The government of Mexico must dismantle its narco-state

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
March 6, 2025

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) A narco-State is any country whose “political institutions are influenced -in a significant way- by the power and wealth from narcotics’ trafficking and whose leaders, simultaneously, occupy positions as governmental officials protected by their legal empowerment, and as members of illicit narcotics’ trafficking networks.” Regrettably, that is the Mexico that was left behind by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and that is being sustained by President Claudia Sheinbaum whose legal and historic obligation is now to dismantle the narco-State.

Beyond building the narco-State, AMLO made out of Mexico a “para-dictatorial” government, that is a “democratic government that is at the service of organized crime’s dictatorships, sustains them, seeks to legitimize them, and does not fulfill its international obligations, thus betraying and hindering its national interests.

Mexico, at the service of Cuba’s dictatorship, buying precious stones, contracting enslaved personnel and physicians, awarding decorations to the dictator, and giving it oil; at the service of Venezuela’s dictatorship welcoming Maduro as Head of State instead of detaining him to comply with the warrants for his arrest as the head of the Los Soles Cartel; operating to grant impunity to dictator Evo Morales and -in complicity with Tuto Quiroga- aiding and abetting Morales’ flight on board of an official Mexican airplane; covering up Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua; granting impunity to duly sentenced members of Correa’s dictatorship in Ecuador, compromising its embassy in Quito, and much more.

Evidence of the narco-State established by AMLO and the “normality” of its functioning by Sheinbaum, consists of official documents as the one reporting that “the Jalisco Cartel has control of the Veracruz, Manzanillo, and Lazaro Cardenas Mexican ports in the States of Veracruz, Colima, and Michoacan,” published in August of 2023 by journalist Ricardo Aleman citing reports of the DEA to the US Congress. These also highlight the increase in “deaths in the US caused by Fentanyl consumption to surpass the hundred thousand lives lost in 2022” and the duplication of the Mexican remittances from the US due to “the massive entrance of Fentanyl to that country.”

An editorial analysis of El Sol de Mexico, dated 14 August of 2024, affirms that “the constant exposure to news regarding the collusion between governmental officials and drug cartels, reinforce the impression that narcotics’ traffickers have a considerable control over the political and social life of the country,” adding that “for many citizens the concept of narco-State is not only an academic definition but a palpable reality that conditions the security and justice in their daily lives.”

Lopez Obrador reinstated the slogan sic “abrazos y no balazos” (somewhat synonym to hugs and not thugs) coined by the Chicano counter-culture of 1960, that defined his policies with the narrative that “violence is a product of the deep inequality and lack of opportunities that provoke violence.” Alexander Aviña, a historian of Arizona State University who studies narcotics’ trafficking in Mexico, is of the opinion that “in reality, there is no opposition between the bad cartels and the good State.”

The first cause of death among young people is premeditated homicide, as was reported by InfoBae, citing data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography that confirmed that in AMLO’s six-year mandate, Mexico surpassed 200,000 premeditated homicides.

The arrest of Mayo Zambada in the US motivated the “protest of the Lopez Obrador government, something that for many was the corroboration of an existing secret -but well known- strong relationship between the Morena political party, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Mexican criminal groups.” Now, Mexico surprised the world with the extradition of 29 major narcotics’ traffickers to the US, amongst whom are Rafael Caro Quintero and Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, brother of “El Mencho.”

Starting with the deployment of Mexican troops to the border with the US to end forcible migration, to the sudden extradition of an important group of traffickers that includes those responsible for the murder of US agents and officials, the government of Mexico endeavors to avoid the imposition of trade tariffs to their products exported to the US. It is a mitigation of the “hybrid war” operated and sanctioned by the AMLO government and continued by Sheinbaum against the US. With the messages verbalized internally by Sheinbaum, however, it would seem that there is no change of conduct.

What would be good for Mexico, its peoples, economy, and security, is “to dismantle the narco-State” established in AMLO’s six-year tenure and now being sustained by its current president Sheinbaum. It consists in restoring the “rule of law,” prioritize the Mexican nation’s and peoples’ security, fulfill international covenants, and stop protecting and sustaining dictators-in-chief of narco-States such as; Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua who violate human rights and use State-terrorism.

Mexico is the launching pad of attacks against the US and can no longer pretend to pursue economic prosperity at the expense of the country it attacks with an antiimperialist discourse at the service of dictatorships and/or narco-States.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director del Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Monday March 3, 2025