and cartel crime wars in other Latin American countries are also chronicled. Spanish language article appendices are additionally incorporated in this important anthology. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief

In recent years, the south-western border of the United States has come under increasing pressure from the activities of Mexican narco-insurgents. These insurgents have developed rapidly from beginnings as nebulous gangs into networked cartels that have exposed the porosity of the border. These cartels declare no allegiance to any nation and are engaging in asymmetrical warfare against sovereign states throughout Mexico and in Central America. Within such states, de facto political control is shifting to the cartels in the ‘areas of impunity’ that have emerged. This book addresses these concerns and focuses on the criminal insurgencies being waged by the gangs and cartels. It is divided into sections on theory, Mexico, and the Americas and contains a number of introductory essays pertaining to this premier security threat to the United States and her allies in the region. Topics covered include criminal and spiritual insurgency, cartel weapons, corruption, feral cities, Los Zetas, politicized gangs, and threat analysis in Central America. This book will be a valuable resource to scholars in the fields of regional security, criminal justice and American Studies. It will be of great benefit to military and civil policymakers and practitioners in the areas of law enforcement and counternarcotics. This book was published as a special issue of Small Wars and Insurgencies.

The book takes a hard hitting look at the drug wars taking place in Mexico between competing gangs, cartels, and mercenary factions; their insurgency against the Mexican state; the narco-violence and terrorism that is increasingly coming over the border into the United States, and its interrelationship with domestic prison and street gangs. Analysis and response strategies are provided by leading writers on 3GEN gang theory, counterterrorism, transnational organized crime, and homeland security. Narcos Over the Border is divided into three sections: narco-opposing force (NARCO OPFOR) organization and technology use; patterns of violence and corruption and the illicit economy; and United States response strategies. The work also includes short introductory essays, a strategic threat overview, an afterword and selected references. Specific topics covered include: advanced weaponry, internet use, kidnappings and assassinations, torture, beheadings, and occultism, cartel and gang evolutionary patterns, drug trafficking, street taxation, corruption, and border firefights. This book was published as a special issue of Small Wars and Insurgencies.

In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps five hundred body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit-men to gun down forty-one police officers and prison guards in two days. In southern Mexico, a meth maker is venerated as a saint while enforcing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments, and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns, and humans. What they do affects you now--from the gas in your car, to the gold in your jewelry, to the tens of thousands of Latin Americans calling for refugee status in the U.S. Gangster Warlords is the first definitive account of the crime wars now wracking Central and South America and the Caribbean, regions largely abandoned by the U.S. after the Cold War. Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001 and gained access to every level of the cartel chain of command in what he calls the new battlefields of the Americas. Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policy-makers, Grillo provides a disturbing new understanding of a war that has spiraled out of control--one that people across the political spectrum need to confront now.

In sum, this anthology represents some of the best and brightest scholars of today who are writing on the evolving security environment in Mexico and the implications this may hold for the United States. They have greatly enhanced our understanding of crime wars and criminal insurgencies 21st century war and conflict waged by non-state entities and the impact this new form of warfare is having on states. For this, we embrace them and have established the new SWJ El Centro forum to further promote their professionalism and scholarship. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief

The emergence of new hybrid (state and nonstate) transnational criminal/terrorist franchises in Latin America operating under broad state protection now pose a tier-one security threat for the United States. Similar hybrid franchise models are developing in other parts of the world, making understanding the new dynamics an important factor in a broader national security context. This threat goes well beyond the traditional nonstate theory of constraints activity such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking into the potential for trafficking related to weapons of mass destruction by designated terrorist organizations and their sponsors. These activities are carried out with the support of regional and extra regional states actors whose leadership is deeply enmeshed in criminal activity, which yields billions of dollars in illicit revenues every year. These same leaders have a publicly articulated, common doctrine of asymmetrical warfare against the United States and its allies that explicitly endorses as legitimate the use of weapons of mass destruction. The central binding element in this alliance is a hatred for the West, particularly the United States, and deep anti-Semitism, based on a shared view that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was a transformative historical event. For Islamists, it is evidence of divine favor; and for Bolivarians, a model of a successful asymmetrical strategy to defeat the "Empire." The primary architect of this theology/ideology that merges radical Islam and radical, anti-Western populism and revolutionary zeal is the convicted terrorist Ilich Sánchez Ramirez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," whom Chávez has called a true visionary.

This second Small Wars JournalEl Centro anthology signifies the important debate that this new forum, focusing on the crime wars and criminal insurgencies taking place in Mexico and other regions of the Americas, is helping to generate in U.S. defense and homeland security circles. The debate comes at a time when neither of the two major U.S. presidential candidates were willingly to candidly discuss this issue and at the end of the recent Felipe Caldern administration which saw over 80,000 dead, 20,000 missing, and 200,000 internal refugees stemming from gang and cartel violence during its tenure in Mexico. Dave Dilegge SWJ Editor-in-Chief