Serapes, Tacos, And Montezuma's Revenge - Mexico, Cartels, And Mayhem

As of this writing (2/23/26) Mexico is aflame. The drug cartels are wreaking havoc in the country in reprisal for the killing of their supreme jefe. This display of violence - burning cars, armed assault on police, destruction of commercial properties - has shown that the government is not nor never has been in control of the country. Worse, as many have suspected, the government is in the pocket of the cartels.  Unable stop them, they have joined them and have built offshore bank accounts, homes in St. Tropez, and villas on the Caribbean. 

Now, most Americans know little about Mexico except diarrhea; and although the country's tourism department has advertised places like Cancun, Guadalajara, Cabo St. Juan, and Acapulco as tropical idylls, attracting thousands of credulous Americans every year, they are nothing more than explosive tinder boxes in the hands of the cartels.  Most tourists to Cancun still get  diarrhea, but they get some soft breezes in return. 

The country is a mess, and the economic growth, five star Michelin meals in Mexico City, and a solid trade in tomatoes and lettuce, is just window dressing.  Mexico is a Third World country as corrupt as any African dictatorship, perhaps without the secret police, dungeons, and summary executions, but an ungoverned and ungovernable place nonetheless. 

Many older Americans remember their first trip to Tijuana, a quickie across the border for cheap booze and cheaper whores. 'You want to see my seester?', pornographic postcards, rotgut tequila, and rolled by greasers in shithole whore houses was what they got, but still kept coming.  It was a foreign place, full of promise and adventure, and no amount of sleaze, rancid whiskey, stinking serapes, and mangy dogs was going to dampen adventurous enthusiasm. 

Mexico was a joke, a South of the Border getaway from censorious, Puritan America. There you could watch as many dirty movies as you wanted, drink from morning till night, sleep with dark-haired senoritas, and go home with the clap, broke, but happy. 

NAFTA, the cross-border free trade agreement signed a number of years ago helped jumpstart the economy, and supermarket bins were full of Mexican produce.  Of course you had to scrub them, soak them in potassium permanganate, and peel them before eating, but it was a start - fresh produce all year around. 

Farm labor was Mexican, lettuce and strawberry picker, most illegal, but necessary to keep Sacramento Valley humming, and it was only when Joe Biden open the borders and said, 'come one, come all', did Americans get a good dose of Mexicans, and didn't like what they saw.  If the country was so great, why didn't these people stay homes?  It wasn't that the price of lettuce would go down, but sanctuary cities and their taxpayers were spending billions to house illegal immigrants in three-star hotels with a per diem that beggared most Americans'. 

The Mexican government, under a deal with the cartels, every so often showed the flag - planned, mutually agreed upon incursions into known cartel strongholds.  A few shots fired over the heads of the gang members, and a few pickups riddled; but in the main it was all for show.  The cartels went back underground to do their business in peace. 

Now with US help, a drug kingpin has been killed; and this time it is not like when Pablo Escobar got arrested, a quiet reassembly of the hierarchy and then business as usual. This time, the cartels decided to show their muscle both the Mexican government and to the United States.  The violence sent white tourists scattering in panic from airports and streets.  Told to shelter in place, they have been hunkering down in hotel rooms and condos until order is restored; but that is a fanciful promise.  No one knows when the mayhem will end and when the cartels have proven their point. 

Los federales, the state police, have kept petty crime to a minimum all for the sake of tourism, but leaving the cartels alone.  What police officer with a family and a baby on the way wants to confront bloodthirsty cartels?  What federal judge wants to try and convict the few cartel members unlucky enough to avoid federal protection and have his home firebombed as a result?

So Mexico looks like a nice place to visit - safe streets, nice restaurants, good weather, and cheap flights - and the cartels, given America's insatiable appetite for drugs, remain underground, sated, and happy with spectacular profits.  If there is violence, it is between cartels, and the operative Mexican policy is to let them kill each other off. 

The cartels are well-organized, politically savvy, open to new investment, and completely and absolutely bloody-minded. They have no problem with MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran gang now with a foothold in Los Angeles. A little extra muscle clearing the trade routes from the south, and helping enforce the status quo is welcome.  While not exactly brothers, the cartels and Mara are cousins in brutality and arms. 

Even the Somalis decided to get into the game - not on the muscle end of course, for these skinny little Africans were not intimidating unless they were behind a Russian machine gun on a pirate boat - but on the distribution end.  Minnesota has looked the other way in an atmosphere of diversity and inclusivity, and Somalis have made billions through fraudulent networks.  Why not use this sanctuary and political blindness to make ten times the money made through empty storefront daycare centers?

So give Mexicans credit. The cartels are even more powerful than the Mafia ever was and their reach extends far beyond Mexico's borders.  The Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Juarez cartels are like the five big Mafia families, each with its own turf, willing to defend it at any cost but agreeing and cooperating when it is in everyone's best interest 

It is also a hydra, a many headed snake - kill the likes of kingpins like Escobar or El Mencho and a hundred others will scramble to take their place.  The violence in Mexico now is not the chaos of a political vacuum, it is a show of strength.  Soon some other brutal leader will head the cartels. 

'Mrs. Sheinbaum, she don't know what she doing', said Maria Valdez, taking a break from cleaning bathrooms. But Sheinbaum knows exactly what she is doing.  She is in bed with the cartels, presents an anti-American nationalistic posture to calm her leftist supporters, and refuses American help because in her heart of hearts and offshore bank accounts she wants no help and is quite happy with the status quo. 

Everyone in Mexico except Sheinbaum and the cartels would be happy if the US military came in, took over, and wiped out every last one of the cartel leaders, destroyed their infrastructure and supply lines, and put an end to the violence.  However, Trump is quite busy, on alert for an invasion of Iran, ready to help Israel if Gaza heats up, and at odds with Russia in Ukraine.  An invasion is possible, but doubtful. 

The days of serapes and tacos are long gone. Montezuma's revenge is still around, but the rest of the landscape is far different than it was.  Mexico is a failed state, one which has done wonders with window dressing. Americans like their cheap tomatoes and strawberries and are content to look no further in understanding the socio-political dynamics of the place. 

Cartels rule! That is the only lesson to come out of the mayhem and universal civil disorder in Mexico. Everyone this side of the border knows it, knew it, or should have known it; and the time for reckoning has come.