Killing Cartel Bosses Won’t Solve Mexico’s Organized Crime Problems
Killing Cartel Bosses Won’t Solve Mexico’s Organized Crime Problems
Cartel violence and drug trafficking can’t be fixed with just bullets or explosives.
The Mexican Army on Sunday closed the net on Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico’s largest and most violent criminal organizations. Oseguera decided to go down fighting, and the operation turned into a vicious gunfight that left the kingpin mortally wounded and eight cartel members dead.
The cartels responded aggressively to the Mexican government’s takedown of one of their most prominent leaders. Attacks against Mexican military and police forces broke out across the country, and cartels burned hundreds of vehicles in the streets, a tactic used to disrupt and delay state reaction to cartel activity and terrorize civilian bystanders. In the state of Jalisco, the government reported Monday that cartel attacks killed 25 Mexican national guardsmen, a state prosecutor, and a private citizen; Mexican security forces returning fire killed 30 cartel gunmen.
The operation was made possible by American intelligence, which pinpointed the cartel leader’s location, although the attempted capture was carried out by Mexican troops alone. The U.S. has placed increasing pressure on the Mexican government to crack down on cartels as part of its border security plan, something Mexico under the Morena party has long been hesitant to do. Its previous president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, largely ignored organized crime under his “hugs, not bullets” campaign to end violence by attempting to solve its “root causes” of poverty and youth unemployment.
The American right broadly has taken an aggressive stance against the cartels, and support for further militarization of anti-cartel operations is popular among MAGA influencers and the Republican party base. “I am once again calling to bomb the cartels,” Jack Posobiec wrote in a popular post on X earlier this week, and the sentiment has been echoed by figures as diverse as Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX).
The Trump administration itself has hinted at an endorsement of this approach, with President Donald Trump at times suggesting that the U.S. would begin conducting airstrikes against cartel assets on the ground similar to the strikes the U.S. military has conducted on drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
The Mexican government has responded to U.S. pressure by scaling up the intensity of anti-cartel operations and cracking down on its northern border. Since President Claudia Sheinbaum’s election, Mexican forces have seized hundreds of tons of illegal drugs and imprisoned tens of thousands of participants in drug production and trafficking and organized crime. Sheinbaum also took the remarkable step of extraditing 55 of the country’s imprisoned cartel leaders to the U.S. to face justice on American soil.
But while aggressive and flashy military operations and the capture and killing of drug kingpins may appeal to the imaginations of the American right, the truth of the matter is that cartels are not a problem that can be solved by bombs, drones, special ops teams, or even large-scale military deployments. We know because Mexico and the U.S. have attempted this strategy before, during the presidencies of Vicente Fox and most notably Felipe Calderón. With U.S. assistance in the form of the Mérida Initiative, the Mexican Army swept through cartel strongholds with the intent to kill as many gangsters as they could, destroy their redoubts, and shatter their leadership and morale.
The results were disastrous. The Mexican Army was able to kill thousands of criminals, but cartels adapted and hit back hard. Organized crime became increasingly militarized and significantly more violent than it had in the 20th century, and cartels adopted guerilla and insurgent tactics, killing Mexican soldiers in ambushes and bombings and then melting away to blend in with the civilian populace. Mexican police and military forces became frustrated and paranoid, and reports soon followed about civilians shot by nervous soldiers at checkpoints or killed by police in firefights with fleeing criminals. Cartels began targeting civilians in reprisals against government crackdowns, and the military occasionally attacked civilians who they suspected of harboring or protecting cartel operatives. The murder rate in Mexico skyrocketed, and has never come down to pre-21st century levels, but the quantity of drugs crossing the border to the U.S. did not significantly decline.
In 2009, Calderón published a list of Mexico’s most wanted criminals, naming 37 cartel leaders and drug kingpins. By 2015, 33 of the 37 had been captured or confirmed dead, but their elimination had little apparent effect on the volume of drug trafficking or cartel violence. Taking out a cartel leader often weakened or sometimes even destroyed his gang, but the territory was simply taken over by competing groups, sometimes sparking turf wars that further escalated violent crime in the region.
The death of “El Mencho” is likely to have the same effect. His son and heir, “El Menchito,” is currently imprisoned in the U.S., leaving the CJNG without leadership. That is more likely to result in a fight as other cartels muscle in to take over their operations and CJNG subordinates fight for the throne than in a material decline in drug trafficking.
The fundamental problem facing Mexico is not one of guns or manpower. The cartels are overwhelmingly outmatched militarily by the Mexican Army and National Guard, regardless of the photographs of cartel gunmen looking tough in fatigues and armored cars that circulate on the internet.
Ultimately, the issue is one of state capacity and economics. The Mexican army can kill cartel operators and capture cartel bosses, but the Mexican government and police forces can’t stop new entrants from moving into the territory, intimidating civilians, buying off government officials, and purchasing local complaisance with the largesses of the drug trade. Drug trafficking is lucrative enough to create a practically endless appetite for expansion and promises wages high enough to make recruitment from Mexico’s youth functionally limitless.
Adding American weapons and manpower to the equation will not change these realities. The U.S. military cannot govern the country for the Mexicans, nor can it turn off the massive consumer market in the U.S. that funds the drug trade. If the U.S. is not careful, its pressure to crack down on cartels could lead to a less stable situation south of the border.
Instead of fantasizing about airstriking the cartels into oblivion, the American right should take seriously the need to cooperate to build Mexican state capacity and choke off the cartels economically. This has already been a major theme of Sheinbaum’s security policy, which aims to increase centralization and federal control over policing via the National Guard and building up Mexico’s intelligence services. Increasing intelligence penetration and identifying the means of disrupting cartel supply chains and operations in ways that cause the greatest cost and reduce the economic viability of drug trafficking is the most durable way to reduce the volume of drugs and crime that reach American soil. This requires the use of military force and police action, to be sure, but force alone will not be sufficient; it must be well used.
Additional work needs to be done to increase the professionalization and integrity of local government and the Mexican judicial system—the latter of which has recently become more vulnerable to exploitation after the recent judicial reform which subjects judges to popular election. Only once the Mexican government, national and local, is capable of holding its own against cartel influence will eliminating cartels function as a way to reduce organized crime and drug trafficking rather than simply opening new territory for other gangs to fight over.
This kind of work is not glamorous. It is not easy, the way smashing sicarios with cruise missiles or drones would be. But it is the only serious and durable approach to dealing with the cartel problem that the U.S. and Mexico face.
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