The word "cartel" is correct and can be used in written English.
It typically refers to an organization of businesses or countries that form an agreement to control prices and limit competition. For example, "The oil cartel was formed to regulate the price of oil on the international market."
Two sons of the former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid are being investigated by the federal competition watchdog over alleged "cartel conduct" in securing a coal exploration licence over an area that included the Obeid family's farm.
"Things are bad and there's no real sign they're going to get any better soon, unless there's a bit more enthusiasm around forming a cartel".
Related: Mexican man dies during violent police response to teachers protest in Acapulco Six people died and 43 others disappeared last September when a bus convoy carrying a party of student teachers was attacked by municipal police officers, allegedly in league with a local drug cartel.
In 2012, the Knights Templar cartel in neighboring Michoacan state burned five warehouses and dozens of vehicles owned by Sabritas snack company, a Mexican subsidiary of PespsiCo.
He added that El Chapo's arrest and tighter restrictions on cash transactions had led to a notable contraction in the past year, though he expected this to ease once the cartel had found new creative ways of laundering its money.
A close relative of María's trafficed cocaine independently, she said, but still depended on the cartel to keep order in the state.
Memories are still fresh of the all-out war that erupted in Sinaloa in 2008 following a violent split between Chapo and his one-time allies in the Beltrán Leyva family, leaving many in the area particularly attuned to signs of internal tension in the cartel.
The Sinaloa cartel also has other important leaders, most notably Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, which makes it unlikely that the group will fall apart in the wake of the capture.
Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel is the biggest trafficking organisation in Mexico, with a long tradition of moving South American cocaine to insatiable markets in US and other parts of the world, as well as locally produced marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines.
In Iguala, the attack highlighted longstanding allegations that the mayor, José Luis Abarca, all but shared municipal authority with a local cartel, Guerreros Unidos.
María de los Angeles Pineda has several brothers named in intelligence reports as members of either the Beltrán Leyva cartel or Guerreros Unidos.
