Can Mexico’s Incoming President Improve Public Security?

When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took office in late 2018, he promised Mexicans a “hugs, not bullets” approach to the formidable challenge of reducing drug-related violence and weakening the country’s powerful criminal organizations. But while social programs did expand under his watch, so did the power and influence of organized crime.?

The president largely took his hands off the wheel of the “drug war” juggernaut that has now been rolling for some two decades, allowing it to veer off the road and hum quietly in a ditch as the country’s two main criminal organizations — the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) — went from strength to strength .?

After six years of that approach, Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will move into the driver’s seat in October and see if she can solve Mexico’s insecurity problem.

Restarting Momentum

López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” mantra signaled a softer approach to crime, defined by an emphasis on social programs, a new National Guard to replace the beleaguered Federal Police, and a philosophy that violence can’t be beaten with violence. He defied the US’s demands for anti-narcotics measures, and the arrest of major kingpins decreased. He also denied that fentanyl — the synthetic drug behind tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US — was being produced on Mexico soil. Incidents such as an attempt to arrest drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s son Ovidio in Culiacán, Sinaloa in October 2019 resulted in government forces being outnumbered and outgunned, showing the growing power of the criminal organizations as parallel armies (Ovidio was arrested on a second attempt in 2023).

Looking down the road, Sheinbaum must find a way to lurch Mexico’s public security policy out of a ditch and use the political establishment and state institutions to restart momentum. Since winning Mexico’s elections earlier this month in a landslide, Mexico’s first female leader has done little to elaborate on the security plans she floated during her campaign.

Sheinbaum has hinted that she would stay loyal to López Obrador’s security plan. She also wants to strengthen the National Guard that López Obrador created, and formally bring it under the control of the Defense Ministry. Mexico’s military has faced credible allegations of human rights abuses during the “drug war.” ?

Security analyst Lilian Chapa-Koloffon said this move would increase the opaqueness surrounding the military’s role in public security.?

“Public security federally would be much more closed…there would be a lot less transparency,” she told Southern Pulse.?

AMLO and Sheinbaum: Key Differences

While Sheinbaum appears ready to follow López Obrador’s track record on security and other issues, there are some notable differences between the two presidents’ approaches.

Sheinbaum plans to improve interagency collaboration to strengthen the country’s criminal investigation capacities, which was never her predecessor’s focus. This is where she could quickly make some gains. For example, Mexico does not have a single money laundering investigation related to the synthetic drug trade, according to freedom of information requests InSight Crime filed to the Mexican government. Details of the new president’s security strategy remain under wraps so far.

After Sheinbaum is up and running on the “drug war” road again, she must then run down the criminal organizations powering the fentanyl epidemic ravaging the US and the methamphetamine industry in Mexico.?

“At the national level, one factor for success will be how fast they are able to clean up local and state police forces,” said Alberto Islas, security analyst and founder of consultancy firm Global Leading Solutions. “The devil will be in the detail.” Many governments, both in Mexico and other countries in the region, have made efforts in the last two decades to purge state security forces of graft and corruption , with little success.

Her time as Mexico City’s mayor did provide some security wins. Violent crime fell by 58%, according to government statistics, and murders by more than 51% after she boosted the number of police officers in the capital and their wages. She also increased the number of security cameras on the streets, which not only helped bring down the murder rate but also played a role in orchestrating one of the country’s biggest cocaine busts .

“Mexico City hasn’t seen the [same] levels of homicides as other parts of the country,” argues Chapa-Koloffon. “It’s a compact city with an abundant police force with a single command…She isn’t the governor of each state, and each governor has a different reality and political will [when it comes to fighting organized crime].”

The US-Mexico Relationship

But Sheinbaum’s security push in Mexico City does bode well for one of the key challenges pending — resetting the bilateral security relationship with whoever wins the US presidential election in November. Mexico's anti-narcotics ties with the US reached new lows during López Obrador’s government. Sheinbaum, on the other hand, reportedly worked hand in hand with the US State Department and the US Drug Enforcement Administration during her crime crackdown in Mexico City. This has won her friends and a degree of trust at the US embassy on Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue.??

“She is more public policy-oriented and AMLO is more of a politician,” Islas said. “I think that will help the security coordination.”?

One challenge is regaining control of vast swathes of the country under criminal rule, amidst a backdrop of violent, internecine conflicts between rival criminal gangs that have transformed many parts of rural Mexico into high-risk areas for both locals and visitors . These include Chiapas , Michoacán , Guerrero, and Tamaulipas , to name a few. Six of Mexico’s 32 states are currently no-go zones for US citizens, according to US State Department travel warnings , while 24 more are deemed risky.

Another major bilateral security issue concerns not just Mexicans and the criminal organizations, but migrants passing through Mexico in search of the “American Dream.” Under López Obrador’s watch, the security realities for migrants in Mexico have gone from questionable to cruel to inhumane, in large part because of Mexico’s own domestic policies as well as those of the US.?

“I would rather cross the Darién Gap 10,000 times than cross Mexico,” Venezuelan migrant Yeneska García told the Washington Post earlier this month from a migrant shelter.?

Migrant smuggling and kidnapping have blossomed from a side business into a lucrative market for criminal organizations across the Americas. The cost of being smuggled across the US-Mexico border, for example, has risen from USD3,000 to USD5,000 to anywhere between USD7,000 and USD10,000 and beyond, migrants told InSight Crime . Migrating across Mexico now poses a grave risk to the tens of thousands of people who do it. The kidnapping for ransom of migrants by organized criminal networks is now systematic, as are the smuggling networks that move this vulnerable population across a country now considered one of the most treacherous in the region.?

“The [Beltrán-Leyva Organization] and Jalisco New Generation Cartel have moved into this business and taken over the National Migration Institute and several NGOs that help migrants,” Islas said.?

One activist told Southern Pulse that immigration officials are charging migrants MX2000 pesos (about USD120) each to board a government bus from the banks of the Suchiate River on Mexico’s southern border to Tapachula, the nearest city where they can register with the country’s migration officials. Thousands of undocumented migrants cross the river on homemade rafts every day, afraid of continuing their journey into Mexico independently due to rampant kidnapping on the short trip between the two locations.?

Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, which has no wall, stretches across the edge of Chiapas — one of the states currently most troubled by warring criminal groups and violence.

“Mexico needs to invest at least US35 billion to control its south[ern] border — not a wall, just plain infrastructure,” Islas said.

Working with the US on immigration policy both at home and abroad will form some major bumps that Sheinbaum will have to navigate repeatedly. If she can steer Mexico’s security juggernaut policy in a new direction, Sheinbaum could, in theory, drive her country toward a more peaceful future. Harm reduction, a road less traveled by past Mexican governments, could help provide an alternative to criminalizing drug users. More prevention and less punishment of small crimes like minor drug possession could keep thousands out of jail .?

But whether Sheinbaum will have the political strength and wisdom to diverge from the policies of the man who helped put her in power — and those of his predecessors — is the million-dollar question the region wants answered. All it can do is watch and wait — but it would be wise not to hold its breath.

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