Cartels contain more than just a few arch-villains. Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images

Most residents in the town of Jerécuaro in Central Mexico were asleep when the car bomb exploded in the plaza at 5.10 am on 24 October, blowing out the windows of stores and scattering debris. But when a second car bomb went off over an hour later in the city of Acámbaro, 30 kilometres away, many residents were heading to work and school. The explosive device blew up outside a police station and injured three officers. Mexico’s recently sworn-in security minister, Omar García Harfuch, blamed the car bombs on the drug cartels fighting a turf war.
Car bombs are one of the many terrifying weapons in the arsenal of Mexico’s cartels as they battle over territory, not only to traffic and sell drugs, but to steal oil from pipelines, smuggle migrants over the US border, and extort businesses, among other crimes. They also wield weaponised drones that drop makeshift bombs unleashing shrapnel and nails. They lay landmines that kill soldiers in their Humvees as well as farmers. And they build fighting vehicles known as “monsters” that look like they are out of Mad Max, with walls of bullet-proof steel and battering rams.
Mexican soldiers have been out in force fighting the cartels since 2006, and the new Left-wing president Claudia Sheinbaum has promised to keep up this militarised strategy. But the troops have failed to quell the death toll (or perhaps made it worse): Mexico has suffered over 400,000 murders since the army crack-down began almost two decades ago. During this period, many security officials have themselves been found working with cartels, including the former security minister Genaro García Luna, who was sentenced by a New York court in October.
Living and reporting in Mexico since 2001, I have covered the conflict in depth and it’s as bad as ever. In recent months, I’ve been in a village in Guerrero state that suffered attacks with armoured drones, and in the city of Culiacán, where residents have shut themselves in their homes because of the violence, calling it a “narco pandemic”, in allusion to the Covid lockdown. Over the years, I have seen horrors that I couldn’t have imagined such as going into a morgue with 49 bodies that were all decapitated and had their hands and feet cut off.
It’s a complex conflict that spirals across Mexico with dozens of different groups, ever-changing frontlines and unclear rules. The cartel war is a fight that the Mexican army can’t win yet can’t pull out of. And it’s a conflict that Washington needs to be wary about getting dragged deeper into.
The United States is already involved in Mexico’s cartel war. Agents for the DEA, FBI, Homeland Security and CIA run operations against drug traffickers, using undercover agents and stings. Washington gives aid to Mexico City, partly in return for holding back migrants and hitting narcos. US companies sell arms to Mexican security forces, and gangsters smuggle an iron river of guns over the Rio Grande.
But Donald Trump has called to bring the US military into the battle. “When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again,” Trump said in a 2023 statement. Rep. Dan Crenshaw introduced legislation for authorisation of US military force against cartels. “You need something that says, ‘You have finally pissed off the gringos. You finally did it,’” he told me last year. Trump has picked Ronald Johnson, a retired colonel and former CIA liaison to special operations, as ambassador to Mexico.
I used to think that scenes in the movie Sicario of US special forces sneaking over the border to take out cartels were pure fantasy. Now I think there is a chance such operations could really come to pass. But Washington should avoid getting drawn too deep into this quagmire.
The Republican hard-liners rightly blame cartels for trafficking fentanyl; they buy precursor ingredients from Chinese pharmaceutical companies and cook it into the lethal substance in labs south of the border. They are also right to call out US overdose deaths as a true national catastrophe; several years saw over 100,000 overdose deaths, with fentanyl in about 70% of cases.
Yet the problem with the call to bomb cartels is not only that it would inflame cross-border tensions, especially if civilians were killed, which could put American lives in danger of revenge attacks. It’s that it wouldn’t stop cartels.
The cartels are not composed of a few arch villains who can be taken out. They are sprawling networks with look-outs, runners, gunmen, traffickers, “mules”, businessmen, accountants, and plenty of police, soldiers, prosecutors, and mayors on the payroll. A study published in Science found cartels were one of the biggest employers in Mexico with 160,000 to 185,000 members. I think that is an underestimate. Even if US special forces were to blast away 1,000 cartel operatives then more than 99% would still be standing.
Furthermore, US forces could not take out one cartel and declare victory. There are about 20 significant groups, from the biggest cartels to powerful regional players to important local mobs, and dozens more affiliated gangs and crews. As US drug agents have discovered from decades of experience, when they weaken one cartel, another steps up and it often just creates more violence and fragmentation. The US arrest of the kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in July has created a devastating civil war in the Sinaloa Cartel that is drowning the state in blood.
The call to bomb cartels gets into the question of what kind of conflict we are dealing with south of the border. Mexico’s cartel war is not officially a war. In 2017, a British think tank claimed Mexico had the world’s second deadliest armed conflict after Syria. But Mexico’s foreign ministry in response released a forceful communiqué arguing that it is a criminal problem. “The report irresponsibly points to the existence of an ‘(non-international) armed conflict’ in Mexico,” it said. “This is incorrect. Neither the existence of criminal groups nor the use of the Armed Forces to maintain order in the interior of the country are sufficient reason.”
I think the Mexican conflict is a weird mix of crime and war and we don’t have the best language and legal norms to deal with that. Yet the same is also true for various countries in the Americas, from Jamaica to Honduras to Brazil to Ecuador. Cartels wield paramilitary forces, people flee their villages and towns, and Mexico is littered with mass graves. Yet the gangsters are not ideological and are looking to make money rather than sweep to power like the Taliban. And to recognise Mexico as having a legal armed conflict would be to recognise cartels as belligerents with rights under the Geneva Convention.
There are no missile attacks or full-on aerial bombings. It’s a brutal battle but one that paradoxically allows much of Mexico to live outside the bloodshed. When you go to much of Mexico, you might be surprised how ordinary it feels, from colonial towns with bustling markets to hipsters sipping lattes in the trendy quarters of big cities. Mexico City is a thriving and popular capital and the Caribbean beaches are bustling with record numbers of tourists. Mexico has a trillion-dollar economy and a big middle class despite the crime. It’s a weird duality of violence alongside normality.
If the United States were to classify cartels as terrorist groups, it would create other issues. Those fleeing over the border to claim asylum would have their cases strengthened. US gun stores could be charged with providing material to foreign terrorist organisations.
Perhaps Trump is using the threat of violence to pressure Mexico to act. In November, Trump stated he would put 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods if they didn’t stop migrants and fentanyl coming in. On 3 December, Mexican security forces made what they claimed was their biggest fentanyl bust ever.
Such pressure could have a long-term effect. Mexico might not be able to eliminate cartels right now but it could manage to force them to reduce their fentanyl trafficking. Seizures at the border in the coming months will see if that is the case. That would be a positive development and also stop the poison spreading in Mexico. But the United States would still have to deal with fentanyl being made elsewhere, including on US soil.
The United States could create a new robust law against cartels, this novel type of paramilitary organised crime spreading in the hemisphere. But it would need to wield the law in US cities, where cartels move vast quantities of drugs, money and guns. And Mexico has to try and reduce the bloodshed in its homeland. Right now, perhaps the best it can hope for is reducing the worst crimes. In the future, it would have to go through some fundamental change to really become a less violent society.
Cartel bosses like to bathe their guns in gold and jewellery. The Mexican army has many such captured weapons in a base in Mexico City in what is known as the “narco museum”. A gleaming captured pistol there has words carved on the side saying, “only the dead have seen the end of the war.” And Trump’s unlikely to change that.
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SubscribeGet Mossad to sort it out.
Kind of silly remark, if you read or understood anything about the Mexican conflict, including the article you are commenting on. Taking out a few hundred operatives it’s not going to solve the problem.
The Chinese might however “sort it out” – of course it can never have occurred in the first place in China. There would be the wholesale incarceration of everybody, even tangentially involved, in concentration camps. This would loadout involve a tremendous amount of injustice, but the Chinese then give a damn about individual justice, being a Marxist-Leninist regime.
Regardless, about how ‘normal’ life might seem in Mexico, it still doesn’t say much for Mexico and Mexican culture.
I don’t know why people coming on things they have absolutely no understanding of! I doubt it has anything much to do with Mexican culture. Drug violence and domination by gangs do exist elsewhere in the world, though not quite on the scale and complexity that the Mexican conflict has evolved into.
And then you have uncomfortable fact that a huge amount of the demand for these products comes from developed countries, including in this particular case, the United States and Canada.
I think the main issue is: Why Mexico is relatively less poor than the U.S. and Canada while all are North Americas?
I believe this is the governance style you’re looking for.
If U.S. elevate Mexico’s economic standing by strengthening the peso and improving living standards by inviting them to G7 to financial status etc. If that happens, Mexico could achieve what Bukele did in El Salvador by themselves – they will have motivation to clean up dirt!
Ultimately, only a country can fix its own problems. If Americans intervene through bombings or military action, it will only create more refugees, which makes no sense—it’s a completely counterproductive approach. However, if the U.S. empowers Mexico’s government or helps place capable leadership in power, then Mexico could develop into a nation more like Canada, and the border issues would begin to resolve themselves….rich countries do not want open borders…but Mexico is not rich and does not care at this point!
For Mexico to address its cartel problem, the solution must come from within. Americans, viewing the situation from an aerial perspective, cannot differentiate between cartel members and civilians. But the people living in Mexico know exactly who the cartels are. That’s why an external military intervention wouldn’t work—it would only cause further chaos. Instead, Mexico should look to El Salvador’s model for crime reduction, but without U.S. military involvement. And US can do the same within its borders for those not only benefiting but are the basis for the cartel within US – this is where US can have more power!
Historically, we’ve seen similar patterns. For instance, China’s decline in the past was fueled by the opium crisis, and now we see fentanyl playing a similar role – tactics to stabilize others are coming home to roast. Mexico must take control of its own problems, but at the same time, the U.S. needs to provide economic support similar to what they do with Canada. As long as Mexico has a lower standard of living than the U.S. and Canada, migration at the border will not stop. And why would it? People will always seek a better life where opportunities are greater—it’s basic human nature.
Re: About the tariffs—these are threatening tactics aimed at forcing Canada’s hand and possibly dividing the country on this issue and also threatening Mexico because of its Chinese involvement. However, every action has a counterreaction. Given this, along with the Greenland fiasco, the bigger question is: Will NATO survive?
So many moving parts, I think this article fails to put accountability on Mexico for its security but also undermines how US, itself, feeds on this chaos!
The distraction is fear of China! All other things are just to throw red meat!
I am really struggling to quite understand your comment. Reams has been written about why the Anglophone colonies in North America performed much better economically over the long-term than their Latin southern neighbours. This was due to the pattern of land ownership attitudes towards entrepreneurialism – and even the much high proportion of the Native American population that was still exists in Latin America. And it has also to be said that the United States was particularly ruthless it is expansionist policies, which included conquering huge swathes of Mexican territory.
On the border issue, just because people want to cross an international frontier, doesn’t mean to say a state has to allow them to do so! Saudi Arabia took zero civilian refugees for example, despite the cultural similarity between the two peoples. It may be of course that relatively liberal democratic societies are unwilling to use the ruthless measures needed to deter migrants but it isn’t impossible to do so.
But overall you seem to be implying that because everything is linked somehow this drugs issue has much to do with the US China conflict. It really doesn’t, though I suppose it could be the case that China doesn’t go out of its way to prevent fentanyl forerunner chemicals from arriving in the Americas
“US gun stores could be charged with providing material to foreign terrorist organisations.” Not a bad starting point, if there are feasible precautions that could enable law abiding storeowners.
In my opinion, nothing will change in Mexico without a fundamental change in the way that the influential there view governance. The number of politicians and bureaucrats operating on the basis that their positions are licenses for profit is appalling. High level thievery is not a scandal, as it is here. In Mexico, it is the norm.
I’m not sure. Corruption is commonplace in many societies but not all of them by any means have the terrible drug cartel wars that Mexico now does. The suborning of the armed forces and police with their fixed salaries by wealthy drug cartels of course makes combatting them much more difficult.
I agree with Andrew Holmes’ comment about corruption in Mexico. Some years ago, I read an article about that in Soldier of Fortune, in an article on his same topic. One of the examples cited in that article was the author’s experience that you could pay a parking or traffic fine directly to the cop (who wore no uniform) instead of getting a ticket.
The problem is illegal drug use in the US, cocaine in the case of the middle class, fentanyl in the case of the poor. Curb demand for illegal drugs (instead of decriminalising it) by way of lengthy sentences for middle class people in the developed world using them is the way forward. The fentanyl issue I don’t understand but proper jobs for people (reshoring) would help.
“Mexico has to try and reduce the bloodshed in its homeland. Right now, perhaps the best it can hope for is reducing the worst crimes. In the future, it would have to go through some fundamental change to really become a less violent society.”
As a Mexican citizen, I find the comment Spot On. The drug war and fentanyl problem in the US are intractable issues for us, but daily crime (business extortion, muggings, kidnaps) very much affects our life quality. A lot of this crime is connected to cartels, which as the author mentions, are complex networks ranging from organized gangs acting locally to sophisticated paramilitary organizations. The Mexican state has chronically failed to set up a professional police force, a deterioration worsened in the regime of the authoritarian populist (but incompetent) ex-president López Obrador, who militarized the police and thoght that crime could be ameliorated by social policies (a disastrous approach). Unfortunately, López Obrador applied his personal whims as policies, without listening to critics. The new president, Claudia Sheinbaum lacks his authority and has to “walk on eggshells” to avoid angering this tyrant, all of which is conductive to immobility. The author mentions that most Mexicans are able to live normally even when some regions face a lot of violence. This is partly true, most of us in “normal” regions live with a constant subliminal but annoying fear. I feel uneasy when doing any activity at night, in Mexico City and in all cities not besieged by crime.
As bad as the cartels are, as sophisticated and well armed as they are, the cartels are collectives of mortal, weak humans. Their strategies are not magic, and they are the bad guys. It is unconscionable that the last Administration enriched them by way of a corruptly open border. However that era is now over. Let’s see what unfolds.
A lot of comments seem to be very critical and Mexico and Mexican culture. Yes there is corruption, as there is in most of the world. But I haven’t read anything demonstrating a convincing link with the terrible cartel wars in this particular country.
But while we are happily blaming the Mexican, let’s perhaps face up to the fact that a huge amount of the demand for these drugs comes from it’s much wealthier northern neighbours!