Lopez Obrador’s Policy Against Organized Crime and Violence in Sinaloa | Article by Mario Luis Fuentes

Mario Luis Fuentes

The administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been distinguished by a security policy whose slogan has sparked heated debate: “hugs, not bullets.” This phrase, which sums up the official strategy to combat violence in Mexico, has received both praise and criticism, depending on the sector that analyzes it. While some interpret the policy as a humanitarian approach based on pacification, others see it as a reflection of the state’s weakness in the face of drug cartels, especially in key states such as Sinaloa.

The case of this organization is significant because for decades it was the epicenter of Mexico’s drug trade and the birthplace of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world. With mafia bosses like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the cartel maintains tight control over drug trafficking, the underground economy, and local power dynamics. The capture and fall of “El Chapo” did not weaken the cartel as many expected; instead, “El Mayo” Zambada took over and consolidated his leadership. However, since his capture, Sinaloa has seen intense waves of violence, calling into question the effectiveness of the federal government’s security policies.

President López Obrador insisted that the roots of violence in Mexico lay in social inequality, poverty, and lack of opportunities for young people. In response, his security policy focused, at least rhetorically, on implementing social programs and policies of containment, avoiding direct confrontation with criminal organizations. Rather than adopting a strategy of confrontation or armed confrontation, the current government has chosen a policy aimed at “de-escalating” the conflict.

However, this strategy has been marked by its ineffectiveness. Murders and violence in much of the country, particularly in states such as Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, Baja California, Sonora, Guanajuato, and more recently Chiapas, Tamaulipas, and Sinaloa, have continued or even increased, suggesting that the “embrace” has not been enough to stop the cartel’s brutality. It is likely that the policy has been interpreted by criminal groups as a sign of permissiveness and a guarantee of impunity; or worse, as a sign of the state’s weakness and inability to restrain them.

The capture of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is a milestone in the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico. This is a figure who, in more than four decades of dominating the criminal underworld, has never come close to being arrested. But rather than being a blow that would guarantee the dismantling of the Sinaloa Cartel, Zambada’s arrest has triggered a new wave of violence that many perceive as an internal war within one of the most powerful cartels in the world, one that may even have implications for the operational logic of transnational organized crime.

It must be emphasized that Mexico is experiencing very complex processes of armed violence and other violence. And although the diagnosis made at the beginning of President López Obrador’s six-year term showed that the country has problems concentrated in certain regions, the truth is that the data show that these are not just a limited number of entities, but that violence persists in them, but it also spreads and multiplies in others, sometimes temporarily, and in others it becomes entrenched in a very dangerous way.

In this case, there are, for example, Zacatecas and Sonora, entities where in recent years there has been an unusual escalation of violence, which has even led to a demonstration by the doctors’ union due to the danger faced by their colleagues in rural areas and even in urban areas.

In Chiapas, the city of Tapachula has been facing deep and complex processes of social disintegration for at least two decades; it has established itself as one of the most dangerous borders in the world, as all types of illegal trade take place there. In this sense, the penetration of organized crime has reached such proportions that the phenomenon of communities displaced and expelled from their territories is growing, and more and more people suffer from extortion and dispossession of their territories.

In Celaya and Irapuato, in Matamoros and Reynosa, in Cancun, in Morelia and Uruapan, in Guadalajara and its entire metropolitan area, as well as in an already countless list of cities, the presence of criminals is palpable; the level of aggression against civil society is growing; the damage to businesses and the formal economy is becoming more extensive, putting very important production and commercial chains at serious risk.

In contrast to the above, one of the most important sectors of the López Obrador administration has been the perception of a supposed “pax narca” or “informal agreement” between the government and the cartels. Allegations that the government is too lenient towards certain criminal groups have been raised repeatedly, although they have not been conclusively proven. However, the “hugs, not bullets” strategy feeds into this narrative, especially when violent events such as those in Sinaloa seem to demonstrate that the state has little capacity to control the power of the cartels; to this is added, in a negative way, such unfortunate statements by the president, who is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, that “criminal groups must bear a minimum of responsibility,” normalizing and even legitimizing the actions and presence of crime in public life.

Moreover, the National Guard, one of López Obrador’s mainstays in the fight against violence, has demonstrated limited ability to maintain peace in the country’s most conflict-ridden areas. Despite its deployment in the most violent states, killings, disappearances, extortions, and extreme violence continue.

The militarization of public security combined with a policy of non-confrontation appears to have created a paradox in which the state increases its armed presence but avoids direct combat, resulting in a highly ineffective strategy.

The relationship between López Obrador’s government and organized crime groups is complex, and his “hugs, not bullets” policy has raised more questions than it answers. While it is clear that violence in Mexico is deep-rooted and cannot be resolved solely through armed confrontation, it is also clear that the current strategy is insufficient to protect the population.

The events in Sinaloa following the capture of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada are a reminder of the fragility of peace in Mexico and the difficulty of combating criminal structures so deeply entrenched in the country’s social, political and economic life.

The big question remains: whether the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum will continue without changing the policies pursued by López Obrador; or if it will formulate a new logic of intervention that will lead it to seek a balance between addressing the structural causes of violence and, at the same time, effectively countering the power of the cartels. For now, the results show that the “embrace” formula urgently needs to be reconsidered before the violence escalates further.

Researcher at PUED-UNAM