Integrating Feral Cities and Third Phase Cartels:third Generation Gangs Research

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Integrating feral cities and third

phase cartels/third generation gangs
research: the rise of criminal (narco)
city networks and BlackFor
a b
Robert J. Bunker & John P. Sullivan
a
Epochal Warfare Studies , Claremont, CA, USA
b
Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST) , Los Angeles,
CA, USA
Published online: 29 Nov 2011.
To cite this article: Robert J. Bunker & John P. Sullivan (2011) Integrating feral cities and third
phase cartels/third generation gangs research: the rise of criminal (narco) city networks and
BlackFor, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 22:5, 764-786, DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2011.620804
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2011.620804
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Vol. 22, No. 5, December 2011, 764–786
Integrating feral cities and third phase cartels/third generation

gangs research: the rise of criminal (narco) city networks and
BlackFor
Robert J. Bunkera* and John P. Sullivanb
Downloaded by [University of North Texas] at 21:13 28 November 2014
a
Epochal Warfare Studies, Claremont, CA, USA; bCenter for Advanced Studies on
Terrorism (CAST), Los Angeles, CA, USA
This essay addresses and integrates ‘feral cities’ with ‘third phase cartel’ and
‘third generation gangs’ (3GEN Gangs) research. The feral cities diagnostic
tool will be expanded from three levels (green, yellow, and red) to five (adding
purple and black). This will be accomplished by means of the addition of two
new levels that model the shift from ferality (de-institutionalization) to
criminal re-institutionalization of urban social and political structures around
new patterns of living. Such processes set the stage for the projected
emergence of the BlackFor (Black Force) within the Americas. BlackFor
represents a confederation of illicit non-state actors – essentially a
postmodern form of societal cancer – linked together by means of a network
of criminalized and criminal (narco) cities as are now arising.
Keywords: BlackFor; corruption; criminal insurgency; epochal change;
feral cities; Mexican cartels; narcos; networks; third generation gangs; third
phase cartels; urban terrorism
Concerns over urban decay, societal collapse, and the subsequent need for
combat and high intensity policing operations to stabilize cities falling into such
darkness and despair have been uttered for almost two decades now. They greatly
resonate with contemporary urban life found in numerous towns of Mexico
including those of Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez, Moreila, Culiacán, and,
increasingly, Monterrey and possibly one day Mexico City itself. Additionally,
small and large urban centers from Guatemala and Honduras down through
Central America into the southern hemisphere are experiencing significant levels
of urban unrest and civil strife. These concerns intersect with those focusing on
the identification of non-state (criminal) soldier evolutionary patterns –
specifically those patterns that relate to criminal-soldiers organized into cartel
and street gang organizational forms. Both cartels and gangs have been evolving
apiece for decades. Current cartels of concern include Sinaloa, El Golfo, Los
Zetas, and La Familia, while such gangs as Barrio Azteca, Mara Salvatrucha 13
*Corresponding author. Email: docbunkert95@mac.com
ISSN 0959-2318 print/ISSN 1743-9558 online

q 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2011.620804
http://www.tandfonline.com
Small Wars & Insurgencies 765
(MS 13), and Eighteenth Street highlight the news with their atrocities inflicted
upon other gangs, public servants, and innocents alike.
This essay will address both avenues of concern by blending what is known as
‘feral cities’ with ‘third phase cartel’ and ‘third generation gangs’ (3GEN Gangs)
research. Further, the feral cities diagnostic tool – utilizing a ferality metric –
will be expanded from three levels (green, yellow, and red) to five (adding purple
and black). This will be accomplished by means of the addition of two new levels
that model the shift from ferality (de-institutionalization) to criminal re-
institutionalization of urban social and political structures around new patterns of
living. This analysis will be set within the larger context of epochal change – the
broader war over humanity’s future social and political organization – taking
place in the Americas between the nation-state organizational form and those
illicit organizational forms that seek to challenge it by means of ongoing criminal
insurgencies. Ultimately, such processes set the stage for the projected emergence
of the BlackFor (Black Force), a threat first articulated in a 1998 US Army War
College paper, within the Americas.1 BlackFor represents a confederation of
illicit non-state actors – essentially a postmodern form of societal cancer – linked
together by means of a network of criminalized and criminal (narco) cities. Such a
network is now arising from the Mexican border with the United States, moving
throughout the entire length and depth of Mexico itself, down through Central
America, and penetrating into South America deep into Brazil, eventually linking
up with Ciudad del Este in the tri-border region.2 Small criminal enclaves at the
neighborhood and street level complementing this emergent network exist
throughout the United States and into Canada and into the other regions of South
America not yet directly threatened by actual criminal (narco) city ascendancy.
Overview of feral cities research

The pioneering work of Richard J. Norton on feral cities, focusing on the process
of social and political urban de-institutionalization, was first published in 2003
and later updated in a 2010 publication.3 Other writings in this genre include
works by Ralph Peters ‘Our Soldiers, Their Cities’ Parameters (1996), Mike
Davis Planet of Slums (2006), and Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege (2010).4
Norton’s feral city work helps to model how traditional structures and bonds that
hold human relationships (both civil and legal) together within a city going feral
begin to fray, tear, and eventually break apart. The current definition of such a
city per his 2010 essay is as follows:
A feral city is a metropolis in a nation-state where the government has lost the
ability to maintain the rule of law within the city’s boundaries. These cities
nevertheless remain connected to the greater international system through such
avenues as trade and communication. The most immediately recognizable example
of such a city is present-day Mogadishu, Somalia.5
An earlier definition from Norton’s 2003 essay provides additional background
information:
766 R.J. Bunker and J.P. Sullivan
The putative ‘feral city’ is (or would be) a metropolis with a population of more than
a million people in a state the government of which has lost the ability to maintain
the rule of law within the cities boundaries yet remains a functioning actor in the
greater international system.6
A diagnostic tool was created to evaluate a city in order to help identify its
level of ferality. Each ferality level represents a place on the continuum from the
first (green level), to the second (yellow level), and then to the third (red level).
Green cities are in no danger of becoming feral, while yellow cities are in
marginal condition, and red cities are identified as becoming feral.7 The concept
of city ferality is derived from qualitative indicators and analogous in some ways
to state focused quantitative indicators utilized for failed-state, corruption, and
large-scale unrest indexes.8 The term ‘failed community’, a ‘sovereign free city’,
and an urban ‘zone of impunity’ (a term used in Mexico), all appear to be
indicative of similar thinking to that of the feral city construct.
The three levels of city ferality – green, yellow, and red – are described in
Tables 1 to 3. Fifteen sets of measurements, five categories multiplied by three
ferality levels, are used to determine city ferality. Initially, 12 measurements were
utilized, but then this was then expanded with the Civil Society category being
added in 2010 yielding three more measurements. In reality, cities are considered
patchworks of colors – mosaics of health – with great ferality variances possible
in their zones, neighborhoods, and enclaves. The overall mosaic of a city in a
single point in time thus determines the assigned city color. Further, ‘It is the
overall pattern and whether that pattern is improving or deteriorating over time
that give the overall diagnosis.’9 Additional methodological cautions and the
possibility of category blurring are then provided.
Confirmed city designations within these levels of ferality have to date been
chosen judiciously – most likely due to political sensitivities:
. Green Level (No Danger): New York (2003)
. Yellow Level (Marginal): Mexico City (2003)
. Red Level (Becoming Feral): Johannesburg (2003), Mogadishu (2003,
2010); Fallujah (2010), Gaza City (2010), Lagos (2010), New Orleans
(2010), Nuevo Laredo (2010), Rio de Janeiro (2010), Rosarito Beach
(2010), São Paulo (2010). Note: candidate cities identified in the feral
cities articles, at one point in time or another, are listed in italics.
Overall, the feral cities methodology is sound, though the research provided
for public consumption in the 2003 and 2010 articles is limited. It does, however,
have great potential to one day incorporate the earlier mentioned quantitative
indicators utilized for the more mature failed-state, corruption, and large-scale
unrest indexes to which it is somewhat analogous. While not specifically
mentioned in the tables, the following variables may also serve as useful
components to some of the five categories isolated: rising homicide rates, loss
of public spaces (the retreat back to private enclaves with gates and guards), and
the depopulation of urban zones and rise of abandoned structures. Additionally,
Table 1. Green level (no danger).

Governance Economy Services Security Civil Society
Enacts effective legis- Robust. Significant foreign Complete range of services, Well-regulated, pro- Rich and robust.
lation. investment. Provides goods and including educational and fessional, police forces. Constructive
Appropriately directs services. Provides a stable and cultural, available to all city Response to wide spec- relationships with
resources. adequate tax base. residents. trum of requirements. government.
Controls events in all
portions of the city, day

and night. Corruption
detected and punished.
Source: Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?’, 57.
767
768
R.J. Bunker and J.P. Sullivan
Table 2. Yellow level (marginal).
Exercises only Limited or no foreign invest- Can manage minimal Little regard for legali- Relationships with govern-
patchwork or ment. Subsidized or decaying level of public health, ty/human rights. Police ment are confrontational.
diurnal control. industries. Growing deficits. hospital access, potable often matched/stymied Civil societal organizations
Highly corrupt. Most foreign investment is water, trash disposal. by criminal ‘peers’. fill governmental voids.
quickly removable.
Source: Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?, 57.
Table 3. Red level (becoming feral).

At best, has only Local subsistence industries or Intermittent to nonexistent Nonexistent. Secur- Civil society fractured along
negotiated zones industries based on illegal power and water. Those who ity is attained clan/ethnic/other lines. Local
of control. At commerce. Some legitimate can afford to will privately through private elites in control. Security-
worst, does not business interests may be contract or allow NGO to means or paying oriented civil society organiz-

exist. present, based on profit poten- provide. protection. ations may be criminal.
tial.
Source: Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?, 57.
769
the urban health discipline would likely benefit from feral city based security
analysis. Precedent exists with new concepts drawing upon complementary
forms of analysis that argue gang and cartel violence are representative of new
forms of urban terrorism that have emerged.10
Overview of third phase cartels/third generations gangs research

Third generation gangs (3GEN Gangs) and third phase cartel writings, and their
conceptual precedents, have been published since 1995, by John Sullivan, Robert
Bunker, and increasingly by other scholars including Max Manwaring, Nicholas

Haussler, and Hal Brands. The initial writings viewed urban street gang violence as
‘a chronic, endemic form of conflict disaster’, identified a ‘ . . . process of
environmental modification based on “social terrorism” appear[ing] to be taking
place’, and made early projections concerning some of these gangs eventually
evolving into paramilitary groups.11 A then provocative, now far less so, projection
made in a policing magazine was that: ‘Street gangs will likely represent a
fundamental threat to US security in the future.’12 The initial publication of ‘third
generation gangs’ research took place in Transnational Organized Crime in 1997
by Sullivan followed by the initial publication of ‘third phase cartel’ research by
Bunker and Sullivan in 1998 in that same journal.13 The intent of each line of
inquiry, which has been increasingly fused since 2010,14 is to project and track the
evolution of non-state threat groups, street gangs and drug cartels, respectively,
from common criminal to what is known as non-state (criminal) soldier status. The
more evolved non-state threat groups, with evolutionary indicators based on a
number of criteria, shift from solely that of a policing problem to being one of a
homeland security threat that requires a more encompassing and coordinated state
response. Fortunately, most of these non-state threat groups are less evolved and
more benign in orientation. This so far has been especially true for street gangs
found in the United States, however, in high intensity urban conflict environments
as found in many contested cities in Mexico down into South America, forced
evolutionary change is taking place that can speed up gang and cartel evolution
into deadlier and more politicized organizational forms.
The third generation model – using politicization, internationalization, and
sophistication criteria – views the evolution of these gangs as follows:
. Turf: First Generation Gangs are traditional street gangs with a turf
orientation. Operating at the lower end of extreme societal violence, they have
loose leadership and focus their attention on turf protection and gang loyalty
within their immediate environs (often a few blocks or a neighborhood).
When they engage in criminal enterprise, it is largely opportunistic and local
in scope. These turf gangs are limited in political scope and sophistication.
. Market: Second Generation Gangs are engaged in business. They are
entrepreneurial and drug-centered. They protect their markets and use
violence to control their competition. They have a broader, market-focused,
sometimes overtly political agenda and operate in a broader spatial or
geographic area. Their operations sometimes involve multi-state and even
international arenas. Their tendency for centralized leadership and
sophisticated operations for market protection places them in the center of
the range of politicization, internationalization, and sophistication.
. Mercenary/Political: Third Generation Gangs have evolved political aims.
They operate – or seek to operate – at the global end of the spectrum, using
their sophistication to garner power, aid financial acquisition, and engage in
mercenary-type activities. To date, most 3 GEN gangs have been primarily
mercenary in orientation; yet, in some cases they have sought to further their
own political and social objectives. A shift from simple market protection to
power acquisition is characteristic of third generation activity. A key
indicator of gang evolution is internationalization. Transnational gangs in
Los Angeles and on the border have been notable in this regard . . . Third
generation gangs can be considered netwarriors and networked organiz-
ational forms contribute to the rise of non-state or criminal-soldiers.15
The third phase cartel model – using a number of metrics including
organizational form, type of violence/corruption utilized, level of public
profiting, product range, technology use, and mercenary use – describes the
evolution of these cartels as follows:
. First Phase Cartel (Aggressive Competitor): The first phase cartel form
originated in Colombia during the 1980s and arose as an outcome of
increasing US cocaine demand. This type of cartel, characterized by the
Medellı́n model, realized economies of scale not known to the individual
cocaine entrepreneurs of the mid 1970s. This early cartel was an aggressive
competitor to the Westphalian state because of its propensity for extreme
violence and willingness to challenge the authority of the state directly.
The Medellı́n model, pioneered by Pablo Escobar, was hierarchical and
revolved around Escobar as the kingpin. In retrospect, the Medellı́n model
represented a very successful, albeit short lived, form of criminal entity.
Their attempt at directly taking on a Westphalian state, politically and
militarily, was both organizationally and individually suicidal as witnessed
by the successful decapitation of the top Medellı́n leadership ranks by
governmental forces in the early 1990s. Against the resources and
legitimacy of the Colombian state, this emerging netwarrior ultimately was
crushed.
. Second Phase Cartel (Subtle Co-Opter): The second phase cartel form also
originally developed in Colombia, but in this instance is centered in the city
of Cali. Unlike their Medellı́n counterparts, the Cali cartel was a shadowy
organization and the actual kingpins remained as anonymous as possible.
Its organization was more distributed and network based, relying on
terrorist-like cell structures, rather than being hierarchical. Many of its
characteristics and activities were dispersed and stealth-masked, which
yielded many operational capabilities not possessed by the first phase cartel
form. Specifically, it possessed leadership clusters that are more difficult to
identify and target with a decapitation attack. This cartel form has also
spread to Mexico with the rise of the Mexican Federation, an alliance of the
‘big four’ mafias based in Tijuana, Sonora, Juárez, and the Gulf.
. Third Phase Cartel (Criminal State Successor): Third phase cartels, if and
when they emerge, have the potential to pose a significant challenge to the
modern nation-state and its institutions. A third phase cartel is a
consequence of unremitting corruption and co-option of state institutions.
While this ‘criminal state successor’ has yet to emerge, warning signs of its
eventual arrival are present in many states worldwide. Of current

importance to the United States are the conditions favoring narco- or
criminal-state evolution in Mexico. Indeed, the criminal insurgency in
Mexico could prove to be the genesis of a true third phase cartel, as
Mexican cartels battle among themselves and the state for dominance.
Essentially, third phase cartels rule parallel polities or criminal enclaves,
acting much like warlords.16
Non-state threat groups, such as Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana, have
made for an interesting hybrid case as they have attributes representative of both
third generation gangs and second phase cartels, with evolving third phase cartel
attributes, including the emergence of forms of spirituality and governance that
compete with traditional Mexican state values and political structures.
Expansion of ferality into the purple and black levels

While Richard J. Norton recognizes that a city becoming feral (red) may be able
to heal its institutions over time and progress on the ferality continuum back to
marginal (yellow) and healthy (green) conditions, he does not view an end state
beyond that of ferality. Ferality being defined by the anarchy induced by ‘ . . . a
metropolis in a nation-state where the government has lost the ability to maintain
the rule of law within the city’s boundaries . . . ’ but ‘ . . . nevertheless remain
connected to the greater international system through such avenues as trade
and communication.’17
The extension of the ferality metric from the initial three levels into a fourth
(purple) and, more importantly, fifth (black) level, proposes that even greater
levels of security threats emanating out of imploding urban centers exist than were
initially articulated by Norton. Thus, a city sliding towards ferality and actually
becoming feral – institutionally broken and very much in a state of public anarchy
– is not necessarily the worst fate that may befall a city, its populace, and nearby
urban centers and other sovereign states. Rather, a city held tightly in the grips of
anarchy and chaos pales as a security threat – both domestic and international – in
comparison to one that has reconfigured its social, economic, and public
institutions around criminal value systems. This less recognized threat is in line
with the current thinking of Vanda Felbab-Brown concerning competition in state
making:
It is thus important to stop thinking about crime solely as aberrant social activity to
be suppressed, but instead think of crime as a competition in state-making. In strong
states that effectively address the needs of their societies, the non-state entities
cannot outcompete the state. But in areas of socio-political marginalization and
poverty – in many Latin American countries, conditions of easily upward of a third
of the population – nonstate entities do often outcompete the state and secure the
allegiance of large segments of society.18
Implicit in this line of reasoning, though unstated, are parallels to the work of
Charles Tilly concerning ‘Warmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime’
published in 1985. The agents of states that engage in organized violence focus
primarily on four activities:
(1) War making: Eliminating or neutralizing their own rivals outside the
territories in which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of
force.
(2) State making: Eliminating or neutralizing their rivals inside those territories.
(3) Protection: Eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of their clients.
(4) Extraction: Acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities –
war making, state making, and protection.19
Historical parallels and lessons learned suggest that early European dynastic
states were ruled by leaders, such as Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern
warlords of the fifteenth century, whose initial activities to secure wealth and
power, and their later gaining of political legitimacy due to the passing of time in
which they possessed lands and resources, were little different in character than
contemporary personages such as the late Pablo Escobar (Medellı́n Cartel) and
Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán (Sinaloa Cartel). The Americas are now witnessing
the painful birth of new proto-states, branded anathema by the established order,
much in the same manner as Europe did as it transitioned from the medieval to the
early modern era.
Hence, it is bad enough that we are witnessing the de-institutionalization of
public structures and erosion of urban social bonds and relationships which
thereby results in a basket case city, such as Mogadishu, which is a blight on
Somalia and a gravity well of instability and criminal anarchy for the surrounding
countries with which to contend. However, a city that is even farther gone and is
undergoing the re-institutionalization of public structures and the reconfiguring
of its social bonds and relationships around criminal value systems, such as
Nuevo Laredo under Los Zetas, represents a much greater threat to domestic and
international security. While chaos, anarchy, and blatant human misery gets press
coverage, it at best represents disorganized criminality and is less of a long term
threat to sovereign states than criminal cities controlled by new war-making
entities that are becoming politically sentient.20 This was the intent behind the
warning in Narcos Over the Border concerning a core element of the strategic
threat forming on the horizon: ‘The end result of all of these trends is that Mexico
is becoming an entity that is truly the antithesis of the modern nation-state.’21
With these strategic theoretical considerations in mind, Tables 4 and 5 have
been created. They are meant to identify ferality at the ‘fully feral’ (purple) and
‘beyond feral; criminal city’ (black) levels as an extension of the ferality
continuum beyond the ‘becoming feral’ (red) level initially conceptualized by
Norton. Being fair to Norton, and giving credit where it is due, his model accounts
for the ‘fully feral’ (purple) level yet, for whatever reason, his research does not
cross the firebreak between making the distinction between a city that is
becoming feral and a city that has become feral. This distinction goes well beyond
semantics – to do so promotes the view that we have crossed from the modern to
the postmodern era and that nation-states can fully lose control of their major
metropolitan centers due to factors that include social instability, institutional
breakdown, and non-state threat entities. The fully feral (purple) level sees a
city’s five categories (governance, economy, services, security, and civil society)
degraded to the point that they are basically non-existent – governmental
authority is gone and the city is barely providing life for its inhabitants. The
conditions that now exist for the common man in the words of Hobbes are ‘ . . .
nasty, brutish, and short’.22
Such a level is viewed as an anomaly and unstable over the long term – the
veritable Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (‘war of all against all’) with
massive depopulation of the urban zone, due to death and migration, expected to
result.23 Three end states result from a truly feral city, either: (a) the death of the
city is coming with much of its infrastructure abandoned; if this condition
continues, (b) the ferality process is arrested and reversed by the local political
authority or foreign powers engaging in stability and support operations, to the
point where the city reenters the ‘becoming feral’ (red) level; or (c) the vacuum of
governance is filled by a non-state entity, such as a gang, cartel, warlord, or
mercenary group who have no choice but to de facto become politicized and draw
upon their illicit economic and criminal (military) power to create their own form
of rule. In the case of (c) the ‘beyond feral; criminal city’ (black) level then
emerges. This level beyond ferality represents a revival and rebuilding of a city’s
institutions and human relations, the lifting of a city out of chaos and anarchy,
with the caveat that the re-institutionalization taking place is essentially morally
skewed, spiritually dark, and criminal in nature. Such criminal cities have
reconfigured themselves around illicit economies and secondary revenue streams
with a developing taxation shift back again from blatant extortion to more
sustainable forms of coercive taxation.
David Kilcullen in his work identifies the ‘accidental guerrilla’ in addition to
the traditional politicized insurgent.24 Drawing from this dichotomy, the de facto
politicized gang or cartel member, finding themselves in a city with a vacuum of
governance in the above case, would represent the creation of an ‘accidental
criminal insurgent’ whose striving for freedom of criminal action resulted in a
breakdown of a nation-states’ political authority in their area of operations. As
stated by Sullivan and Rosales, ‘The cartels may not seek a social or political
agenda, but once they control turf and territory and effectively displace the state
Table 4. Purple level (fully feral).

Does not exist. Extortion Illegal commerce and Highly erratic to nonexis- Nonexistent. Total col- Civil society in ongoing
of monies, goods, and industries dominate. Bar- tent services. Those who lapse of police forces and conflict between clan/eth-
services replaces taxation. ter system in effect. can afford to will privately judiciary. Security is nic/ other lines. Most local
Localized control by Legitimate business inter- contract or establish own attained through private elites have fled. Written
street gangs, cartels, pri- ests if present, based on services (e.g. generators/ means, paying protection, press no longer exists.

vate armies, and warlords. high profit potential, and wells). Most NGO provi- and rise of militias/forti- Security-oriented civil
heavily armed/have made ders have left. fied enclaves. Wide society organizations are
alliances with criminal spread use of mercenaries. criminal.
groups.
775
776
R.J. Bunker and J.P. Sullivan
Table 5. Black level (beyond feral; criminal city).

Legislation and policy Active. Some foreign Services, including edu- Reasonable levels of Total shift in value systems
based on strong man investment. Goods and cational and cultural, security provided in public to criminal (narco). Spiri-
rule and personal services, both legitimate available to city residents spaces. Police forces tuality is death/greed
whims. Taxation and illicit, openly pro- that are loyal/contracted to (mafia in uniforms) pro- based. The strong prey
replacing extortion. vided. Illicit revenues from the criminal government. vide internal security for upon the weak and women
Resources directed criminal activities sup- ruling autocrats. are disenfranchised.
without the consent of plemented by tax base
the governed. (developing).
Controls events in all
portions of the city, day
and night. Corruption
is the system.
25
they have no choice – they become “accidental insurgents”.’ Another
evolutionary path identified is that of a transition between the ‘red’ (becoming
feral) level and the ‘beyond feral; criminal city’ (black) level. This type of
transition is not one of de facto (or accidental) non-state entity politicization but
rather is found when a deliberate political agenda exists – via a premeditated
criminal insurgency – to take over a specific city and fully criminalize its
governance. Two evolutionary paths to the ‘black level’ – one accidental and one
deliberate – are therefore viewed to exist. A gang or cartel member, in this
instance, would be considered a premeditated ‘criminal insurgent’ who had
already become politicized such as a third generation gang member. Following

this evolutionary path, a purposeful ‘shadow criminal government’ was created
early on and grown and nourished over time by means of intimidation, co-option,
targeted assassination and political execution, indiscriminate and discriminate
acts of narco-terrorism, and the establishment of a well developed
information/psychological warfare campaign that included the neutralization
and compromise of the free media and press.26
Ferality levels and the integration of third phase cartels/third generation

gangs
The integration of ‘feral cities’ with ‘third phase cartel’ and ‘third generation
gangs’ (3GEN Gangs) is achieved by taking a specific level of ferality and cross-
indexing it to the expected cartel phase and gang generation which would inhabit
a major city at that level (See Table 6.). This cross-indexing is as follows:
. Green (No Danger): Cities found at this level would be equivalent to New
York in their urban health characteristics. Other cities at this level would
Table 6. Ferality level by cartel phase and gang generation.
Ferality Level Cartel Phase Gang Generation

Green (No Danger) Proto-‘cartels’ (traditional First (Turf)
organized crime) Second (Market)
Yellow (Marginal) First (Aggressive Competitor) First (Turf)
Second (Subtle Co-Opter) Second (Market)
Red (Becoming Feral) Second (Subtle Co-Opter) First (Turf)
Second (Market)
Third (Mercenary/Political)
Purple (Fully Feral) Second (Subtle Co-Opter) First (Turf)
Second (Market)
Black (Beyond Feral; Third (Criminal State Suc- First (Turf)
Criminal City) cessor) Second (Market)
fused to new Criminal State
most likely include Chicago and Los Angeles. This is a relatively healthy
city level with no indigenous cartel emergence. Still, first and second phase
operatives and enforcers may be present along with members from 3GEN
gangs advancing their global linkages. Still, many yellow (marginal)
pockets may exist in the city mosaic. The majority of gangs found in a city
at this level – such as the various Surenos (Sur 13) groups prevalent in
Southern California – will be turf based with some market (drug) based
gangs also present.
. Yellow (Marginal): This city level is equivalent to that of Mexico City.
Other cities of interest at this level would likely include Medellı́n, Cali,
Tijuana, Guadalajara, and now, quite probably, Monterrey. While the
overall level of ferality is marginal, high levels of corruption, limited
public health services, human rights issues, and the public’s confronta-
tional relationship with government are evident. Many families living
below the poverty line in inadequate housing and slum-like conditions are
found at this city level. Indigenous first and second phase cartels readily
arise in yellow cities – as they have historically done in Colombia and
Mexico – and can quickly overwhelm the response capabilities of local
police services whom the cartels seek to intimidate, co-opt, and if
necessary target for kidnapping and assassination. All generations of gangs
can now be found at this city level with a higher proportion of market
gangs to the still more numerous turf gangs. Cliques and even larger
elements of 3GEN gangs, such as those MS-13 and Eighteenth Street gangs
found in many regions of Central America, are also now evident. The
cartels, being more organized, sophisticated, and affluent, are in a
dominant relationship with the local gangs whom they utilize for street
surveillance, drug distribution, and as contract enforcers and killers.
. Red (Becoming Feral): Johannesburg was identified as the archetype of
this city level. However, other candidate cities such as Rio de Janeiro,
Gaza City, and quite a few others were also mentioned in Norton’s 2010
work. Cities at this level harbor second phase cartels which are actively co-
opting local institutions to gain freedom of movement. In some instances,
shadow criminal governments are also being constructed, not only to allow
for freedom to engage in cartel operations, but also to create a political
base in which to actively seize control of city governance. Of all the
current Mexican cartels, La Familia Michoacana (and its splinter group
Los Caballeros Templarios) may be the most adept at undermining local
authority and replacing it with its own. Gangs in cities that are becoming
feral increasingly fall under the sway of either the dominant or competing
cartels that exist as both symbolic and absolute power begins to shift from
the state to non-state threat groups.
. Purple (Fully Feral): Norton identified no cities at this level because it
extends beyond his ferality diagnostic. It is thought that, if he had extended
the ferality continuum to include fully feral cities, Mogadishu would have
been reassigned from the Red to the Purple level. Cities at this level harbor
second phase cartels, who actively co-opted local institutions to gain
freedom of movement and who, in the process, killed their symbiotic
political host. These cartels and their gang allies which may, at this point, be
almost indistinguishable form one another – much like the Juarez cartel, La
Lı́nea, and Los Aztecas at the higher levels27 – have tipped the balance from
state dominance to that of a vacuum of governance. The rise of such an
anarchistic urban environment is extremely unstable and imperils the future
of both the city and the non-state threat groups themselves. Second phase
cartels and 3GEN gangs finding themselves in such an environment will

either (a) utilize the shadow criminal government that was being built to take
over the reigns of local governance and quickly move to the Black level or
(b) when facing such a grim situation become de facto politicized –
although not their initial intent – and like a local crime boss or strongman
with both resources and military arms attempt to create a new form of
governance, albeit one based on their own unique and illicit vision.
. Black (Beyond Feral; Criminal City): This level is beyond Norton’s ferality
model and represents something far worse than a city falling into perpetual
chaos and anarchy – at least from the perspective of our modern value and
state system. This level represents the emergence of criminal (narco) cities
that arise either quickly from the red level, basically bypassing the purple
level as in the case of a premeditated criminal insurgency arising or far more
slowly from the purple level for those non-state threat groups that are forced
to become politicized – and can be thought of as accidental criminal
insurgents in order to fill the vacuum of governance that has now been
created. The end result is the rise of a third phase cartel (Criminal State
Successor), with probable 3GEN gang member fusion, supported by both
turf and market gang generation allies and associates.
To better articulate the proposed purple (fully feral) and black (beyond feral;
criminal city) levels and their interrelationships to cartel phases and gang
generations, a short case discussion highlights certain cities in Mexico and South
America that are representative of these levels.
Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, and Ciudad del Este ferality discussion
Ciudad Juárez (Feral City); Nuevo Laredo (Criminal City); and Ciudad del Este
(Criminal City) provide key examples of dystopian urban development.
From the vantage point of this analysis, Ciudad Juárez is an example of a feral
city, while Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad del Este represent criminal cities. The key
metric here is not raw violence – although violence is certainly present in Juárez
and Nuevo Laredo – but rather the domination of economic, political, and social
flows.
Ciudad Juárez has been characterized as the most violent or dangerous city in
North America. A border town across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, it is a
city under siege. Cartels, gangs, and a range of criminal actors battle each other,
the police, and the military, and increasingly target civilians in this brutal ‘feral’
cityscape.28 In 2010 between 3,075 and 3,156 persons were killed in the colonias
of Juárez as a result of the cartel wars. Over the past four years, at least 10% of
Mexico’s narco death toll was registered in Juárez. Proceso called the city a
‘place where the narco rules’.29 In addition to rampant crime and street battles,
squatter shacks, jury-rigged homes, unpaved streets, lack of running water, and
extreme urban blight characterized the landscape.30
According to Ed Vulliamy, Juárez is embroiled in criminal anarchy with the
Juárez Cartel, La Lı́nea, the Sinaloa Cartel, street gangs, the police and army all
vying for the upper hand.31 In a recent essay at the Guardian, Vulliamy asserted
that Juárez provides a lens to assess future criminal/deviant globalization with
Mexican cartels acting as pioneers in the business logic and modus operandi of the
global economy. Vulliamy invoked Charles Bowden’s observation that ‘Juarez is
not the breakdown of social order. Juarez is the new order.’32 Bowden for his part
calls Juárez ‘Murder City’ where violence permeates all aspects of life.33
A surge in federal police and military forces has been applied at least twice to
quell the rise in urban insecurity resulting from open cartel warfare with uneven
results. The municipal police chief Julian Leyzaola is waging a battle against
entrenched corruption, endemic street crime, gang warfare, and, according to
media accounts, competition from federal forces. In a 28 July 2011 report,
Leyzaola claims that federal police attempted to kill him by firing on his vehicle
during a response to a prison revolt.34 Here we see all elements of the city – licit
and illicit – battling for control.
As a result, up to 200,000 people have left Ciudad Juárez – more than 10% of
its 1.5 million population – in 18 months from fear of a turf war between cartels.
About a quarter of homes in the city lie empty as residents escape or new houses
are left vacant. At least 30,000 people have moved to El Paso. Estimates vary on
the size of the exodus but academics and Ciudad Juarez officials put it at between
75,000 and 200,000 people since mid 2008.35 The culmination of the battle for
control combined with the flight of civilians results in a proliferation of lawless,
‘no-go’ zones where the criminals rule. While the state and elements of civil
society continue to battle to retake the city, a de facto feral city exists.
In Nuevo Laredo, we see the Zetas providing civil security and police
functions with a force of over 3,000 cartel gunmen. This presence far outnumbers
the legitimate police, placing Nuevo Laredo firmly under the control of narcos.
Nuevo Laredo is essentially a criminal enclave. The emergence of parallel
government in Nuevo Laredo (more fully entrenched than the similar situation in
Juárez) places the cartels in power. The Zetas – and to a lesser degree their
competitors – levy taxes, gather intelligence, control the media, run business
enterprises, and most importantly impose order.36
According to Howard Campbell, ‘Entire regions of Mexico are effectively
controlled by non-state actors, i.e., multipurpose criminal organizations’ that
have ‘morphed from being strictly drug cartels into a kind of alternative society
37
and economy.’ This situation is maturing in Nuevo Laredo where the Zetas are
the dominant social and political actors. In Campbell’s view, ‘They are the
dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or control utilities
such as gasoline, sell their own products and are the ultimate decision-makers in
the territory they control.’38
Eric Olsen at the Woodrow Wilson Center summarizes the situation, ‘There is
no question the lines between the state and organized crime have been blurred in
some areas of Mexico and, in some cases, obliterated altogether.’ Olsen adds, ‘In
such cases local governments continue to function “normally” while protecting the
interests of crime over those of the citizens.’ This state of ‘dual sovereignty’
means, ‘In local areas where the state is unable to guarantee the safety and well-
being of citizens, organized crime provides de facto security and even guarantees
services for the public.’39
In Nuevo Leon, the violence persists but control is in the hands of the
gangsters. According to Vulliamy, ‘before the war, the narco was granted
impunity, so he thought he was the boss, but actually the politicians and the police
were the bosses of the narco. Now, after the war, the cartel in this state has become
a parallel structure; they are not subject to the political parties, they are a parallel
government. Before, the policeman and politician were the bosses of the narco.
Now, the narco is the boss of the policeman and politician, and does what he
wants.’40 This situation results in ‘criminal enclaves’ and is characterized in this
analysis, when occurring in an urban milieu, as a ‘criminal city’.
Ciudad del Este is the prototypical ‘criminal enclave’ or ‘criminal city’. This
criminal city is situated in the South American jungle at the intersection of three
nations: Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. It is a key node or hub in the global
illicit economy. Participants in the criminal free-zone of the enclave include
Lebanese gangsters and terrorists, drug smugglers, Nigerian gangsters, and Asian
mafias – Japanese Yakuza, Tai Chen (Cantonese mafia), Fuk Ching, the Big
Circle Boys, and the Flying Dragons.41
The blurring of borders – a characteristic of the networked, information age
– is present here. Mafias exploit interconnected economies. It is a hub for the
global drug trade, a center for consumer product piracy, and base for gunrunners
diverting small arms (from the US) to the violent and heavily armed drug gangs in
the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In Ciudad del Este, extreme violence
is rare since the co-option is complete and connections to the global illicit
economic circuits are secure.
The rise of criminal (narco) city networks and BlackFor

Extrapolating the rise and creation of ‘black level’ cities in the Americas and their
linkages into networks suggests a potentially chilling future. Essentially, these
have become ‘their’ criminal cities and, while linked to the greater international
system, the linkages that exist are less about legitimate commerce and intercourse
to ‘our’ cities than to the flourishing global illicit economy that is helping to
sustain and increasingly link ‘their’ cities together.42 We are potentially seeing
the rise of networked ‘feral cities’. Essentially, this is ‘deviant globalization’43
characterized by the dystopian mirror to the rise of ‘global cities.’
With over half the world’s population living in urban settings, the role of cities –
especially ‘mega-cities’ – is pivotal in the relationships between place and power as
exercised through the ‘space of flows’. The urban future may be dominated by cities
as expressed by Parag Khanna who states ‘cities rather than states are becoming the
islands of governance on which the future world order will be built.’44 If this is the
case, the spatial dynamics of the global urban network are instrumental. Friedmann
conceptualized cities as distributed within a global hierarchy with London, New

York, and Tokyo serving as ‘global financial articulations’, and Miami, Los
Angeles, Amsterdam, and Singapore as ‘multinational articulations’.45 Saskia
Sassen argues that territory, authority, and rights are key to understanding these
distributions46 and that ‘global cities’ such as London and ‘sub-global cities’ such as
Frankfort (for banking) are elements of this global distribution.47 Castells sees world
cities as those serving as command and control centers within these global
networks.48 These differentiated functions are distributed among the urban nodes via
the ‘space of flows’ where node and hubs have specific strategic (or non-strategic)
functions.49 Given the rise of ‘feral cities’, it is conceivable to envision a ‘space of
illicit flows’ serving the economic needs of transnational organized crime.
The tension between those connected to the licit economic system and those not
connected will likely fuel a contradiction between the ‘space of flows’ and the ‘space
of places’. This contradiction promises to exacerbate the separation and isolation of
those not well integrated into the global economy. Here, Castells’s concept of ‘dual
cities’, where cities and components of ‘mega-cities’ are spatially divided between
high value-making groups and functions and devalued and downgraded spaces,
suggests the development of ‘mega-slums’ complementing ‘mega-cities’.50
According to Mike Davis, by 2030 an estimated 5 billion of the world’s population
(estimated at 8.1 billion at that time) will live in cities; 40% (2 billion) will be slum
dwellers.51 In some places like Nigeria (where 80% of the population currently lives
in slums) or Mexico City (where 4 million live in the Neza/Chalco/Izta slum), the
contrast will be stark, generating the rise of ‘feral city’ alternatives.52
As these stark mega-slums compete for survival, it is likely that criminal
enclaves and ‘feral cities’ will link with network criminal enterprises to compete for
a stake in the global economies (licit and illicit). Here, the potential for illicit
economy and illicit economic actors (gangsters) to link with gangsters in other
mega-slums in a criminal parallel of the global network of mega-cities may be
realized.53
The rise of networked criminal enclaves and feral cities coordinating black
and gray market transactions via illicit economic circuits is an emerging reality.
Transnational crime, as described by Ivan Briscoe is a powerful actor: ‘the
criminalized drug economies are silting into durable structures, uniting public
allegiance, political and official allies, money and reliable armed units so as to
feed growing demand. They are quasi-states, in fact straddling law and crime
much like the policeman-anarchists in Chesterton’s The Man Who Was
Thursday.’54 As the gangsters (networked mafias, third generation gangs, and
third phase cartels) continue to exploit weak governance and extract resources
from ‘feral cities’ at all phases along the spectrum, it is increasingly likely that we
will see the rise of a ‘criminal league’ or BlackFor that challenges states and their
structures of governance, security, and economic power.
Notes
1. Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting. BlackFor was first linked to the
criminal insurgency construct in Sullivan and Elkus, ‘State of Siege’ and ‘Red
Teaming Criminal Insurgency’.
2. This now even includes Mexican and Colombian narco-enclave encroachment into
West Africa. See Brice, ‘Latin American Drug Cartels Find Home in West Africa’.
3. Norton, ‘Feral Cities’ and ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?’.
The New York Times selected this research one of the ‘ideas of 2004’. The author has
apparently conducted additional research on this topic that has not been publicly
released. Another writer who has expanded on this research historically with an eye
towards piracy is Frick, ‘Feral Cities – Pirate Havens’.
4. See Peters, ‘Our Soldiers, Their Cities’; Davis, Planet of Slums; and Graham, Cities
Under Siege.
5. Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?’, 51.
6. Norton, ‘Feral Cities’, 98.
7. Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?’, 56 – 57.
8. See Foreign Policy, The Failed States Index 2010; Transparency International,
Corruption Perceptions Index 2010; and Paul et al., ‘Identifying Urban Flashpoints’.
9. Norton, ‘Feral Cities’, 103.
10. See Bunker and Bunker, ‘Urban Terrorism’. The primary editor specifically reached
out to the authors to bring in a more interdisciplinary perspective to the urban health
field.
11. Sullivan and Silverstein, ‘The Disaster Within Us’ and Bunker, ‘Street Gangs’.
12. Bunker, ‘Street Gangs’, 58.
13. Sullivan, ‘Third Generation Street Gangs’.
14. Bunker and Sullivan, ‘Cartel Evolution Revisited’.
15. Ibid., 37 – 38.
16. Ibid., 33 – 34.
17. Norton, ‘Feral Cities: Problems Today, Battlefields Tomorrow?’, 51.
18. Felbab-Brown, ‘Conceptualizing Crime as Competition in State-Making and
Designing an Effective Response’.
19. Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, 181.
20. Discussion and analysis of the politicized nature of gangs and cartels can be found in
a number of works including Clark, ‘Does Clausewitz Apply to Criminal-States and
Gangs?’ and Manwaring, Gangs, Pseudo-militaries and Other Modern Other
Modern Mercenaries.
21. Bunker, ‘Strategic Threat: Narcos and Narcotics Overview’, 9.
22. Hobbes, Leviathan.
23. Hobbes, De Cive. The standard version of this work is Howard Warrender, ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
24. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla.
25. Sullivan and Rosales, ‘Ciudad Juárez and Mexico’s “Narco-Culture” Threat’.
26. See, for example, Mail Foreign Service, ‘Mexican Newspaper Vows to End
Coverage of Drugs War As It Pleads with Cartels to Stop Killing Its Journalists’ and
Sullivan, ‘Cartel Info Ops’.
27. See Sullivan and Logan, ‘La Lı́nea’.
28. Sullivan and Rosales, ‘Ciudad Juárez and Mexico’s “Narco-Culture” Threat’.
29. Ibid.
30. Caputo, ‘Juárez: City of Death’.
31. Vulliamy, Amexica: War Along the Border Line.
32. Vulliamy, ‘Ciudad Juarez Is All Our Futures’.
33. Bowden, Murder City.
34. Los Angeles Times (La Plaza), ‘Police Chief in Ciudad Juarez Claims Mexican Feds
Tried to Kill Him’.

35. Cardona, ‘Mexicans Flee Drug War City in Fear of Killings’.
36. Corchado, Alfredo, ‘Drug cartels taking over government roles in parts of Mexico’.
The Dallas Morning News (30 April 2011), http://www.dallasnews.com/news/
state/headlines/20110430-drug-cartelstaking-over-government-roles-in-parts-of-
mexico.ece.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Vulliamy, ‘Nuevo Laredo’.
41. Bunker and Sullivan, ‘Cartel Evolution: Potentials and Consequences’.
42. See Peters, ‘Our Soldiers, Their Cities’.
43. See Gilman et al., Deviant Globalization.
44. Khanna, ‘Beyond City Limits’.
45. Friedmann, ‘The World City Hypothesis’.
46. Sassen, Territory-Authority-Rights.
47. Sassen, The Global City.
48. Castells, The Information Age.
49. Castells, ‘The Informational City is a Dual City: can it be Reversed?’
50. Davis, City Of Quartz.
51. Davis, Planet of Slums.
52. Ibid.
53. Sullivan and Elkus, ‘Global Cities – Global Gangs’.
54. Briscoe, ‘Lockdown in Vienna’.
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