On Monday I was saying that my impression is that, for the United States, Mexico has become a national security threat, and that is why they have modified their strategy. That same day, the White House published its National Drug Control Strategy, detailing part of that transformation.
It’s not that I’m a fortune teller or have privileged information. As Christian Ehrlich, a security expert, rightly says, there isn’t much in this document beyond what was already in the national security and military strategies published in recent months. In fact, the change on the ground can be dated much earlier, to the Biden administration, under which the extraction of Mayo Zambada took place. If that weren’t enough, the creation of the Joint Interagency Task Force of U.S. Northern Command at the beginning of the year clearly pointed to what we are now seeing.
This information allows us to confirm that we are not facing a sudden impulse by Trump, even though he has undoubtedly approved this process and will surely try to use it to his advantage. The shift is institutional; it is a state policy, and it seems to respond to the transformation that organized crime in Mexico has undergone.
First, it is worth remembering that Mexican cartels are among the most important criminal groups in the world. They frequently rank among the five most powerful, far surpassing other Latin American groups. It is no coincidence that concern has grown in several South American countries about the presence of elements from Sinaloa or Jalisco.
Second, these groups have undergone a notable transformation over the past 15 years. On the one hand, their market changed, with the legalization of marijuana in the United States, but also with the opioid epidemic. Hence the connection with Chinese and Indian groups to produce fentanyl in Mexico and introduce it into the United States. On the other hand, pressure from security forces, both in Mexico and in the United States, forced them to seek other sources of income. For these reasons, we see both the transnationalization of these groups and the expansion of their business portfolios.
With López’s victory, these two phenomena grew significantly. On the transnational side, it is enough to recall his insistence that fentanyl laboratories did not exist in Mexico; on the domestic side, territorial expansion allowed for a notable increase in extortion, but also the expansion of criminal groups into human trafficking, taking advantage of the margins created by U.S. anti-immigration policies and Mexico’s de facto role as a “safe third country.”
For all these reasons, referring to these groups as drug traffickers is anachronistic. They are certainly still in that business, but it is no longer the only one, and in many cases not even the main one. Moreover, this is no longer about the Mexican police turning a blind eye to crops or trafficking. Organized crime, through its transnational expansion and diversification via territorial control, has in practice begun a process of replacing the State. They are the ones who guarantee public security, administer justice, and control public goods, either directly or through figureheads they have placed in power.
Seen this way, it becomes clear why for the United States this is no longer just a “war on drugs,” at least not only that. And if this interpretation is correct, the dilemma facing the Mexican government is entirely different from that of two or three administrations ago. It is no longer a matter of asking neighbors to stop consuming and everything will be solved. The threat for them—and the same for us—is that Mexico may be governed by criminal groups. That is what the discussion should be about.