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Guest Essay
It’s Not the Cartels That Worry Claudia Sheinbaum
President Trump can’t seem to stop threatening strikes on Mexico’s narcotics traffickers. He has repeatedly pushed to deploy U.S. troops inside Mexico to “take out the cartels” smuggling fentanyl and other drugs over the border. But he has a problem: President Claudia Sheinbaum says no.
“She’s a good woman,” Mr. Trump told Fox News last month, making clear he did not lump 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. Ms. Sheinbaum’s hesitancy, he claimed, stems from fear rather than complicity. “She’s very frightened of the cartels,” he said. “She’s not running Mexico. The cartels are running Mexico.”
Mexico’s cartels are indeed highly dangerous, but Mr. Trump seems to miss what makes the country’s organized crime networks such an enduring menace. In 12 years covering Mexico as a journalist, I’ve learned that force alone can’t take cartels down. The problem isn’t simply that drug-trafficking groups attack the state. It’s that they’re often a part of it. Like other political parties in Mexico, Morena, Ms. Sheinbaum’s party, has multiple high-profile members facing serious allegations of ties to organized crime. Fighting the cartels doesn’t just involve taking on drug traffickers. For Ms. Sheinbaum, it could mean dismantling the foundations of local power in Mexico — and confronting members of her own coalition.
With Ms. Sheinbaum’s political survival at stake, she is unlikely to wage the total war that Mr. Trump demands. She lacks the iron control over Morena exercised by her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, who founded the party and became wildly popular thanks to his folksy manner and far-reaching social welfare programs. Morena is now divided into factions allied with Ms. Sheinbaum and AMLO — who is nominally retired, but still wields enormous influence within the party — separated less by ideology than by personal loyalty. Moving more firmly against corrupt politicians could pit her against party officials who could undermine her, and weaken Morena as it heads into midterm elections next year.
U.S. politicians have consistently failed to grasp the political nature of Mexico’s drug-trafficking business. Conditioned by shows like “Narcos: Mexico,” many Americans imagine a handful of cartels led by colorful kingpins like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, who defy the government with their bloody exploits. In fact, there is evidence indicating close ties between drug gangs and Mexican authorities dating back over a century. Under the one-party system that ran Mexico for 71 years, local and state governments routinely shielded their favored criminals and jailed rival traffickers in exchange for cash, according to the historian Benjamin T. Smith. By the 1970s federal police agencies had taken over many of these protection rackets.
Such collusion didn’t end when Mexico transitioned to democracy in 2000, or when the state began to wage the so-called war on drugs in 2006; if anything, the lines grew fuzzier. Many of the big cartels, like the Zetas and La Familia Michoacana, splintered after their leaders were killed or captured. Today’s crime bosses look less like high-flying cartel capos and more like feudal lords, dominating chunks of territory in which they not only move drugs, but also extort local businesses, steal oil and smuggle migrants. Some of their most important relationships have involved mayors and governors, some of whom belong to Morena — which isn’t necessarily uniquely corrupt, but simply Mexico’s dominant political force.
To get a glimpse of how such protection networks function, look no further than Tabasco, AMLO’s home state. There, Hernán Bermúdez Requena, a wavy-haired politician with a law degree, served as the top state security official until 2024 — while simultaneously, according to military intelligence documents, secretly helping to run a local crime group called La Barredora. Mr. Bermúdez, who reportedly fled the country shortly after resigning his post, was arrested in Paraguay last fall, and is facing charges in Mexico of criminal association, extortion and kidnapping. (He has said that the charges amount to political persecution.)
Even more startling is the identity of Mr. Bermúdez’s political patron: Adán Augusto López Hernández, the former governor of Tabasco. Mr. López, a close friend of AMLO’s and currently a Morena senator, named Mr. Bermúdez to the job in 2019. He has said he had no idea that one of his closest aides was allegedly in bed with criminals — an assertion that has generated significant skepticism, even within Morena.
In other regions, cartels have become powerful enough to force the authorities into a subservient role, threatening them with death if they resist. One mayor who did stand up to organized crime, Carlos Manzo, was assassinated in November, triggering a national outcry. It’s no longer that unusual for criminals to battle openly to install their own officials. Ahead of countrywide elections in 2024, about 30 local candidates were killed and hundreds more abandoned the race under pressure from criminal groups.
Where does this leave Ms. Sheinbaum? On the surface, she has brought a tougher approach to crime-fighting than AMLO, first as mayor of Mexico City and now as president. In the face of Mr. Trump’s tariff threats, she has sent thousands of troops to the U.S. border to intercept drugs and migrants and transferred 92 alleged cartel leaders from Mexican prisons to the United States. Her government boasts of tens of thousands of criminal arrests and a dropping homicide rate. In November 2024, authorities even arrested a Morena mayor in the state of Mexico who was accused of working with La Familia Michoacana.
But her drive has its limits. While Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration has insisted on a commitment to “zero impunity,” it talks little about the political structures that assist crime organizations. This may reflect not only her personal political concerns, but also her awareness of how quickly chaos could erupt in much of the country. Destroying official protection rackets by getting rid of tainted politicians and police officials has often led to explosions of bloodshed, as criminal groups move in to attack their newly vulnerable competitors. With hundreds of thousands dead or disappeared in two decades of the drug war, Mexicans have little appetite for a surge in violence.
In recent years, figures inside and outside of Morena have proposed a so-called transitional justice process, which would use courts and truth commissions to dismantle and seek accountability for Mexico’s protection networks. Such a process would potentially have a huge political cost for Morena. Further revelations of malfeasance could even undercut the legitimacy of the party, which presents itself as a social justice movement that has broken with the corruption of the past.
Ms. Sheinbaum might not be personally afraid of the cartels; she has, after all, continued to traverse the country, attending rallies and open-air events. But she may well be wary of taking on a system of collusion with organized crime, especially when her hold on the faction-ridden Morena is shaky. With Mr. Trump breathing down her neck, she may find herself increasingly caught between a superpower demanding a crusade and a political machine that survives on the status quo.
Mary Beth Sheridan is a journalist specializing in Latin America and a fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute. She was the Mexico City bureau chief for The Washington Post from 2023 to 2025.
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