Cartel federation: How Mexico has come under the shadow rule of organized crime

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The war on drugs: brutal but ineffective

Donald Trump frequently criticizes the Mexican authorities for what he calls their insufficiently active fight against drug cartels. The American leader claims that organized crime “has enormous influence” over Mexican politicians and that the country risks turning into a “narco-state.”

Commenting in August on reports that Trump had secretly authorized the use of the U.S. Army against drug cartels on the territory of other countries, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated: “The American military will not come to Mexico. There will be no invasion.” She added that in telephone conversations Washington had proposed such a scenario several times — and that Mexico City’s response had been a categorical refusal.

In October 2024, Sheinbaum became the first female president in Mexico’s two-hundred-year history. According to independent polls conducted in July 2025, she enjoys the support of 80% of the population. Most respondents rate her government’s social policies highly: support for pensioners and the needy, as well as investment in education. At the same time, the main source of dissatisfaction among Mexicans remains the situation with organized crime. According to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), six out of ten citizens do not feel safe in their daily lives.

The Mexican authorities have been waging a bloody war against drug trafficking for 19 years — since mid-December 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderón sent federal troops into the state of Michoacán to suppress clashes between cartels. The power of organized crime and its influence on the lives of ordinary citizens, however, have only grown stronger. Since 2015 alone, experts estimate that more than 300,000 people have fallen victim to clashes between criminals and security forces, or to conflicts among rival drug cartels. The number of troops involved in operations against these criminal enterprises increased nearly 2.5 times between 2007 and 2014 and now exceeds 100,000.

The number of murders in Mexico remains depressingly high: in 2024 there were more than 33,000 victims — that is, 85 deaths per day. By April 2025, according to government statements, this figure had dropped by 23% — to 63.5 per day. Even so, the homicide rate in Mexico is five times higher than in the United States.

According to the National Search Commission (CNB), more than 103,000 people have been reported missing since 2010. Between 2006 and 2023 alone, more than 5,500 mass graves of organized crime victims were discovered across the country. Often the remains had been burned or destroyed with chemicals to such an extent that they could not be identified.

Drug cartels indeed represent a formidable force in Mexico. Experts estimate their ranks to be as high as 185,000 fighters — half the size of the Mexican army. When Donald Trump speaks of a “narco-state,” he is not entirely wrong.

The truth, however, is that Trump avoids mentioning the fact that virtually the entire arsenal of the cartels comes into the country from the United States — via the very same routes as the drugs, only in the opposite direction. According to Mexican authorities, at least 200,000 firearms are brought into the country from the U.S. annually. For years, Mexico has accused Washington of inaction, yet the figures cited above show that U.S. authorities clearly do not consider combating illegal arms trafficking across the southern border to be among their priorities.

Show executions

Mexican politicians — especially at the regional level — are more likely than ordinary citizens to fall victim to criminal groups. The 2024 elections that brought Claudia Sheinbaum to power was the bloodiest in the country’s history. More than 200 people were killed by hired gunmen. The victims included not only registered candidates, but even many who were merely planning to run for various offices.

Serving government officials face a similar level of danger. Since the beginning of 2025, 86 current and former officials have been killed in Mexico, according to a report by the consulting firm Integralia, titled “Political Violence in Mexico. January–June 2025.” In total, 112 Mexicans have fallen victim to political violence in less than a year — most of them members of the ruling left-wing party Morena.

On May 20, directly under surveillance cameras near downtown Mexico City, gunmen assassinated the mayor’s personal secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and her colleague José Muñoz. President Sheinbaum, who served as mayor of Mexico City before becoming head of state, was informed of the double murder in the middle of her daily morning press conference. Media outlets described the crime as “a blow to the very heart” of the Morena party. On August 20, authorities arrested 13 suspects — three accused of direct involvement in organizing the killings, and the rest connected to logistics and other support roles.

In another example, on the evening of August 5 in the northern city of Reynosa, gunmen killed Ernesto Vázquez, a special representative of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office in the region. Attackers threw a grenade into the window of his SUV and then shot him at point-blank range as he lay wounded. Several bystanders captured the brutal scene on their phones.

Vázquez, who kept a low profile (local media struggled to find a single photograph of him), played a central role in investigating large-scale theft of diesel fuel and gasoline controlled by organized crime. The fuel was resold within Mexico before being smuggled illegally into the United States.

So far in 2025, security forces in Tamaulipas — a border state — have confiscated 15 million liters of stolen fuel, along with hijacked tankers, containers, and pumps. They have arrested 19 suspects.

At the end of July, police seized another 1.8 million liters in a raid against smugglers. The criminals responded in a way that has become grimly familiar in Mexico — with the public execution of a government official. Investigators have yet to identify any suspects.

Beyond “narco”: how cartels shape Mexico’s economy

Mexican cartels are still habitually referred to with the narco- prefix. However, their economic interests go far beyond simply supplying illegal substances to the United States. Organized crime in Mexico has entrenched itself in the sectors of food distribution, fuel trade, public transportation, and mining.

In 2024, criminal activity cost the Mexican economy the equivalent of 18% of the country’s GDP, according to the latest report by the international think tank Institute for Economics & Peace. In several states, the figure reached as high as 35% of regional GDP. Nationwide, the losses were more than six times the health care budget and five times education spending. Per capita, organized crime stripped every Mexican of 33,905 pesos ($1,816) in 2024. Annual inflation that year stood at 4.21%, and researchers estimate it would have been half that without criminal activity.

Extortion has become a nationwide scourge in Mexico, hitting small and medium-sized businesses the hardest. Entrepreneurs operating in cartel-controlled areas are forced to hand over a weekly “share” — which business owners factor in when setting prices. In effect, Mexicans not only pay taxes to the state, but also tribute to the cartels. Any attempt to resist risks arson, kidnapping, or murder.

According to the Mexican Employers’ Confederation (COPARMEX), cases of extortion have risen by 83% since 2015. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, nearly 6,000 incidents were reported — and those are only the cases known to police. Most victims, fearing for their lives, choose to pay up and stay silent.

One of the most shocking recent extortion cases sparked widespread debate in Spanish-language media. On July 18 in Veracruz, criminals abducted a 62-year-old retired teacher, who was moonlighting as a taxi driver and refused to pay the “tax.” A video soon appeared online: the woman, hands tied, kneeling in front of nine masked men with guns. They forced her to state on camera: “My name is Irma Hernández Cruz, I drive taxi 554. Fellow taxi drivers, don’t play games with the Veracruz mafia. Pay them the set quota…or you’ll end up like me.” Days later, police found her body.

Commenting on the problem of extortion, President Sheinbaum admitted that the authorities have so far failed to reduce its prevalence. She promised a special law to crack down on extortion, while the police plan to set up dedicated anti-extortion units and launch a hotline for victims.

Another serious problem Mexico faces is corruption. In Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, the country ranks 140th out of 180, slipping five places in the past year. Corruption pervades all levels of government, reaching the very top. In 2024, Genaro García Luna — Mexico’s secretary of public security from 2006 to 2012 and once considered a central figure in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime — was sentenced to 38 years in prison over his acceptance of multi-million-dollar bribes from Joaquín «El Chapo» Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel.

Criminal avocados and mercury smuggling

Michoacán is the land of avocados, one of Mexico’s top agricultural exports. Nearly 90% of avocados consumed in the United States come from its southern neighbor. In 2024, Mexico exported more than a million tons of avocados worth $3.42 billion.

According to official statistics from the Michoacán government, at least 250,000 people are employed in growing, harvesting, packing, and transporting avocados. Yet the scale of exports to the U.S. does little to improve the lives of ordinary workers. Instead, the plantations have become the scene of constant bloody clashes.

In Michoacán, everyone from field workers to major business owners have been victimized by the cartels. In the summer of 2024 the violence reached such levels that the United States suspended avocado imports from Mexico for two weeks.

Criminal groups also “help” landowners illegally expand their plantations at the expense of protected nature reserves. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, up to 80% of new avocado plantations established in 2024 were set up illegally. One businessman interviewed for the report described the process:

“Much of the region is made up of protected natural areas, so expanding plantations is impossible. But those with government connections change the status of the land. They drive out the people living there. At first they offer them money. If they refuse, the cartels are brought in. They clear out the villages, kill residents. After a while, the seized territory becomes an official plantation with an export license.”

The seizure of protected areas for plantations leads to soil depletion, water shortages, and the loss of biodiversity. But neither the cartels nor large agribusiness companies show much concern. U.S. avocado buyers, in effect, pay not only official taxes, but also an informal share that goes to the criminals.

And it isn’t only avocados. The neighboring state of Guerrero experienced a bloody turf war over the chicken market in the spring and summer of 2022: kidnappings, shootings in markets, and attacks on farms left at least two dozen people dead. Vendors were so terrified that for several days chicken was unavailable in the state capital, Chilpancingo.

Organized crime has even reached Mexico’s culinary symbol — the corn tortilla, a staple of nearly every national dish. “We are in a situation where tortilla prices are set by criminals,” said Homero López, head of the National Tortilla Council, in May 2024. According to him, around 20,000 shops — 15% of the market — are under constant extortion pressure and pay weekly tribute to the cartels.

Finally, in July 2025, the international Environmental Investigation Agency published a report revealing that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, has been making millions of dollars since at least 2019 by smuggling mercury from Mexico to Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Each year, no less than 40 tons of liquid metal are transported illegally.

The cartel has taken over mines in the state of Querétaro, where around a thousand people work without following personal safety and environmental protection standards. The mercury they mine is then used in illegal gold mining — mixed with gold-bearing sand to form an amalgam from which the mercury is later evaporated. The fumes released in the process slowly kill the miners while poisoning the soil, water, and air. According to Colombian authorities, up to 85% of the country’s gold exports come from illegal mining. These deposits are controlled by organized crime and insurgent groups.

Donald Trump is arguably correct that Mexico’s fight against organized crime has not reduced violence or loosened the cartels’ grip on the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. The real question, however, is what would actually change if the United States intervened. After all, if Washington were committed to prioritizing the fight against crime south of the border, it could start by controlling the illegal flow of weapons that the Mexican cartels use to enforce their demands.