As a final additional note, we could summarize what I wrote above by stating that:
1. the cartels by no means stay safe from state level actors in their activities or protection of their operators. The contrary, they're fully in the eye of a never-ending storm. This means nearly constant, active, life-and-death threat for every single one of their members.
2. However, they do survive in an institutional sense, as organizations, but only because both their leadership structures and overall street-level manpower are apparently highly fungible. Small consolation that to any individual member of said cartels hoping to life a long, healthy life of crime while evading the law; knowing that leader or foot soldier, he or she can almost certainly look forward to a bloody death or prison existence within a decade or less, even if the organization he/she belongs to may indeed survive institutionally. Very few people seeking to build a wealth-seeking illegal organization while avoiding the state would want to emulate such an existence.
1. the cartels by no means stay safe from state level actors in their activities or protection of their operators. The contrary, they're fully in the eye of a never-ending storm. This means nearly constant, active, life-and-death threat for every single one of their members.
2. However, they do survive in an institutional sense, as organizations, but only because both their leadership structures and overall street-level manpower are apparently highly fungible. Small consolation that to any individual member of said cartels hoping to life a long, healthy life of crime while evading the law; knowing that leader or foot soldier, he or she can almost certainly look forward to a bloody death or prison existence within a decade or less, even if the organization he/she belongs to may indeed survive institutionally. Very few people seeking to build a wealth-seeking illegal organization while avoiding the state would want to emulate such an existence.