The Decibel - Mexico’s uneasy balance of power between cartels and government

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

On Tuesday, Canadian airlines began to resume operations in Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. They had been suspended days earlier after the Mexican army killed El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, leading to a wave of violence across Jalisco and elsewhere in Mexico. Residents of Puerto Vallarta, the popular tourist destination, and Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, were told to shelter in place. Many Canadian tourists found themselves stranded. David Agren is a freelance journalist covering Latin America. He joins The Decibel to talk about how cartels operate in Mexico, how the government has dealt with them in the past, and how pressure from the Trump administration is ramping up the stakes for the Mexican government to crack down on cartels. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The entrance to the town had, there were three vehicles, like two trucks and then a car that had been completely burned. Claire Wassony is describing what she saw on Monday while driving with her friend Berlin on a highway in Nayorit, a state on Mexico's West Coast. Violence broke out across many parts of the country after the Mexican army killed El Mencho, the head of the powerful Halisco New Generation cartel. And when you looked on the ground, you could see things had just melted. So I remember, like, when I first saw that, I was a little bit startled. In the popular tourist town of Puerto Vallerta where tens of thousands of Canadians spend their vacation. Billows of smoke were seen rising from the streets.

Canadian Wendy Mueller was vacationing there. And we woke up and saw a couple of odd, weird fires going, and didn't hear sirens, and wondered what was going on. And then more things started to explode and blow up and very quickly realized that something very bad was underway. Dozens of flights out of the area were cancelled. But as of Tuesday, most Canadian airlines resumed their operations. That said, foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand,

said on Tuesday that Canadian travelers to Mexico should remain cautious. Things are getting back to normal. But normal is a delicate balance of power between the Mexican government and cartels. We wanted to talk to someone who could help us understand that part of the story. So today, David Agrin is our guest. He's a Canadian freelance journalist who's been reporting in Mexico since 2005. He now splits his time between Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. Today, he's here to talk about how cartels operate in Mexico,

how they became so powerful and the effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's pressure to crack down on them. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, David. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Oh, glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation. So, David, violence between cartels and the Mexican government flare up from time to time. But I'm curious, how unusual is it for something like this to happen in places with so many civilians? millions. Can you give us a sense of how big a deal this is? This is a huge deal. And this happened in 20 states in Mexico. There are 32 states in the country.

So more than half the country, that shows the reach of the cartel and also shows the importance of the target, El Meno. And so we've seen this in places like Guadalajara. Guadalajara is a city of five million people. So for it to occur there, that's a big deal. But for it to be so spread out and it also happened in Puerto Vallarta where it's a tourist destination and where obviously everybody's going to take out their cell phone and send these pictures of clues of black smoke rising over the Baye de Bandera. You know, this is, it's a big deal. And cartels do it for the media impact, obviously, to pressure the government to release their cartel boss. And, of course, with El Mentional being dead, there's a bit of a revenge motive in that as well.

As you mentioned, Puerto Verta is a very popular tourist destination. A lot of Canadians go there every year. So people have been seeing a lot of pictures out of Puerto Verde. You mentioned Guadalajara, and this is a place that was also a scene of violence. And you spent a lot of time in Guadalajara in the mid-2000s and also the late 2000s as well. Can you give us a bit of a sense of what it's like there? Yeah, sure. It's a second biggest city in Mexico.

In a way, it was a bit of a Rancho Grande, sort of a way of saying in Mexico, a bit of a big, small town. It was always very traditional. It's sort of the birthplace of some of the biggest Mexican traditions, such as mariachi music, tequila. is distilled in a town, you know, called tequila, which is nearby. It's a city that's quite pleasant, so it draws in a lot of expats. A lot of tech has moved in there in recent years as well. It's just a very attractive place. But unfortunately, these cartels have had a strong presence there for decades.

And it's sort of a logistically important place in Mexico. And then, unfortunately, they do get enmeshed in the local society, local political class. And, you know, with the Hothelisqa New Generation cartel, of course, being in the state, you know, they're known for being brutally violent, but they also have done a lot to infiltrate local governments, and they've killed a former governor, and there have been dozens of public officials in the state that have been killed over the years. So it's, uh, Guadalajara is just on the surface, uh, a lovely place with a perpetual spring like climate, but it's got this real seemly underbelly, unfortunately. Can you give me a bit of background here about who Almencha was and

and what we know about the Halisco New Generation Cartel, because you just talked about how they are very much involved in these areas. So give me a sense of El Mentiono and this cartel itself. Yeah, absolutely. Al Mentiono, he came from the neighboring state of Micho Khan, which is another state in Western Mexico. It unfolds to the west of Mexico City. And he was from a park called Tierra Caliente, hot earth,

which has just been a hub of drug activity going back, probably the 1950s or even before that. And he came out of there, and he went to the U.S., and he got involved sort of in the drug business there and then got sent back to Mexico, became a cop. From there, got into the drug business as it's unfortunately commonly occurs. Yeah, he was a cop and then he went into the drug business.

Yeah, he did. And well, ostensibly into protection, quote-unquote protection, the millennial cartel. And that cartel basically was allied with the Cinelloa cartel, a bigger cartel, and then it split apart in 2010 when one of the leaders was killed. And this is sort of, it tends to happen, is that when a leader gets killed,

criminal organizations split apart and the Hilisko New Generation cartel emerged from that. And they went to battle with the Sinaloa cartel. But more importantly, they just went about really dominating the state of Halisco and large parts of Western Mexico and actually getting a footprint across the country. And one of the things it did is it really doubled down on violence. They became known for taking on the federal government. They shot down a military helicopter. They ambushed police convoy. killing, you know, more than a dozen officers on more than one occasion. They, they use landmines

in their battles with other drug cartels. They deployed drones to drop bombs on them. They have targeted young people in a way to swell their ranks. They will open call centers and, you know, present this as legitimate jobs and get young people go and apply for them and then end up in the- Through call centers, wow. Yes, yeah. They end up in the ranks of drug cartels. And then they even do things like they have timeshare scale. So it's just shows how big their criminal enterprises. It's more than just moving drugs, and they do a lot of that. There's a reason that Port of Manzanillo is always so conflictive that, you know, I went there in 2016,

and a lot of it was just that chemical preserverses come through that port from Asia, and, you know, used to make meth and fentanyl. And so they're in everything, and they use a lot of violence. And I should say one of the things that is kind of becoming more notorious of late, It's just how they, among other cartels, have been corrupting the political class. And there was a former Interior Minister from just a couple years ago who, according military intelligence documents that got leaked in a big hack, appointed somebody who belonged to a criminal group affiliated with the Halisco cartel to be the state police chief while he was governor.

And then, you know, you have another case of the town of Tequila. The mayor of that town was recently arrested on accusations of being. in the pay of the Hylisko New Generation Cartel, and he went about extorting distillers, including Jose Cuervo. So it's tentacles reach very deep into local governments, even more, even higher than local governments and also across the country. Where does this leave Halesco, new generation cartel without El Mancho in charge? Was this a successful operation by the government? Well, it's successful in that. It took out El Mancho, and it should be said, El Mentiono was a very violent individual.

And so no one's going to mourn his disappearance. Where some people start having questions is that this kingpin strategy of going after the top leaders, unfortunately, doesn't stop violence. That's been the pattern. Basically, they go after a drug cartel boss, take him out, and all the lieutenants start squabbling over what's left of a leaderless empire. And I think part of an example of that is the state of Sinaloa, where the Sinaloa cartel had lost El Chapo, basically, where,

Without El Chapo, his sons and another lieutenant started fighting. And so, you know, you had a lot of violence there. So, unfortunately, what happens with this strategy is just that, yes, it eliminates leaders, but it doesn't necessarily calm the country. The operations of cartels in Mexico is not new. And yet Mexico is seen as a relatively safe place to travel. Like, it's a huge tourist spot for Canadians. There's a stat here in 2024, Canadians made over two million visits to the country.

Can you explain how these things are happening at the same time? Like, how do these areas remain safe in light of cartel violence? Remaining safe is sort of a relative term. It's safe for tourists. There's long been this idea that drug cartels don't mess with tourists, don't mess with expats. I guess you can say in a way there's a kernel of truth to that. There's long been kidnappings in Mexico. And one of the things that kidnapping gangs of Long wanted to avoid was kidnapping foreigners

just because it gets embassies involved. And that might mean that the Mexican government will respond to some sort of pressure to do something. But one of the things with tourists you have to recognize is that a lot of these tourist towns have strong criminal presence. You know, take Cancun, the whole Maya Riviera, a lot of drug cartels are there because it's such an important market for drug dealing. And they have disputes among themselves. There's violence.

And sometimes that spills into the tourist area. And then a lot of businesses nearby also get extorted. So I think what people have to recognize is that these areas, yeah, they're safe if you stick to the tourist areas. But for the people that live there, they often do face extortion. You can be safe in Mexico and there's no need to panic. There's no need to cancel your trip. But do recognize that a lot of Mexicans do live in insecure conditions. And it's sort of disrespectful to downplay that.

David, what is the story of organized crime in Mexico? Like, why does it have such a stronghold in the country? I think part of it is just that the Mexican state has never exercised the full monopoly on the use of violence. I mean, that's the high level reason. And it goes back decades as far back as the 1960s, 1970s. You know, the 1980s was notorious for drug cartel problems in Guadalajara. So this is not a new issue. One thing with the old institutional revolutionary party, the one party state in Mexico,

they accommodated a lot of these actors. And one of the reasons that they did that was that they would sort of leverage these people as a form of control. You know, maybe these people would help them to win elections or keep the population somewhat subdued. But in a way, I think the Mexican government has always been a little too accommodating of bad actors, including drug cartels. And one of the things Mexico had for a long time is what they call Pax Narca, Narco Peace. And so it was an arrangement where the Mexican government like drug cartels do what they wanted so long as the drug cartels kept violence out of populated areas

and didn't impact innocent people. When did this happen? Can you give me a sense of time here? Basically up until one party rule ended in 2000. Okay. And so, you know, one of the things that happened with the move towards multi-party democracy in 2000 is that parties had to get resources. You had to get money.

You have to get manpower. You need all sorts of things to win, election. So drug cartels in a way became service providers. And I remember being in the state of Tamalipas up in the northeast corner of Mexico where a former mayor just flat out told me that what would happen is that these drug cartels would lend their services. And then they would start demanding payments afterward ongoing payments. And not only that, they would demand positions in the government. So they would do things like take over the waterworks. Well, if you take over the waterworks, you get the billing department that goes with that. So that's a source of money. Also getting

control of local police forces. And so one of the things that's just been occurring is just that there's just been this infiltration of government on the local level. And elections in Mexico have been plagued with violence. I believe there's 35 candidates at least in the last election, or candidates or potential candidates and people in politics that have been killed. And part of it is just that these drug cartels want to control local governments. And if you control governments, you control territory. And that means you can move drugs, you can control the police, and you have access to the government resources. So when Trump says that Mexico is controlled by drug cartels, it's a little too, it's just a, it's too broad a statement. But one of the things that's happening

in Mexico is that there is now an active discussion about when does President Claudius Scheinbaum stop going after big characters like El Mensho and possibly start going after, say, a governor, and there's a lot of governors where there's a lot of noise about possible cartel collusion. When does she go after a partisan, a heavy hit her from her own party? I think that's the next shoe to drop in Mexico. We'll be right back. I really want to understand, David, what's the climate in Mexico that has allowed for cartels to even come up? You know, you said it's been decades and decades.

But what is it about Mexico that has allowed for this to flourish? Well, look, one of the things that, you know, it just has to be said is that it is next to the United States, which is the world's biggest market for drugs. I mean, there's just no getting around that. There is large demand on the U.S. side of the border. And one thing that made Mexico sort of a transit country is that the U.S. did such a good job of going after boats in the Caribbean long before this current state of bombing purported drug boats.

The U.S. really did a lot to curb this activity in the Caribbean. So this is where the Mexican drug cartels have come in. That's, I think, what unfortunately is just Mexico just cannot avoid is that it has this problem with the United States. And then there's the issue of guns coming across the border. I think U.S. guns and the U.S. market just keeps this problem. So it makes it somewhat intractable for Mexico. And then, of course, there are the Mexican dynamics as well, which is, of course, sort of the weak state and this

just ongoing tolerance for bad actors. And it just, even though it's a public, there's this public security crisis. Mexican politicians have just never wanted to invest any political capital into being the tough on crime candidate, unlike what just happening in other parts of Latin America with, say, Naïi Bukle and El Salvador. Say, what you're going to say, what you're will about his program. That's his calling card. Other countries, I was in Chile. Same thing there. Jose Antonio Casas, the right-wing candidate won by being, you know, with this heavy-handed, tough on crime. We're going to build prisons, expel migrants, that kind of agenda. Mexico just has never, just politicians just don't go down that road, or at least happened over the last

18 years. Okay. So let's talk about President Claudia Scheinbaum now, because there has been a sense that things have changed a bit under her. She was elected in 2024. What is she doing differently when it comes to dealing with cartels from past presidents? The big thing that's different is that her predecessor,

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and it should be said that Shinebaum is someone very close to Lopez Oberdor, I think, could be described as his protege. We need to back up to 2006. And what happened is there was an election that year in which Andres Manuel Loposobador,

commonly known as Amlo, lost a very close election to Felipe Calderon. And Lopez Obrador always insisted that election was rigged. He never accepted the results. I've never seen proof that there was this fraud, but he relitigated all through his presidency, Claudius Scheinbaum to this day still relitigates it. And whenever something goes wrong in Mexico, without exaggerating, she will blame things from the administration of Felipe Calderon. And there are reasons to blame him, Felipe Calderon's public security secretary,

a guy named Hennaro Garcia Luna was convicted in a U.S. court of being in the pay of the Sinaloa cartel. So, but the point being is that Felipe Calderon started this crackdown on drug cartels. And he put on a military uniform, you know, less than two weeks after taking office, went out to the state of Mitcho Khan and basically declared war on the drug cartels. And there's been a lot of violence ever since. And one of the things that Lopez Obrador and others, not just people in his party, people even in other parties, is that Lofosososos D'Obrador always thought that Felipe Calderon was trying to legitimize himself through military action after a scandalous selection, or what Lopez Obrador considered a scandalous election. And so it's often called La Guerre de Calderon. It's his, it's Calderon's war as opposed to a public security crisis

in Mexico. So it's, it feels like there's just not been this political will to be a tough on crime candidate like Felipe Calderon. Nobody wants to go and reclaim that mantle. And one of the things Lopez Obrador did was that he dismantled the federal police. There was a federal police started by Felipe Calderon. He completely dismantled it. It came up with something called the National Guard, which is a militarized police under the command of the defense secretariat. And, you know, one of the things, unfortunately, you could just say is that they lost a lot of institutional knowledge. They lost a lot of intelligence gathering capabilities. And they're just gradually getting that back. And so it's just, there's this feeling in Mexico that they're constantly reinventing the wheel.

They don't have a security strategy and they don't stick with. it. And the other thing, it should be said, is Lopens Overdora had a stated security policy called hugs, not bullets. And it was a brilliant campaign slogan, Abrazzos no balasos. It rhymed. It was catchy. It sort of captured the sentiment of, you know, maybe we're going to do things differently. We're going to get to the root cause of crime. You know, what people I speak would tell me is that effectively it was just the army decided not to go after drug cartels. And so Lopez Obrador, I think, had the idea that if the army wasn't out there hunting down drug cartels, the drug cartels might behave and they might go back to this old Pax Narca that I mentioned, this narco piece,

where effectively the drug cartels kept their dirty deeds out of public sight, didn't impact innocent people. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. And now with, now with Claudia Shinebaum, she's coming under pressure from the Trump administration. And effectively, one of the things that happened with Lopez Obrador's in this hugs, not bullets, it just came to symbolize Mexican passivity, Mexican inaction. And so, Cloudy I'm putting in a person, Omar Garcia-R-Fucci as security secretary, someone that the Americans quite like, who was a former police chief in Mexico City, seen as a very serious individual. And he's become the point person on security and on the U.S.

It's Lopez Obrador wanted to put it all in the hands of the army. That's changed. And so one of the things that's happening now is that they are going after people like El Mancho. They have reestablished contact with the DEA. They're working very close with U.S. security forces. This raid on El Mentiono's hideout effectively was done with U.S. and Mexican intelligence. That's always happened, but the difference is that this time both the White House and the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City made sure that U.S. intelligence was mentioned.

The Trump administration's fingerprints are all over this, and that's the way they want it. And so with Claudia Scheinbaum, why is she doing things like facilitating the FBI capture of Ryan Wedding, for example, the Canadian accused of being a drug boss. And, you know, he was effectively taken out of the country bypassing an extradition process. So why is she doing that? She wants to police the Trump administration. It's that simple.

There is this ongoing pressure that if Trump keeps inferring that if Mexico doesn't do something, maybe the U.S. will step in and do something about fentanyl, about stopping migrants, you know, about drug cartels. So that's what she's facing. David, just to end here, to bring it back to what's happening in Mexico and in Halisco, Guadalajara, in Puerto Vallata. When we see this kind of violence breakout,

what does that mean more broadly for Mexico and its reputation on the world stage? I think Mexico in many ways can survive this. It sort of stains the image, but it's not, the essence of Mexico still shines through. And I think with tourism, I think a lot of people have already made the decision that they like Mexico.

They've had good experiences in Mexico. They feel safe there. And they're going to keep going back. So I think, yes, this is obviously not positive, but I think Mexico does get through this. And it's the country's reputation survives. And of course, I think a lot of people are looking for an alternative to the U.S. for tourism. And they're going to keep going to Mexico. David, I appreciate you making the time.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, thanks for the invitation. That was freelance journalist David Agrin. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Bianca Thompson joins us from the Canadian Journalism Foundation's Black Fellowship Program and is our associate producer. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mikhail Stein.

Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.