ISOT Mexico (and other) ISOT - effect on organised crime

[Buba]

Whenever various countires are ISOTed I wonder about the impact on organised crime.
Let us take Mexico as an example.
On one hand the Cartels lose:
- the US market;
- their external suppliers;
- all assets in the USA and elsewhere;
- all bank accounts outside Mexico;
- their Dollars in cash are worthless.

However, they retain:
- their organisations;
- their armies;
- their weapons;
- their Pesos (maybe they manage to convert part of their Dollar accounts into Pesos?).

So, is their power destroyed? Or does it stays same - maybe even grow, especially as some turmoil is to be expected?

In many ISOT scenarios criminals can easily carve out little empires outside of Mexico/whatever, but I'm more interested in their standing inside the country.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The current Mexican Cartels effectively own a significant chunk of the state already. They've diversified beyond drugs into all sorts of markets from logging to Avocados. Their dollars are useful but their guns and organization and what let them do it, they won't die that easily.

If just Mexico by itself the Cartels lose their buyers and would need to expand. This would probably lead to the collapse of the rump Mexican government as the Cartels seize the territory they ignored before. Rather than "carve out" empires for themselves they'd probably just proceed to expand their borders and bite chunks out of North and South America adjacent to their current territories as they move forward. Inevitably they'd start fighting each other, some moron would get the bright idea to arm the natives and point them at the enemy, and native tribes would become competition and slow their capture of new territory.

I'd expect fights over any remaining shipping to be fierce. The best bet for new markets for their products is going to be Europe so the smarter and more tech-savvy cartels are probably going to make a beeline for Altamira and Veracruz. Ensenada is a bigger port than either of them, but as the Panama Canal doesn't exist, it wouldn't help reaching Europe and they may have more trouble opening the markets in Asia. The next step will be fights over supplies of oil to keep the shipping going, and possibly some clever people working up how to build sail/steam vessels to preserve the oil supply and keep going if they aren't able to design and manufacture a drilling rig fast enough.

 

[Doomsought]

Eventually the cartels would legitimize themselves into royal families. Over a dozen generations of deliberate and accidental revisionism, their past will by mythologized to better support their legitimacy.

 

[Buba]

That is eventually
What happens in Year One?