State police maintain a security checkpoint at the entrance of Chilpancingo, Mexico, on Feb. 15. | Alejandrino Gonzalez/APMatthew Kaminski is editor-at-large, writing regularly for POLITICO Magazine on American and global affairs. He’s the founding editor of POLITICO Europe, which launched in 2015, and former editor-in-chief of POLITICO from 2019 t0 2023. He previously worked for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, based in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and New York.
The taxi war in Chilpancingo is a familiar story of violence in Mexico. But there are new wrinkles that speak to a growing and overlooked challenge here. Mexico’s criminal groups aren’t primarily trafficking drugs anymore. That’s maybe half their business these days. They’ve moved into extortion, transport, avocado farming, mining, logging, people smuggling and much else.
that the Mexican criminal groups traffic into the U.S., is responsible for the deaths of some 70,000 Americans every year. Since Mexico joined NAFTA in 1994, a large middle class has for the first time in its history come to life: Roughly 80 million out of its 130 million people — or two Canadas — are out of poverty and part of the developed world as consumers and skilled workers. The peso is strong. High-end tech and manufacturing plants dot the country’s north, taking the investment that previously went to China. Last year, Mexico became America’s largest trading partner.
Ahead of Sunday’s vote, the debates here sound as divorced from the security challenges and strategic opportunities here as those in the U.S. over “the wall” and illegal migration. López Obrador and his handpicked successor Claudia Sheinbaum, who looks to be cruising to the office, have little incentive to make security an issue. He came into office promising “hugs not bullets,” and touts his gains in eradicating poverty over the poor security picture.
Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised peace when he finally gained the presidency in 2018. | Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images If there was an easy solution, it would’ve been tried by now. The security expert Eduardo Guerrero, like some other experts on both sides of the border, says the Mexican authorities alone can’t handle the challenge from the cartels. “If we don’t stop them they will take over several key Mexican states at this rate,” he says. “We need help. We aren’t able to control these groups alone.”
Over breakfast near the strip of beachfront hotels, a colleague and I meet with three people who work with the families of thethe missing people of Mexico. A father lost his 15-year-old daughter, snatched off the street one night in 2015. Her remains were identified years later. A mother’s son was kidnapped and never seen again. A sister lost her brother, gone one day from his hotel job.