Amid the Iran War and midterm U.S. electioneering, most Americans probably missed a potentially game-changing shift in President Donald Trump’s war against Mexico’s drug cartels. The administration has pivoted to a consequential new tactic that, according to some Mexico experts, could cripple the cartels if expanded. Though it has received little U.S. press coverage, this new strategy has the potential to be more effective than anything ever tried.
The shift is epitomized by a recent 34-page Department of Justice indictment that named ten past and present senior government officials of Mexico’s ruling Morena party in Sinaloa State, which is home base for the Sinaloa Cartel. All ten have denied wrongdoing.
The indictment alleged that Governor Rubén Rocha Moya (who briefly stepped down but has returned) and his current and former security service appointees took “veritable fortunes” in bribe money to dramatically aggravate America’s crisis of fentanyl-related deaths.
Allegedly, Moya’s suited coterie tasked the cartel with murdering, threatening, and kidnapping political opponents and helped its leaders torture rivals to death, including at least one suspected U.S. law enforcement informant and his relatives. The indictment can help raise American awareness of how tightly Sinaloa State officials and the cartel allegedly enrich and empower one another.
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