For years, the US went after Mexico’s drug lords. Now it’s looking at the politicians
For decades, drug lords with names like “El Chapo” and “El Mencho” have been the poster boys of the US fight against Mexican drug trafficking. Now the Trump administration has adopted a new target: well-heeled politicians who allegedly accept dirty money to help the criminals.
The US Treasury recently accused cartels of “increasingly using (their) illicit profits to make cash payments to Mexican political campaigns.” Their goal, the statement said, was to elect candidates “willing to defend the cartels and their interests.”
It’s no secret that Mexican organized-crime groups pour money into electoral campaigns, especially at the local level. But it’s rarely addressed openly by Mexican officials. The alert from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ignited an uproar, with analysts seeing it as the latest sign the United States wants to go after not just cartel capos, but their suspected enablers in government.
In the last year, the Trump administration has yanked the US visas of at least one governor, Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda of the Mexican state of Baja California, and numerous mayors. And in a rare move, US prosecutors indicted a sitting governor – Rubén Rocha Moya of Sinaloa – for allegedly allowing drug traffickers to operate in exchange for bribes and electoral support. Both Rocha and Ávila, who are both from the ruling Morena party, have denied wrongdoing.
The actions mark a sharp break with a US practice of handling bilateral disputes largely behind closed doors, and not openly interfering in Mexican politics.
“This is uncharted territory in US-Mexico relations,” said Pamela Starr, a political scientist at the University of Southern California and author of a recent book, “The Making of Mexico: Revolution, Reform, and Transformation.”
The United States traditionally gave Mexico “a lot of domestic political autonomy,” she said, to ensure stability in a neighbor willing to cooperate on issues ranging from global power relations to illegal migration and trade.
What changed? The Trump administration has embraced a hard-line approach that has included labeling the cartels as terrorist organizations and bombing suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. US authorities may also now be in a better position than ever to prosecute politicians who assist organized crime groups. Thanks to aggressive American anti-drug operations and cooperation from Mexico, scores of top-level cartel figures have been sent to US custody in the past two years. Security analysts speculate that many are willing to talk about their bribes to politicians, in hopes of reducing their sentences.
“It’s the only realistic way in this country to detect the ties between organized crime and political campaigns,” said Luis Carlos Ugalde, an academic who led Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute from 2003-07.
But the US policy is straining relations with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and her left-wing Morena party, which has a congressional majority and holds nearly three-quarters of the country’s governorships. If the Trump administration goes too far, said Starr, “they risk poisoning the waters of bilateral security cooperation.”
Hard to follow the money
No one knows the exact scale of cartel donations to Mexican political campaigns, but even former electoral officials acknowledge the sums are significant.
“It’s a phenomenon that has detonated very rapidly,” said Ugalde, adding that the problem barely reggistered two decades ago, when he was an electoral official.
In 2018, he co-authored a report estimating that candidates for governor typically spend at least 15 times as much on campaigns as they report to authorities. The “dark money” includes not just organized crime contributions, but funds siphoned from government budgets, and donations from business owners hoping to win contracts, he wrote.
Campaigns generally receive such funds in cash, and disburse them the same way, leaving no financial trail. “No one pays for a get-out-the-vote operation with their American Express card,” noted the report, titled “Money Under the Table.”
Jaime García, a political consultant, said campaigns have become increasingly expensive over the past few decades as Mexico transitioned from a one-party state to a competitive democracy. That’s motivated party officials to ignore campaign-finance rules and accept illegal donations, he said.
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Until now, the Mexican leader has largely sought to placate US President Donald Trump in his anti-drug campaign. She sent thousands of soldiers to patrol the Mexican border and transferred more than 90 top drug cartel figures to US custody. Her government has cracked down on fuel theft and arrested dozens of current and former local officials – including some from Morena – accused of colluding with crime groups.
But in recent weeks she has hardened her tone, saying the US government was trying to undermine Mexico’s sovereignty with indictments like Rocha’s. Both the Mexican government and public are highly sensitive to interference from a neighbor that annexed more than half their territory in the 1800s.
“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,” Sheinbaum said in late May. “We cannot allow this.”
While few doubt corrupt politicians offer essential support for organized crime, it’s not clear how much the Trump administration’s policy can ultimately weaken the groups. Cartels, smaller mafias and street gangs hold sway in town halls and state governments around the country and have deepened their role in the economy. Both US and Mexican critics say this country lacks an effective justice system and well-trained police, and has persistently underfunded its security apparatus. The cartels are also fortified by strong US demand for drugs and the illegal flow of American guns over the border.
“Fixing the problem in Mexico is a generational project,” said Starr. “It’s not something that can be done in a year or two, or the remaining four years of the Sheinbaum administration.”