El Centro

Military-trained gang members (MTGMs) have received military training such as tactics, weapons, explosives, or equipment, and the use of distinctive military skills. Gangs with military-trained members often pose an ongoing and persistent military and political threat. At least one tenth of one percent of the U.S. population is an MTGM, and there are between 150,000 and 500,000 MTGMs.

The combined illicit revenue collected by the seven major Drug Trafficking Organizations based in Mexico is staggering. By most estimates, it could be as much as $30 billion per year, a figure which exceeds the Gross Domestic Product of nations like Iceland, El Salvador, and Uganda.

Mexican crime statistics tend to elicit one of these reactions:1) Optimistic disbelief, 2) Pessimistic disbelief, and 3) Numbers don’t matter. Mexico has always been corrupt and violent. Build the wall.

Military-trained gang members (MTGMs) have been identified in every wartime period for the United States—from the Revolutionary War to the current conflicts. Active duty MTGMs threaten the cohesiveness of military units and undermine the authority of military leadership, using the military to further their criminal organization’s goals. They are a clear threat to military discipline, bringing corrupt influences, an increase in criminal activity, and a threat to military family members on military installations. MTGMs increase the level of dangerousness to the community with their warfighter training and share their ability to remain undetected by law enforcement or members of the community, which allows their organization to thrive and grow unchecked. Members of 3GEN Gangs benefit from military training in positions like leadership, intelligence analysis, electronic warfare, psychological operations, and finance.

The emergence of the dissident MS-503 organization, while still relatively small in size and influence due to the immediate depuration of various insubordinate MS-13 cliques, has a number of potentially significant implications for MS-13 going into the future. The first is, if MS-503 is able to seize territory and expand within areas of Mexico, it will do so in direct opposition to MS-13 Northbound human smuggling and Southbound marijuana and small arms trafficking illicit economic interests. Natural allies for MS-503 for such an endeavor would be entities competing with the MS-13 allied Sinaloa or Zetas cartels—such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Military-trained gang members (MTGMs) have been identified in every wartime period for the United States—from the Revolutionary War to the current conflicts. MTGMs in the military threaten the cohesiveness of military units and undermine the authority of military leadership.

This research guide has been created for Small Wars Journal readers to aid in their understanding of the plutocratic insurgency construct and explain how it is related to the earlier criminal insurgency construct which has been the focus of numerous El Centro works over the last decade.

The military oversight is the first federal intervention where federal forces took command in a Brazilian state since the return to democracy in 1988.