Sheinbaum takes on cartels, Trump and the legacy of 1968
‘Mexico is nobody’s pinata’ On the evening of November 1, 2025, Carlos Manzo was out celebrating the Day of the Dead and carrying his infant
‘Mexico is nobody’s pinata’ On the evening of November 1, 2025, Carlos Manzo was out celebrating the Day of the Dead and carrying his infant son, who was dressed in a skeleton costume for the candlelit festival. The popular, cowboy hat-wearing mayor of Uruapan in Michoacan was outspoken against the gangsters terrorising his community and called on the federal government to intervene. Manzo put his son down to speak to his constituents, and moments later, a hooded teenage gunman walked up and shot him seven times. Protests and riots erupted, the result of years of frustration with a seemingly endless crime wave. The protesters accused Sheinbaum of heading a “narco-government”. Sheinbaum responded with a more proactive approach than her predecessor’s. Under her leadership, security forces have raided drug labs and taken out leaders such as Mencho. This has had some success. But, according to Amnesty International, while the overall murder rate fell by 27 percent last year, disappearances rose by 10.5 percent, leading some to question the statistics. “I think [the drop] has to do with a lot of factors – with the rise of the disappearances in Mexico, but also with the changed methodologies that the government uses to measure homicides,” explained MUCD’s Reyes. “When they find human remains, they categorise those remains not as a homicide, but as an unidentified cause of death … homicides committed by security forces, they are categorised as abuse of power instead of homicide.” Since 2006, more than 130,000 people have gone missing in Mexico, at the hands of both criminal groups and elements within the security forces (though officials deny this). Search parties keep finding mass graves, and mothers scour burial sites reeking with the stench of death, sifting through human remains to look for their missing children. In March last year, activists made a chilling discovery. At an abandoned ranch in Jalisco state, the birthplace of tequila, volunteers unearthed charred bone fragments, teeth and, hauntingly, hundreds of pairs of shoes. The property was believed to be an extermination site used by the CJNG. Three ovens found at the scene were thought to be used as makeshift crematoriums to dispose of victims. The discovery shocked the nation and Sheinbaum ordered a review of the missing persons database. The authorities narrowed the 130,000 tally down to 43,600 for whom there were grounds to keep looking. But victims’ families argued this downplayed the problem: at least 72,100 bodies were lying unclaimed in Mexico’s morgues.
“A lack of information makes it impossible for the authorities to search and find the person that is missing, so they prioritise,” Reyes explained. “But it is a crisis so great that there is this perception that the government is not doing enough.” In April, when a UN committee concluded that disappearances in Mexico frequently involve the authorities and appear to constitute crimes against humanity, Sheinbaum hit back, saying “there are no enforced disappearances perpetrated by the state,” and solely blaming criminal gangs. Mexico’s drug cartel problem has also become a political football north of the border, where fatal overdoses were claiming the lives of over 100,000 Americans a year by the early 2020s – largely from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid manufactured in Mexico using Chinese chemicals. “The cartels are waging war on America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said last year. Soon after returning to the White House, Trump threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China over fentanyl and undocumented migration. Mexico responded with high-level consultations and direct talks between Sheinbaum and Trump, and the tariff threats were repeatedly delayed or modified as negotiations continued The tariffs were set to start on March 4, 2025, but Sheinbaum reached out to Trump and presented data showing a decline in fentanyl seizures at the border after her troop deployment. Shortly after, Trump announced he would waive most of the general tariffs, though not the sectoral tariffs on products such as steel and aluminium. “Despite high US tariffs on Mexican steel, aluminum, copper and autos, among others, most Mexican products that meet USMCA rules of origin enter the US duty-free,” said David Gantz, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Sheinbaum understands that being confrontational with Trump will not help. “So she’s been very pragmatic and smart in that regard, I would say… Claudia has made sure that she is collaborating closely with the United States," said Correa-Cabrera. "But at the same time, working with her base of support, saying, ‘We don’t want intervention. We want to be sovereign.’” Claudia has made sure that she is collaborating closely with the United States. by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera The latest round of economic pressure came on July 1, when the USMCA review was due. Originally signed by Trump in 2018 as a replacement for NAFTA — which he described as “the worst trade deal ever made” — his administration has refused to renew USMCA in its current form.
The BriefWire