Guanajuato: A Struggle to Control Oil Theft

Abstract

Guanajuato became Mexico’s most dangerous entity in 2019. It used to be a peaceful state in the 1990s, but with the evolution of criminal groups and organised crime, Guanajuato became a strategic region because of its geographical location, road network, economic development and fuel pipelines. The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that brought Guanajuato to the first place in terms of homicides in 2019 nationwide. The hypothesis states that violence in the entity was the result of an invasion of the CJNG and its fight against the CSRL to dominate the theft of gasoline. To prove this hypothesis, we use a multiple regression model to correlate homicides taking place from 2015 to 2019 between the most dangerous municipalities of Guanajuato with those occurring in Jalisco and Michoacán. The correlation parameters which also take into account the road network were significant for Leon, (Guanajuato) vs. San Pedro de Tlaquepaque (Jalisco), Tlajomulco de Zúñiga (Jalisco), Tonalá (Jalisco), Zamora (Michoacán) and El Salto (Jalisco); Irapuato vs. Guadalajara (Jalisco) and San Pedro de Tlaquepaque (Jalisco) and Salamanca vs. Guadalajara (Jalisco), Tonalá (Jalisco), Zamora (Michoacán) and Lagos de Moreno (Jalisco).