Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera | Cartels Inc: A ‘New Generation’ of Criminal Networks

This presentation will explain a new configuration of organized crime “networks” in Mexico in the context of militarization, and its relationship with the energy sector in the Americas. It will provide an overall description of the most recent transformation of Mexico’s criminal landscape, and a revised theoretical framework to study of transnational organized crime and its effects on land ownership and use in an era of energy transition.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera is professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government, and co-director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at George Mason University. Her areas of expertise are border studies, U.S.-Mexico relations, international security, migration studies and illicit networks. She is past president of the Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS) and is co-editor of the International Studies Perspectives journal (ISP, Oxford University Press).

Correa-Cabrera was recently (2024-2025) a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Mexico conducting research at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte and writing her forthcoming book entitled Coyotes LLC; The Industry of Human Smuggling and the American “Dream.” In the fall of 2025 she was Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Davidson Institute for Global Security of The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding in Dartmouth College. She is currently vsiting scholar at the Center for Research on Latin American and the Caribbean (CIALC) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her forthcoming book in Spanish (2025) is titled: Carteles Inc: A “New Generation” of Criminal Networks (in contract with Siglo XXI Editores).