Christine Murray and Michael Stott of the Financial Times report that Mexico struggles to control powerful cartels under pressure from Trump, who demands action on drug trafficking. Despite President Sheinbaum’s efforts, experts doubt her approach will succeed. Cartel violence continues, and tensions rise as the U.S. considers military action. They write:
Thousand of trucks heading for Texas thunder down the highway each day towards Nuevo Laredo, the busiest crossing point for freight on the Mexico-US border.
Top business leaders visited on Thursday to inaugurate a $100mn international rail freight bridge over the Rio Grande, described by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as a symbol of North American integration. But three days earlier, Nuevo Laredo hit the news for a different reason.
Masked gunmen sprayed bullets from heavy automatic weapons as they fought the Mexican army on a bridge into the city. Municipal authorities told residents to stay home to dodge the gun battles, which erupted after security forces arrested a man they said was the second-in-command of the Cártel del Noreste drug-trafficking gang. […]
As part of a hastily agreed deal to avert Trump’s threat of tariffs of 25 per cent on all Mexican imports to the US — a move that spelled disaster for Mexico’s export-oriented economy — Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 extra National Guard troops to the border to stem illegal exports of the highly potent opioid fentanyl. This was a top priority for Trump.
But with about 20,000 trucks and 208,000 cars crossing the border every day, few experts believe a few thousand extra troops will make much difference along a 2,000-mile frontier as they hunt for a drug so concentrated that a year’s illegal US supply would fit into a few pick-ups. […]
That is fuelled by the kidnapping and rendition to the US of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in June, after he was betrayed by a former business partner. Zambada was for decades the prime political dealmaker of the Sinaloa cartel.
Guerrero said: “He had become the great patriarch of Mexican organised crime, and was a man with a lot of information that he is surely giving up.”
Read more here.
