For years, the US went after Mexico’s drug lords. Now it’s looking at the politicians

Mexico City — Drug lords like “El Chapo” and “El Mencho” have been the face of the US war on drug trafficking in Mexico for decades. The Trump administration has now set its sights on wealthy politicians who allegedly take illicit funds to support criminals.

Mexico City — Drug lords like “El Chapo” and “El Mencho” have been the face of the US war on drug trafficking in Mexico drug lords for decades. According to the statement, they wanted to elect people who were “willing to defend the cartels and their interests.”

It is well known that Mexican organized crime gangs fund political campaigns, particularly municipal ones. However, Mexican politicians hardly ever discuss it in public. Analysts saw the alert from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as the most recent indication that the US plans to target not only cartel capos but also their alleged government facilitators, which caused a stir.

The Trump administration has revoked the US visas of many mayors and at least one governor, Marina del Pilar Vila Olmeda of the Mexican state of Baja California, within the past year. Additionally, a serving governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, was indicted by US authorities in an unusual step for allegedly permitting drug traffickers to operate in exchange for payments and electoral support. Both Rocha and Vila, members of the ruling Morena party, have denied any misconduct.

The US’s pattern of resolving bilateral disagreements mostly behind closed doors and refraining from overtly meddling in Mexican politics is drastically altered by the moves.

According to Pamela Starr, a political scientist at the University of Southern California and the author of a recent book titled “The Making of Mexico: Revolution, Reform, and Transformation,” “this is uncharted territory in US-Mexico relations.

In order to maintain stability in a neighbor ready to work together on matters ranging from international power relations to illegal migration and trade, the United States has historically granted Mexico “a lot of domestic political autonomy,” according to her.

What was altered? The Trump administration has adopted a tough stance, bombing suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and designating the cartels as terrorist groups. Additionally, politicians who support organized crime groups may now be more easily prosecuted by US authorities. Numerous high-ranking cartel members have been apprehended by the US in the last two years as a result of vigorous US anti-drug operations and Mexican collaboration. According to security analysts, many are eager to discuss their bribery of politicians in an effort to have their sentences shortened.

According to Luis Carlos Ugalde, a scholar who oversaw Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute from 2003 to 2007, “it’s the only realistic way in this country to detect the ties between organized crime and political campaigns.”

However, the US stance is causing tension with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and her left-wing Morena party, which controls over three-quarters of the country’s governorships and has a congressional majority. Starr stated that if the Trump administration overreaches, “they risk poisoning the waters of bilateral security cooperation.

Hard to follow the money

Even former electoral authorities admit that cartel contributions to Mexican political campaigns are substantial, while the precise amount is unknown.

“It’s a phenomenon that has detonated very rapidly,” Ugalde stated, noting that when he was an electoral officer twenty years ago, the issue hardly registered.

According to a report he co-authored in 2018, candidates for governor usually spend at least 15 times as much on campaigns as they do on reporting to authorities. According to him, the term “dark money” encompasses not only contributions from organized crime but also money embezzled from government budgets and payments made by business owners seeking contracts.

Such contributions are typically given to campaigns in cash, and they are distributed in the same manner, leaving no financial trace. According to the study “Money Under the Table,” “no one pays for a get-out-the-vote operation with their American Express card.”

Political consultant Jaime García claimed that as Mexico moved from a one-party system to a competitive democracy over the past few decades, campaign costs had increased. He claimed that this has led party officials to disregard campaign finance regulations and take illicit donations.

Donors and beneficiaries of drug funding are rarely prosecuted, much less found guilty.

That failure can be attributed to several factors. Mexico’s legal system is inadequate and overburdened. Often, witnesses are too terrified of the cartels to provide testimony in court. Furthermore, none of the parties have been eager to examine the money coming into their campaigns.

“Tracing the money spent during the days of official campaigning is inconvenient for anyone,” stated Gabriel.

There are other indications of the expanding influence of organized crime in politics, even though tracking the money may be challenging. In the lead-up to the 2024 national election, over three dozen candidates were assassinated, and hundreds more withdrew from the contest as criminal organizations worked to choose their cronies. With cartels expanding into illegal logging, extortion, and domestic drug distribution, political control over towns and cities has become increasingly significant. They now want to dominate local mayors’ offices, police forces, and entire communities, when previously they concentrated on controlling routes to transport heroin or cocaine to the United States.

Sheinbaum added that a state-level electoral tribunal approved Rocha’s victory in Sinaloa after reviewing charges of irregularities and stated that little evidence has surfaced to support allegations of cartels meddling in elections. However, she has suggested that before the midterm elections of the next year, federal electoral officials create a verification board to check candidates for ties to organized crime.

She has also expressed doubts about the Trump administration’s intention when it targets politicians who are supposedly involved with cartels. “Is combating organized crime a legitimate interest?” In a recent address, Sheinbaum inquired. “Or are we perhaps witnessing how elements of the ultra-right in the United States are using our nation to position themselves in the lead-up to the elections in November 2026?

Sheinbaum’s dilemma

One of those more recent cartel actions was targeted in the most recent Treasury statement. In Mexico, the illegal sale of gasoline and oil has grown to be a multibillion-dollar industry. The government has accused criminal organizations of collaborating closely with dishonest enterprises and authorities. Fuel is sometimes smuggled across the US border by criminal organizations, while other times it is stolen in Mexico and resold.

According to the Treasury alert, cartels are using the revenues from these sales to elect dishonest Mexican politicians who grant them access to “key administrative posts in the government,” making it easier for the criminals to smuggle fuel and launder the money.

Sheinbaum reacted angrily to the broad criticism of Mexican politics. At a press conference, she questioned, “What evidence do they have?

The US has been criticizing the cartels’ political protection schemes for a long time, and this accusation was just one of many.

In April, US Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson warned that “significant action” would be taken against bribery and corruption in Mexico, indicating that the Trump administration was launching a new front in the fight against drugs. The US Justice Department declared Rocha and nine other current and former Sinaloa officials indicted about a week later. They were charged with collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel to transport “massive quantities of narcotics into the United States in exchange for political support and bribes.

Because Rocha is a personal friend of Sheinbaum’s mentor, former President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, the case is particularly sensitive. Because Washington hasn’t provided evidence of Rocha’s culpability, she has rejected an American request to hold him for extradition.While the US inquiry is in progress, the governor of Sinaloa has taken a leave of absence.He has claimed that Morena was intended to be weakened by the accusations. He informed reporters, “These accusations against me are untrue.” “I refuse to let them use me to harm the movement to which I belong.

Sheinbaum faces a problem as a result of the Trump administration stance, according to analysts: Morena has positioned itself as an anti-corruption party, and she does not want to appear as though she is hiding corruption. However, turning over well-known Morena politicians to the US might harm the party’s standing and make it harder for Sheinbaum to run her own government.

Up until now, the Mexican leader’s anti-drug strategy has mostly aimed to appease US President Donald Trump. She moved over 90 prominent members of the drug gang into US custody and dispatched thousands of soldiers to guard the Mexican border. Numerous current and former local officials, including those from Morena, have been detained by her government on suspicion of conspiring with criminal organizations in an effort to combat fuel theft.

However, she has become more tough in recent weeks, claiming that indictments such as Rocha’s were an attempt by the US administration to weaken Mexico’s sovereignty. When a neighbor conquered more than half of Mexico’s territory in the 1800s, the Mexican government and people are extremely sensitive to intervention.

Sheinbaum stated in late May, “Let’s be clear: first they come for some, then for others, until the offices of the Department of Justice become the main electors in Mexico.” “This cannot be allowed.

Few people doubt that dishonest politicians provide organized crime with crucial support, but it’s unclear how much the Trump administration’s policies will ultimately damage the gangs. Street gangs, cartels, and lesser mafias dominate state governments and town halls nationwide and have expanded their economic influence.Critics from the US and Mexico alike claim that this nation has consistently underfunded its security forces and lacks an efficient legal system and well-trained police. The illegal movement of American firearms across the border and the high demand for drugs in the United States both support the cartels.

According to Starr, “solving the issue in Mexico is a generational project.” “It’s not something that can be completed in the next four years of the Sheinbaum administration, or in a year or two.