The Patriot Post® · The Cartel Influence in Mexico

Nearly six years ago, this author surmised that the then-incoming president of Mexico was on the take. “Obrador is a socialist who proposes income redistribution to students and seniors, government picking winners and losers in the energy sector, and possible amnesty for some drug criminals. He’s backed by the drug cartels, you see.”

While the assertion may have come across as a fairly educated guess, the truth is that our government had been investigating a tie between the cartels and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (better known by the initials AMLO) for over a decade, beginning with a probe into his unsuccessful 2006 campaign, which he lost by a whisker, and which led to supporters crying fraud and months-long mass protests and demands for a recount. (Honestly, they made Donald Trump and the J6 crowd look like pikers.)

Interestingly enough, two separate yet fairly complementary investigative pieces on AMLO have come out in the last few days as he enters the final few months of his single term. In his piece, Tim Golden of ProPublica asserts:

Years before Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected as Mexico’s leader in 2018, U.S. drug-enforcement agents uncovered what they believed was substantial evidence that major cocaine traffickers had funneled some $2 million to his first presidential campaign.

According to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. and Mexican officials and government documents reviewed by ProPublica, the money was provided to campaign aides in 2006 in return for a promise that a López Obrador administration would facilitate the traffickers’ criminal operations.

The investigation did not establish whether López Obrador sanctioned or even knew of the traffickers’ reported donations. But officials said the inquiry — which was built on the extensive cooperation of a former campaign operative and a key drug informant — did produce evidence that one of López Obrador’s closest aides had agreed to the proposed arrangement.

For his part, writing for the website InSight Crime, investigator Steven Dudley revealed what was called “Operation Polanco”:

The DEA agents believed that during the 2006 presidential election, (Mauricio Soto Caballero) had worked as a political coordinator for AMLO and, among other tasks, had channeled millions of dollars from a Mexican drug trafficking organization to the AMLO campaign. Nab Soto, they thought, and they would take a step closer to finding out if AMLO knew his campaign had received drug money.

It was a bold criminal case and not one that agents typically tackle, given the challenges and potential political pitfalls of going after a would-be president. Investigations like this illustrate how organized crime seeks to get its hooks into politicians at the highest levels, but they are incredibly complicated. Money is moved in cash, so there is typically no paper trail. Witnesses are often criminals, making juries and fellow law enforcement alike reluctant to rely on their word. Going after high-level political targets can undermine an agent’s career and upend diplomatic relations.

While we’ve talked at length about the U.S.-Mexican border over the past several months, the media hasn’t delved as deeply into some of what the Biden administration loves to call the “root causes” of the influx of illegal immigrants.

Most average Mexicans live a hardscrabble life, which makes them desirous of a place where they can make an honest living and not have to sleep with one eye open because of constant criminal threats. Unfortunately, as our since-retired Arnold Ahlert assessed back in 2019 after an incident in which an outmanned and outgunned Mexican military surrendered two prisoners to cartel members, “Mexico has officially become a narco-state.”

So it seems like the only ways to make a life in Mexico are either to leave by making a deal with the cartels and crossing the border as an illegal immigrant, or stay home and do one of two things: finagling a job with the government, or starting at the bottom with the cartels, doing simple tasks and earning the trust of the local kingpin. Then again, these investigations seem to show that both those options are becoming one and the same, as the cartels and government meld together with the drug families’ influence extending to the very top of Mexican politics.

As one would expect, AMLO is denying he’s on the take, even demanding an apology from Joe Biden. But as National Review’s Jim Geraghty observes: “If you are accused of being in the pocket of a drug cartel and not really being committed to stopping cross-border drug trafficking, I don’t think you bolster your reputation by threatening to curtail bilateral cooperation on stopping cross-border drug trafficking. Note that this is not the first time López Obrador has made public comments indicating he’s much more interested in denouncing U.S. DEA agents than in denouncing any of the cartels terrorizing his country.”

And we haven’t even looked at the fentanyl pipeline that runs between labs in China that make the ingredients and the cartel-operated facilities that create the finished product being carted across the border by desperate Mexican mules. If this is part of the “strong partnership” the Biden administration claims to have with AMLO, we have a real problem on our hands.

Just like in America, 2024 happens to be an election year in Mexico. While AMLO can’t run for a second six-year term, the wide lead in polls for former Mexico City Head of Government Claudia Sheinbaum — whose path to the presidency would be the same as AMLO’s, up to and including the same Mexico City leadership position and party affiliation — suggests that we may have more of the same lack of cooperation for the next six years.

Will her loyalty be to the Mexican people or to the cartels? Given what we’re learning about the incumbent, that’s a fair question.