Narco-violence in Mexico: US-backed 'War on Drugs' enters another bloody chapter
Strip away the framing and you're left with this: the official narrative credits law enforcement with a significant victory in Mexico, yet the immediate aftermath is an explosion of retaliatory violence across a dozen states. The death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as 'El Mencho,' leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, is presented as a singular blow against organized crime. This
framing carefully sidesteps the predictable cycle of decapitation strikes leading to power vacuums and heightened brutality, a pattern repeated since the 1980s. Mexico's current conflict is a direct, if unacknowledged, consequence of the US-led 'War on Drugs,' a policy that poured billions into militarization while neglecting systemic causes. In 2011, for example, the US funneled over $1.5 billion
into Mexico through the Mérida Initiative, ostensibly to combat cartels. However, much of this funding armed Mexican military and police units, exacerbating violence and corruption rather than stemming the flow of narcotics or reducing demand. The US drug problem, a domestic public health crisis, is consistently exported and externalized onto its southern neighbors. This is not a new playbook.
Consider the CIAs 1954 intervention in Guatemala, 'Operation PBFortune,' which overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Árbenz's land reforms threatened the United Fruit Company, a powerful American corporation. The ensuing destabilization and installation of military dictatorships created a climate of insecurity and corruption that enabled various illicit economies to