The Mexican government has long shared control of Mexico with
its different criminal organisations.
So no, I don't think Mexican citizens necessarily feel that
the Mexican government is in charge.
Cartels, an organised crime, will not go anywhere near
tourists for the World Cup. At the same time, you will be
extremely near areas that the cartels control, and also you'll
be very near places where the cartels are burying vast amounts
of disappeared bodies. Has this revealed the
inconvenient truth about who really runs Mexico?
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
Huge swathes of Mexico have been shut down by a surge of violence
by drug cartels. After the arrest and killing of
a drug Lord called El Mencho. He had a $15 million bounty on
his head courtesy of Donald Trump.
But when Mexican special forces mounted a raid, he ended up
dead, unleashing a wave of violence across the country,
with cartels torching businesses and setting up burning
blockades. Tourists in resorts have been
told to stay indoors and a number of football matches have
been cancelled, including in cities about to host this
summer's World Cup. So can the Mexican government
regain control? Or does this show that it is the
drug gangs who actually run the country?
In a moment, I'll speak to Cecilia Fafa Mendez, head of the
North American Observatory at the Global Initiative Against
Transnational Organized Crime, and Benjamin Smith, professor of
Latin American history at the University of Warwick and author
of The Dope, The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.
But first, let's go to Deborah Bonello, who's an investigative
reporter based in Mexico City and managing editor of Insight
Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in Latin
America. Deborah, what's been happening
and what's which is it having on people well?
Following the killing of Alimento yesterday morning, I
believe there were some 250 blockades according to the
Mexican government that took place across around 20 different
states in Mexico. To be to be clear, even though
it's called the Helisco Cartel, it has but tentacles all around
the country really. And I think the violence very
much reflected that. I know a lot of people who have
been trapped in Halisco unable to leave via the airport or, or
or via the the highways there because of the the security
operation that's come in response to the sort of cartel
push back. What is the effect when these
sorts of things happen? Because this is not the first
time, you know, do do people feel the government's in
control, the police are in control or the cartels or a bit
of everything? I think it's a little bit of
everything. You know, it's important to keep
in mind that there is kind of a criminal government governance
that exists in Mexico that has been established by the sort of
metastasizing cartel power that you've seen across the country.
So no, I don't think Mexican citizens necessarily feel that
the Mexican government is in charge.
And there has been a lot of kind of chaos and disruption across
the country. Now, of course, the the
government of Claudia Shanebaum will be very keen to bring
things back under control. But the fact of the matter is
that the Mexican government has long shared control of Mexico
with its different criminal organisations.
And and when you then see huge numbers of security forces on
the streets trying to restore order, I imagine that's pretty
scary too. You know, it's been 20 years
since the government launched a crackdown on organised crime in
Mexico. So for better or for worse,
Mexicans are pretty used to seeing the military on the
streets. What we did see, you know,
yesterday was kind of an unprecedented threats of
reaction from organised crime, but smaller versions of this
have been going on for the last two decades at least.
What signal are they sending? Not that it's very subtle.
It's not subtle at all. And the signal they're sending
is, you know, we we won't be told what we usually see from
the decapitation of criminal organisations like this.
It's a detonation of violence because now there's kind of a
scrum to replace not the only El Mencho, but, you know, all the
different kind of regional leadership agreements that,
that, that, that exist across Mexico.
So the, the cartel messages, we, we won't be cowed, we won't be
controlled. And we have, you know, they're
showing off the, the, the criminal governance that they
have, as well as the firepower and the capacity for violence
and chaos. When they lose a leader like our
Mencho, what effect does it have on the cartel?
Does it spark chaos or you know, or you know a power struggle or
what? Yeah.
Well, I mean, it sparks a leadership contest, right.
And if, if you've been following things in Mexico, you'll see
that about 18 months ago, they did very, a very similar thing
to the Sinaloa cartel. We saw the the high profile
arrest of Ismail El Maya, Zambala.
And that followed, of course, El Chapo's arrest and extradition
starting in 2018-2019. And since the the decapitation,
if you like, of the Sinaloa, Qatar, we've seen this internal
war erupt in Sinaloa, which has been going on for the last 18
months. There's a steady curfew there
every night. Violence is is constant.
People live under under siege really.
And I think we can expect to see a similar version of that play
out in the Jalisco Cartel strongholds.
Deborah, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
Let's turn now to Cecilia and Benjamin.
Let's begin with Benjamin. What's going on?
So what we know is that the Mexican military, probably aided
by the CIA, which has happened before, yesterday, attempted to
arrest and inadvertently killed the head of a vast organised
crime group called the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Gena Racion.
Since then, members of the Cartel Jalisco have been doing
what is called in Spanish Calintando la Plaza, which is
effectively means showing that they are in control of areas
that they can burn buses on, burn businesses in and blockade
roads in. So it is a show they're doing at
the moment is a kind of show of force.
Cecilia, has this revealed the inconvenient truth about who
really runs Mexico? I think certainly this is not
the first time that we see a reaction by a criminal group
after the arrest, attempted arrest or death of one of its
purported leaders. But I think, you know, to
essentially say that it is criminal groups who run the
country would be certainly misguided.
I think it's certainly important to understand that it was to be
expected that there would be a backlash in the violence that we
are seeing today. But at least today, there are
also reports that there's no more blockades in the country,
no active blockades in highways. And so certainly the question is
how can the Mexican government will be able to contain
violence. But I would not characterize
these as a criminal group essentially having more
firepower capacity than the state does.
How much support and firepower do they actually have?
I mean are are they effectively private armies?
I mean, we know certainly from, you know, the evidence and
certainly like events from yesterday that these are heavily
armed groups that are also early tech adopters, if you will, in
the sense that they are willing to innovate and be able to
contest the state's capacity. But I would again, you know,
even if they are heavily armed and certainly this links to a
very important bilateral issue which is that a firearms
trafficking, I wouldn't characterize them as having or
outgunning the Mexican state it. Appears the Americans were very
involved in this particular operation, though, and the key
intelligence may have come from them.
Yes. So the US press secretary has
mentioned that this was an operation that was conducted
with U.S. intelligence, but there has been a lot of emphasis
and it was conducted by the Mexican Army and Mexican forces.
And even the US government also thanked the Mexican army for,
you know, the actions that took place.
So, you know, at least as of now, the official narrative that
we have or the official version that we have is that this was
possible due to cooperation, but that the actual, the actual
operation in Mexico was carried out by Mexican authorities with
U.S. intelligence. So, Benjamin, if that's the
official narrative, what what? What is the real the
relationship and the politics of what's going on here?
As to why the Mexicans would act and do something that they would
have known would be very provocative.
As Cecilia says, there have been similar uprisings in the past
when they've tried to grab key figures.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's
particularly risky. The Mexican government over the
last year has been very heavy on showing that it's bringing down
homicide rates. Now, I'm sure Cecilia and I can
talk about whether that is true, whether they're actually
bringing down homicide rates, because I think that's very much
open to discussion. However, you're right in saying
that either arresting or killing Mensch or they knew it would
cause an enormous amount of not only this kind of initial
demonstration of force, but one suspects that in the next few
months we're going to have fairly bloody confrontations
between the remnants of the cartel Helisco for the the
actual control of the cartel. However, I think there are a few
things going on here. A, you've got the World Cup
coming up. So they want to demonstrate that
they have got control of the country.
That's why I think it's quite risky. 2 You've got Trump
putting an enormous amount of pressure on the Mexican
president to clamp down on on organised crime.
At the same time you also have different groups within Mexico.
It's quite noticeable this was done by the military.
Now we know that Claudia Shambaum, the the president is
broadly on the surface support of the media military, but in
actual fact she's trying to balance the military's enormous
control in Mexico with her own federal police force, her own
public security. So one here, how much Claudia
Shane Baum actually knew about this particular, this particular
arrest at all? I mean, it's conceivable that
this was done by the military to a certain extent without her
knowing. Do they?
Have that level of autonomy. They're the biggest military in
Latin America. Do they have that autonomy?
Well, I'm sure no one in the Mexican administration has said
that, but insiders certainly tell me that they do to a
certain have that much autonomy. They are an enormous, extremely
powerful military. I think, and correct me if I'm
wrong Cecilia, but I think there's somewhere around 450,000
of them. Cecilia.
I mean, I, I have a different take on, you know, the autonomy
of the military. And certainly what I, I would
say is that, you know, regardless of whether the
president knew or didn't know about this, what was going to
happen. I think it's a smart move for
her administration to distance herself from the actual
information that was put out yesterday, for instance, and to
lead the Ministry of Defence to be the one releasing the public
information. And to not to say that she's not
involved, but I think by creating some distance between
that messaging and, you know, letting other ministries inform
about this, she's basically, you know, saying this is a security
issue. And I'm going to let you know my
agents who deal with these issues give that message.
But how much pressure is she under from Donald Trump?
I mean, I think certainly, and this is no secret that the US
government has expressed even before the second Trump
administration, a level of frustration with the Mexican
government in terms of fentanyl. I think it's very important to
also note that President Chambon has certainly distance herself
from measures that President Lopez Obrador did.
And mainly she stopped framing fentanyl as AUS only problem.
She's spoken about how this is, you know, she doesn't want
anyone dying from a fentanyl overdose and has definitely
changed the tone of conversation with the US and US engagement.
And while I certainly don't minimize some of the pressure
that the US government has, I will also like to under score
that there's an interest also for Mexico to reduce the levels
of violence, to reduce some of this criminality that can be
quite predatory against individuals and businesses, like
extortion, for instance, which we know is a main source of
income for Jalisco Noah Generacion, which Elemental was
the leader of. So certainly there's that US
conversation, but I would add that there's also an interest in
Mexico in weakening these structures as well.
What what has happened over the last few months to their
business model, given the changes on the border and the
stopping of people you know has has the drug trade been
disrupted? Well, I mean, what is very clear
is fentanyl is still going into the United States and still
killing 10s of thousands of people through overdoses.
I think that's that's completely clear.
And I'm not sure that that's certainly not going to end by
taking out Mensure or any number of of kingpins.
I mean depending how you designate A kingpin, about 200
or so have been arrested or killed over the last 20 years
and it's done absolutely nothing to drug supply in the United
States. In terms of the pressure
there's, I mean, I do think there is an inordinate amount of
pressure that has been put on, on Shamebound to do something.
I think they've what they've done is an extraordinary kind of
propaganda exercise. Over the last year, the Mexican
government claims to have brought homicide rates down by
42%, which is kind of extraordinary.
That's the kind of drop in murders that you see post civil
war. However, I think 2 things are
happening here. 1 they're what they called in the wire duking
the figures. They're putting what are
homicides into claiming their suicides or accidental deaths.
And two, they've come to tacit agreements with the cartels to
bury, to not murder people in public, but rather disappear the
bodies. So I think that that's
effectively shame bound and her security forces answer to this
Trumpian pressure. And I think honestly, Trump
doesn't care. To him, it look to to the
American audience, it looks like Mexico is getting safer.
Murders are going down. Right, So, So what?
What is the relationship in your mind between the governments and
the cartels right now? Well, I think it's again you get
an academic on and they say it's very complicated, not helpful.
I realise that. So effectively it really depends
on the kind of regions that you're talking about.
There is no doubt there are sways of Mexico where both state
governors and town governors, and I think maybe your audience
doesn't know, but town governors or municipal governors,
municipal presidents in Mexico extremely powerful and they have
relatively close relationships with the cartels in certainly in
a lot of western Mexico, the cartels off basically are a kind
of shadow government which are on the one hand moving large
amounts of drugs and illegal timber, illegal mining products,
illegal immigrants, sex trafficked people.
They're moving these things out of Mexico and into the United
States, but they are also fairly integral to the to supporting
governments in these areas as well.
Cecilia, I mean, what would you say about this in terms of what,
what is the real relationship on the ground between formal
authority and the real authority of the cartels?
It largely depends on which parts of the country we're
talking about and what kind of businesses we're talking about.
But I will say, though, is that I think it's very important to
not characterize these as criminal groups running Mexico
and essentially making the decisions and just the
government being there as a puppet.
That's certainly not the situation on the ground and
while certainly there is corruption and especially at the
local level, I wouldn't just say, well, this is the case for
every municipality in the country.
No, but there's certainly coexistence, isn't it?
I mean, my, my very limited experience of Mexico.
I mean, it's quite some years ago.
I was there in 2017 doing a film about murders and the death rate
and, and I, I witnessed a murder in Acapulco.
A man was shot across the road from our hotel and we went down
to the street and nobody dared approach him because the, you
know, the guy from the cartel was still there with a camera,
sort of. And so people were very wary,
obviously, that he waited for the man to die because he'd
only, he'd been shot and injured initially.
And only then did the police turn up.
And it kind of seemed coordinated at the time, you
know, that they kind of, they knew when, when it was safe for
them to move in and when, when the cartel had left.
And you, you know, I, I, I mean, I don't know how much things
have changed over the last nine years, but from what Benjamin is
saying, it's, it's, it's still quite an enmeshed problem.
I mean, surely Mexico has high levels of violence and homicides
and disappearances. I would, you know, add to that.
But that's, you know, an important problem for Mexico and
certainly we have seen egregious forms of corruption.
But again, I think what's very important is to not make a
blanket statement about the country and how these, you know,
just describes everywhere. And I think, you know, over time
it were to look at a map of where violence is distributed in
fluent homicides and disappearances.
You will see that for the most part, this varies considerably
over time. There's a few cities that
remain, you know, hot spots, as it's referred to in the
literature, related to violence. But I, again, I think it depends
sometimes at the time of place who is in power and how these
relationships change. But again, I think it's very
important, especially in the context of bilateral engagement
with the US, to not just portray Mexico as a country that is run
by criminals because that is just, you know, I would agree.
I would say that the evidence is not there for that.
Benjamin I mean, let's turn to the World Cup, which is the
obvious immediate question around Mexico.
People are wondering whether to travel.
I guess the authorities are wondering whether these games
can go ahead. It's only a it's only a few
months away. Yeah, I, well, I mean, I, I, I
would say to any of the audience that I think can go to the World
Cup, it will be completely safe. And there is a fundamental
reason for this is that if you are a Mexican who kills another
Mexican, there is a, it is very, very unlikely you will be
prosecuted. If you are a Mexican who kills a
foreigner, there is a very high likelihood that you will be
prosecuted. So basically cartels and
organised crime will not go anywhere near tourists for the
World Cup. So I would say that they're
probably going to be safe. However, the one thing I would
say is at the same time you will be extremely near areas that the
cartels control and also you'll be very near places where the
cartels are burying vast amounts of disappeared bodies.
I think the about a year ago the Mexican government.
Well, only because the mothers of the disappeared discovered
it. But the mothers of the
disappeared discovered a ranch just outside Guadalajara, which
is one of the sites of the World Cup games.
This ranch had two massive industrial ovens and bone
fragments from literally thousands of victims.
This was run by the cartel Jalisco within, I think, about
30 minutes of a military barracks.
So you're trying to tell me that the military didn't know what
was going on there? Right.
But you but you think as long as they don't try and arrest
anybody else before June, things things should be calm by then?
Well, well, also again, this the, the coal tails aren't
stupid. I mean, you, we say there's been
a lot of violence over the last day, and there has, but it's
been violence that's almost entirely either focused on the
military or the National Guard or on trucks and buses.
They haven't gone after tourists because to do so would be
suicidal. So, Cydia, is that still the
case? I mean, again, I mean, sorry to
harm back to nine years ago, but but that was precisely the story
we were doing. But there were there were lots
of there were lots of tourists in places even like Cancun where
shootings were going on on the beach and people didn't even
notice. I, I went to one shooting
literally on the beach outside one of those five star hotels
and was talking to people who were sort of 100 meters away and
they didn't know, they hadn't even noticed while the police
tape was being being put up. So, so you know, foreigners and
visitors remain safe even if the locals don't.
I mean, I'm glad that you bring up the World Cup because I think
this again, allows us to put something that's very important
on the table. And precisely, you know, for
people who love traveling to Mexico, who love to spend their
vacation time there. I think it brings to the table
that the issue again, of farms trafficking and why is it that
criminal groups are able to have this firepower.
And so this is part of the conversation that we want to
have not just stay on a conversation around cartels, but
also question, well, how are they able to, to perpetrate
these levels of violence? And I think to Ben's point of,
you know, foreigners having a relatively degree of safety, I,
I agree with that. I agree that, you know, cartels
and criminal groups learn and adapt over time.
And one thing that they have learned is that going after
foreigners is actually very bad for their business.
And unfortunately, it also underscores that you have
different types of victims in the country.
And, you know, about a year ago, surfers from Australia
disappeared in Baja California. And unlike the 120,000 people
who are missing in Mexico, their bodies were actually found.
And even in this tragedy, what that shows you is that you can
have different types of victims. And again, foreigners you know
is different for them. Thank you both very much indeed.
Cecilia and Benjamin, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. Thank you for having us.
And that's the forecast. Until next time, bye bye.