A criminal organisation. They've been accused of some pretty heinous crimes in the pursuit of money. This includes torture, kidnapping, trafficking, drug trades, murder, etc. Use your imagination, they've done it.

A Mexican cartel is just like every other cartel, just Mexican. If you want to learn more about them, Pablo Escobar is easily the most famous. Former leader of the Medellin cartel in Columbia.

A cartel is a group of competing organizations that decide to cooperate with each other to corner or dominate their market, usually to the detriment of the public. A drug cartel is a group of drug manufacturing/smuggling organizations that are trying to monopolize the illegal drug trade.

Their victims can be anybody: people who didn’t cooperate with the cartel, people who oppose/threaten the cartel, people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the cartel decided it needed to make a gruesome statement, etc.

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What do their victims do? Nothing, they're usually dead!