It seems President Donald Trump can’t stop threatening attacks on Mexican drug traffickers. He has repeatedly insisted on deploying U.S. troops to Mexico to “take down the cartels” that traffic fentanyl and other drugs across the border. But he has a problem: Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum says no.
“She’s a good woman,” Trump told Fox News last month, making it clear that he didn’t put her in the same category as Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader who was captured by U.S. forces and is now in New York facing drug trafficking charges. Sheinbaum’s hesitation, he claimed, stems more from fear than complicity. “She’s very afraid of the cartels,” he said. “The cartels run Mexico; she doesn’t run Mexico.”
Mexico’s cartels are indeed very dangerous, but Trump seems to miss what makes the country’s organized crime networks such a persistent threat. In the 12 years I’ve covered Mexico as a journalist, I’ve learned that force alone cannot take down the cartels. The problem isn’t simply that drug cartels attack the state. It’s that they are often part of it. Like other political parties in Mexico, Morena, Sheinbaum’s party, has multiple prominent members facing serious allegations of ties to organized crime. Combating the cartels doesn’t just mean confronting drug traffickers. For Sheinbaum, it could mean dismantling the foundations of local power in Mexico and confronting members of her own coalition.
With Sheinbaum’s political survival at stake, she is unlikely to wage the all-out war that Trump is demanding. She lacks the iron grip on Morena that her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, wielded. AMLO founded the party and achieved enormous popularity thanks to his jovial manner and far-reaching social welfare programs. Morena is now divided into factions allied with Sheinbaum and AMLO—who, although nominally retired, still wields enormous influence within the party—divided more by personal loyalties than ideological differences. Taking a more decisive stance against corrupt politicians could pit her against party officials who might undermine her authority and weaken Morena ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
American politicians have failed to grasp the political nature of the drug trade in Mexico. Conditioned by programs like Narcos: Mexico, many Americans picture a handful of cartels led by colorful kingpins like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who defies the government with his bloody exploits. In fact, there is evidence of close ties between drug cartels and Mexican authorities dating back more than a century. Under the one-party system that ruled Mexico for 71 years, local and state governments routinely protected favored criminals and imprisoned rival traffickers in exchange for cash, according to historian Benjamin Smith. By the 1970s, federal law enforcement agencies had already taken control of many of these protection networks.
This collusion did not end when Mexico transitioned to democracy in 2000, nor when the state began waging the so-called war on drugs in 2006; if anything, the lines became more blurred. Many of the large cartels, such as Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana, fragmented after their leaders were killed or captured. Today’s crime bosses are less like flamboyant kingpins and more like feudal lords, controlling swathes of territory where they not only traffic drugs but also extort local businesses, steal oil, and smuggle migrants. Some of his most important connections have involved mayors and governors, some of whom belong to Morena, which is not necessarily the only corrupt party, but simply the dominant political force in Mexico.
To get an idea of how these protection networks operate, one need only look at Tabasco, AMLO’s home state. There, Hernán Bermúdez Requena, a wavy-haired politician with a law degree, was the state’s top security official until 2024, while, according to military intelligence documents, secretly helping to run a local criminal group called La Barredora. Bermúdez, who apparently fled the country shortly after resigning, was arrested in Paraguay last fall and faces charges in Mexico for conspiracy, extortion, and kidnapping. (He has said the charges are politically motivated.)
Source: nytimes
