Number of Cartel Members - Some Things to Consider

Numbers are relative in low intensity conflict environments; an out-of-date term that still should have relevance today, especially in the case of Mexico. 

Why are numbers relative?  In simple terms- SOCIAL NETWORKS.  People belong to social networks; those networks may be familial, societal, professional, etc.  While loners do exist, the Mexican Drug Cartels are anything but loners and leverage both coercion and bribery to establish their networks to sustain their operations.

One has to take into account the Mexican culture and how people interrelate.  They historically have close knit families…ergo, it’s hard to believe that someone in those networks does not know, or fails to perceive, someone in their family does not have ties to the cartels.  This goes for other networks e.g. legal, economic, municipal etc.

So, when an estimate comes out and says the bad guys add up to about 100; starting doubling, tripling, etc. the numbers, because someone in each of those bad guy’s social networks has an idea of what the other person is doing and is not acting against the criminal terrorist for reasons of fear, love, survival or profit.

Below is an example of what a revolutionary movement looks like.  While the cartels of Mexico are not a political movement; they still function in very similar ways, but for profit.  The fighters are the tip of the ice-berg; now look at everything that sustains the iceberg.  The graphic below will be value if the reader switches criminal interests for political interests.  The graphic is from Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies by Andrew R Molnar and the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) of the 1960s.