The amount of money the United States actually makes is massive. With this money many of the illegal activities that go on are funded by the drug cartels. Mexico is not a wealthy country. The population of Mexico is approximately 113.7 million people and the unemployment rate is about 5.3 percent (Mexico). The people who are unemployed are willing to do whatever they can to earn a living. As a result many of them join the drug cartels. The drug cartel leaders are intelligent and take advantage of these situations. The cartels make about 3-4% of Mexico's GDP which is about $1.5 trillion and the total GDP is about of $30 trillion (Lee). These cartels hire people who are unemployed and have starving children who are willing to work in any condition. These cartels recruit people by promising the employers that their lives would become much better if they worked for the Cartel (Fantz). The cartels employ about half a million people (Lee). If the employers didn't work for the cartels they wouldn't have jobs and would be in a worst situation than they would be working for the cartels. The cartels operate in more urban areas because there is less security in the urban areas compared to the cities. The larger the cartels, the larger the acts of violence is, such as massacres and abductions against other cartels and innocent people. .
Throughout the history of cartels, violence has been the means of ensuring employee loyalty and honesty. Once the government decided to take some action against the cartels, the violence increased. In September 2006 a cartel named La Familia tossed a bag of heads in a disco club in Uruapan, Michoacán. Few months later Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico, decided to send 6,500 troops to the city in order to fight the cartels (Booth). This action initiated the Mexican drug war. Unfortunately the 6,500 troops were not enough to stop the drug cartels. A year later the Bush administration decided to help in the Mexican drug war by giving Mexico $1.