Mexico Security Notes - August 2024
Does the Sinaloa Cartel internal fight reshape Mexico's violence? Does Sheinbaum change her security strategy because of recent events?
In late July, the US arrested two top Sinaloa Cartel leaders. A plane with Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo,” and Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of El Chapo, conveniently landed at an airport in El Paso Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and the two were immediately detained. Did they turn themselves in? Was one or both tricked? Were they forcibly kidnapped and taken? The competing stories will make for good fodder for a future television series.
Political fallout
President Lopez Obrador says the arrests may have been treason and demanded explanations from the US and Mexican officials. The Mexican Attorney General's office has opened an investigation as to how El Mayo ended up in the United States. The Mexican government is going to spend more resources attempting to figure out how the US captured El Mayo than they did trying to capture El Mayo themselves over the past six years.
The emerging story of El Mayo's arrest includes strong indications that Sinaloa's governor, an ally of AMLO, was being paid off by the Sinaloa Cartel. Most analysts have suspected that AMLO's government had some sort of arrangement with one or several criminal groups, but the arrests could confirm some of the details. The corruption story will turn out poorly for MORENA and will harm AMLO's legacy on security issues, which is likely why the president has reacted so viscerally to the events.
Security fallout
A wave of murders directly related to the arrests has hit Sinaloa in recent weeks. Allies and enemies of El Mayo have ended up dead and the Sinaloa authorities seem to be covering up at least some of the situation. Even before El Mayo's detention, there was an increase in violence in the state. However, the arrests of El Mayo and a Chapito could lead to a leadership struggle within a criminal group that had been relatively stable, even after the arrest of El Chapo. While there were minor skirmishes before, what people fear is a break similar to the Gulf/Zetas or Sinaloa/CJNG breaks of the past that reshaped the entire criminal environment and led to significant violence.
The map of Mexican violence is mostly shaped by the question of where the criminal groups compete for control and where the criminal groups have internal fights. In recent years, the CJNG expansion to other states was the dominant narrative. The detention of El Mayo threatens to make the Sinaloa Cartel civil war the new focal point of violence around which much of the country's security narrative will revolve for the coming year.
Political fallout, part 2
When controversies like this have happened in the past, such as when General Cienfuegos was detained by the US, it led to a decrease in security cooperation between the US and Mexico. AMLO, in many ways similar to former President Peña Nieto and the old-school PRI, does not want US involvement in Mexico's security situation to expose the levels of corruption in the country. It is possible (though we probably won't learn for certain for a long time to come) that AMLO's unwillingness to cooperate further on the Venezuela crisis is driven in part by his anger at the US detention of El Mayo.
But in less than 45 days, AMLO won't be president anymore. Claudia Sheinbaum takes over in October and she has promised a different approach from Lopez Obrador's.
I worry that AMLO, in launching accusations of "treason" against those who detained El Mayo, may be sending a warning and setting a red line for anyone on Sheinbaum's security team who may be considering a more forceful response to criminal corruption.
Meanwhile, if the wave of violence worsens, Sheinbaum may not get the same benefit of the doubt from voters who seemed willing to ignore AMLO's security failures over the past six years. Her political capital and her mandate will shorten if violence causes her popularity to take a hit.
The next president of Mexico will face an early test in which she is caught between a public that wants a better security policy that includes less corruption and a former president who wants his allies protected from prosecution. The US will also be looking to Mexico's new president for greater cooperation than they received under her predecessor and Sheinbaum needs a positive relationship with the US for her economic agenda to succeed. Up until this point, Sheinbaum has been nothing but loyal to AMLO. If this tension early in Sheinbaum's term leads to an internal MORENA fight on security policy, the leadership struggle could be every bit as consequential as the one going on in Sinaloa.
CORRECTION: Fixed the location where the plane landed.
