{"id":23591,"date":"2026-02-26T01:25:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T01:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/?p=23591"},"modified":"2026-04-09T21:04:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:04:45","slug":"outro-chefao-cai-nada-muda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/artigo\/outro-chefao-cai-nada-muda\/","title":{"rendered":"Outro chef\u00e3o cai, nada muda"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size\"><time datetime=\"2026-02-26T01:25:24+00:00\">fevereiro 26, 2026<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:17px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This article was originally published by <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/02\/el-mencho-mexico-cartels-us\">Jacobin<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The killing of El Mencho, Mexico\u2019s most wanted drug lord, won\u2019t slow the cartels, reduce violence, or stop the flow of drugs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the United States is on the precipice of another war in West Asia, only a few months after the abduction of Venezuela\u2019s president and with the football World Cup only a few months away (and FIFA joining Donald Trump\u2019s Board of Peace), Mexico\u2019s most notorious drug lord and the FBI\u2019s most wanted man, Nemesio Rub\u00e9n Oseguera Cervantes, better known as El Mencho, the leader of the C\u00e1rtel de Jalisco Nueva Generaci\u00f3n (CJNG), was killed in Tapalpa, a town two hours southwest of Jalisco\u2019s state capital, Guadalajara, Mexico\u2019s third-largest city and one of the host venues for the upcoming World Cup. Mencho was taken down in an operation conducted by Mexican special forces \u201cwithin the framework of bilateral\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/world\/mexico\/jalisco-new-generation-cartel-leader-killed-rcna260184\">cooperation<\/a>, with US authorities providing complementary intelligence\u201d; the CJNG was designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump regime last year and is widely regarded as Mexico\u2019s most powerful criminal organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rumors about El Mencho\u2019s death have been circulating for years, either from kidney problems or some unspecified cause, but this time his death has been confirmed by the Mexican government; he was tracked down through a mistress, according to the authorities. The killing of El Mencho sparked an immediate reaction from CJNG forces in the form of narco blockades on what veteran journalist Ioan Grillo&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crashoutmedia.com\/p\/mexican-troops-slay-mencho-and-his\">described<\/a>&nbsp;as an \u201cunprecedented scale\u201d in at least fifteen different Mexican states, along with the torching of targets such as oil trucks, buses, pharmacies, and banks. As of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/23\/el-mencho-mexican-drug-cartel-boss-killing-violence\">writing<\/a>, the death count includes several civilians, including a pregnant woman, twenty-five members of the state and federal security forces, and thirty \u201ccriminals.\u201d Tourists and locals in affected areas were advised to shelter in place, while 2,500 additional troops are being deployed to Jalisco<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the political scientist Benjamin Lessing argues in a landmark paper on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/0022002715587100\">criminal insurgencies<\/a>, \u201cWhen cartels turn to fighting strategies, I argue, their aim is not to conquer the state but to constrain it \u2014 to change its behavior, which in the case of states means policy outcomes. In wars of constraint, the function of violence is generally coercive.\u201d In this sense, criminal violence does not represent an attempt to destroy the state but forms a negotiation with it; the message in this case is that Mencho might be dead, but the power of the organization remains intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s government is taking&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/the-americas\/2026\/02\/23\/the-killing-of-mexicos-most-powerful-narco-will-please-donald-trump\">credit<\/a>&nbsp;for El Mencho\u2019s death, there is no doubt that this was in part a response to pressure from the Trump regime, as well as Morena\u2019s critics who accuse the party of being soft on \u201ccartels,\u201d exemplified by the idea that AMLO\u2019s crime strategy was actually \u201chugs not bullets\u201d rather than handing over responsibility for law enforcement to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/sep\/27\/amlo-mexico-army-national-guard\">the military<\/a>. Of course, Trump\u2019s officials and cronies were quick on the draw to claim credit for Mencho\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s almost impossible to follow what exactly is happening on the ground; for instance, social media was suddenly full of false reports that Guadalajara airport had been taken over by cartel&nbsp;<em>sicarios<\/em>, and of old videos of CJNG armored cars. There is a legion of monetized blue tick X accounts, operator podcasts. and organized crime YouTubers, along with MAGA or MAGA-adjacent influencers and politicians, that conjure up the specter of \u201cthe cartel,\u201d not a named organization but a monolith that supposedly controls Mexico and has captured the state. The reality of the fragmentation of organized crime in the country and the removal of two generations of leaders from the board does not trickle down to this analysis shaped more by Taylor Sheridan and Netflix\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Narcos<\/em>&nbsp;than the realities of the Mexican drug trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Kingpin Strategy and the Specter of the Cartel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For nearly fifty years, the United States has pursued a strategy of taking out the leaders of major drug trafficking organizations as the centerpiece of its drug wars. El Mencho joins the litany of past slain iconic designated drug villains deemed as the most violent and dangerous traffickers of their day in the never-ending \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d Other slain drug bosses include\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/americas\/1840083.stm\">Ram\u00f3n Arellano F\u00e9lix<\/a>\u00a0(2002);\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2010\/jan\/12\/arturo-beltran-leyva-obituary\">Arturo Beltr\u00e1n Leyva<\/a>, known among other things as \u201cthe boss of all bosses\u201d (2009); and the particularly sadistic ex-US-trained special forces operator\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bbc.com\/news\/magazine-19922962\">Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano<\/a>, aka \u201cZ3\u201d (2012). The better-known\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2018\/11\/el-chapo-trial-mexico-drug-war\">El Chapo<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c2eny8nz94vo\">El Mayo<\/a>, along with the original Guadalajara Cartel bosses\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Miguel_%C3%81ngel_F%C3%A9lix_Gallardo\">Miguel \u00c1ngel F\u00e9lix Gallardo<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/international\/2025-06-30\/caro-quinteros-life-behind-bars-the-story-of-mexicos-narco-of-narcos.html\">Rafael Caro Quintero<\/a>, to name a few more of Mexico\u2019s most infamous drug lords, are all fading away in American prisons. F\u00e9lix Gallardo is the exception and is serving a life sentence in Mexico. However, nobody can seriously claim that any of these deaths or arrests has made Mexico a less violent country or seriously reduced the overall power of organized crime, let alone hindered the flow of drugs to the United States and the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Colombia\u2019s kingpins, from Pablo Escobar to the leaders of the Cali Cartel, suffered similar fates, with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-latin-america-66446113\">Dario Antonio \u00dasuga David<\/a>, aka Otoniel of the Gulf Clan, being the most recent to fall, but the country has never exported&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.channel4.com\/news\/colombias-cocaine-trade-booming-despite-trump-crackdown\">more cocaine<\/a>&nbsp;as a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/insightcrime.org\/investigations\/invisibles-colombias-new-generation-drug-traffickers\/\">new generation<\/a>&nbsp;of smaller more horizontally organized and discreet traffickers have continued to operate along with paramilitary and guerrilla organizations. Where Mexico was dominated by a few major organizations over the last few decades, there are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crisisgroup.org\/visual-explainers\/crime-pieces-effects-mexicos-war-drugs-explained\">now<\/a>&nbsp;hundreds of small criminal splinter groups, regional factions, and gangs spread across the country, in large part as fallout from the kingpin strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>While Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s government is taking credit for El Mencho\u2019s death, there is no doubt that this was in part a response to pressure from the Trump regime.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The capture of El Mayo profoundly destabilized Sinaloa and neighboring states through a cartel civil war, which has seen a 400 percent spike in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2025\/08\/18\/americas\/mexico-killings-sinaloa-cartel-kingpin-latam-intl\">homicides<\/a>\u00a0as of last year, with over\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/culiacan-sinaloa-cartel-9.7022258\">2,400 murders<\/a>\u00a0and 2,900 disappearances since September 2024. Removing a major player in such a fractured criminal landscape can be deeply destabilizing and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mwi.westpoint.edu\/why-mexicos-kingpin-strategy-failed-targeting-leaders-led-to-more-criminal-groups-and-more-violence\/\">tends to<\/a>\u00a0make things more dangerous and disordered. The war between the Beltr\u00e1n Leyva Organization and the Sinaloa Cartel began with the arrest of Alfredo Beltr\u00e1n Leyva and saw almost 10,000 people\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/culiacan-sinaloa-cartel-9.7022258\">killed<\/a>\u00a0between 2008 and 2011. The effects of this past destabilization and violence are directly evident in the current violence. There are thus very good reasons to fear that the death of El Mencho could spark similar violence as factions of the organization seek to consolidate their position in the coming months in Jalisco and beyond, as was almost always the case when past capos were killed or captured. Just as the Sheinbaum administration has made real gains in the overall public\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thedialogue.org\/blogs\/2025\/12\/a-tale-of-two-sheinbaums-mexicos-security-strategy-https\/thedialogueorg-and-abroad\">security<\/a>\u00a0situation in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In reality, the idea of the drug cartel as a vertically organized single entity has always been a convenient fiction serving the interests of US foreign policy. While Mexico\u2019s mafias are very real and dangerous and embedded in Mexico\u2019s political economy, they are best thought of as overlapping interests, regional clans, and horizontally organized structures that form a system of international and domestic drug trafficking (and other illegal commodities from wildlife to minerals), extortion, and other criminal interests rather than centralized organizations. As Benjamin Smith, a leading historian of the Mexican drug trade,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2021\/10\/official-narrative-mexico-drug-war-wrong-trafficking-corruption\">told me<\/a>\u00a0a few years ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>It is there, for example, in the term \u201ccartel.\u201d American drug agents started to use the term cartel in the late 1980s to describe Mexican traffickers. The term \u201ccartel\u201d immediately brought to mind OPEC, price controls, and the perversion of good old, fair-minded, Anglo-run capitalism. And it promised victory. Destroy the cartel, and you destroy the drug trade. Yet the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] knew that the traffickers didn\u2019t operate as a cartel at all. These were networks of intermarried families and friends, which all played small roles in creating this market ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if Mexican organizations describe themselves as \u201ccartels,\u201d this is more of a matter of self-branding than an accurate assessment of their functioning. As the literary critic Oswaldo Zavala argues in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/harpers.org\/archive\/2023\/07\/do-cartels-exist-revisionist-view-of-the-drug-wars\/\">his book<\/a>,\u00a0<em>Drug Cartels Do Not Exist<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The narco in Mexico and the United States works like Tony Soprano\u2019s clever trick. The narco appears in our society as a fearsome Pandora\u2019s box that, we believe, would unleash endless death and destruction if opened. If we could overcome that fear and confront what we call the narco by finally opening the box, we would not find a violent trafficker, but the official language that invents him: we would hear words that would slip through our fingers like sand. Let\u2019s open the box then.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And that box has been opened again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Narcoterrorism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump\u2019s second term has been characterized by an official language in which the narco becomes the narcoterrorist, a demonic being looking to destabilize and kill America through drugs rather than an illicit capitalist. This is hardly new; Ronald Reagan used the same justification for his aggressive foreign policy and support for bloodsoaked dirty wars in Latin America. As the Gipper declared back\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reaganlibrary.gov\/archives\/speech\/written-responses-questions-submitted-noticias-de-mexico\">in 1986<\/a>: \u201cThe link between the governments of such Soviet allies as Cuba and Nicaragua and international narcotics trafficking and terrorism is becoming increasingly clear. These twin evils of narcotics trafficking and terrorism represent the most insidious and dangerous threats to the hemisphere today.\u201d More recently, there was the fever dream of an alliance between Islamic terrorists and drug cartels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a long history of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2021\/11\/what-we-really-know-about-the-cia-and-crack\">CIA support<\/a>\u00a0for right-wing drug traffickers from Laos to Colombia. A former Honduran president who proudly boasted that he wanted to shove the drugs \u201cright up the noses of the gringos\u201d was recently pardoned by President Trump. As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v48\/n03\/laleh-khalili\/guns-money-and-opium\">Seth Harp<\/a>\u00a0pointed out, US-occupied Afghanistan was arguably the biggest narcostate in history. Narcoterrorism is a useful fiction rather than an actual thing; were the drug profits that allowed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Archives\/1985\/09\/17\/Priest-recounts-Contra-atrocities\/7948495777600\/\">the Contras<\/a>\u00a0to rape and pillage their way through the Nicaraguan countryside, Cuban counterrevolutionaries to blow up passenger planes, or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.trust.org\/item\/20140321130623-3r9w4\">Colombian paramilitaries<\/a>\u00a0to apply chainsaws to the limbs of campesinos narcoterrorism? All of the aforementioned groups had more of a political agenda than the late El Mencho, who as far as anyone can tell sought to influence rather than replace the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In reality, the idea of the drug cartel as a vertically organized single entity has always been a convenient fiction serving the interests of US foreign policy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">El Mencho and the CJNG<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The CJNG\u2019s entry into Mexico\u2019s criminal landscape was a direct consequence of infighting and regrouping after the death and capture of past kingpins. The organization\u2019s origins lay in the Valencia clan, a major trafficking clan hailing from Michoac\u00e1n that used to disguise shipments of drugs through their avocado export business. The Valencias\u2019 organization, also known as the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.borderlandbeat.com\/2018\/09\/the-once-powerful-los-valencia-milenio.html\">Milenio Cartel<\/a>, was at one point one of the most profitable mafias in the world. However, the Valencias were forced out of their home state of Michoac\u00e1n by their rivals and regrouped in Jalisco as an ally of the Sinaloa Federation \u2014 in particular of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2012\/07\/02\/the-kingpins\">Ignacio Coronel Villarreal<\/a>, aka \u201cNacho Coronel,\u201d a pioneer of the synthetic drug industry.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-features\/the-brutal-rise-of-el-mencho-196980\/\">El Mencho<\/a>\u00a0began his criminal career as a minor heroin dealer in the Bay Area before he served time in a US prison and was deported back to Mexico, where he worked as a cop and married into the Valencia clan, but he really made his name for leading a paramilitary force in the war against the Zetas; Mencho\u2019s group was known as \u201cMatazetas\u201d (Zeta killers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After Nacho Coronel\u2019s death in 2010 and the capture of several of the leaders of the Valencia clan, the CJNG emerged as the new force in Jalisco after eliminating a few rivals. Its rise was based on the combination of the financial expertise and international networks of the Valencia organization with the innovations in synthetic drug production introduced by their former partner Nacho Coronel and the paramilitary violence of El Mencho. The CJNG\u2019s infamy was in large part due to the organization\u2019s willingness to engage in direct conflict with state forces, including famously downing a military helicopter during a previous attempt to take down Mencho in 2015, and more recently pioneering the widespread usage of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/invisibles.info\/en\/mexico-new-old-drug-strategy-scepticism\/\">drones<\/a>. The CJNG also killed or attempted to kill numerous state officials, including\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/international\/2026-02-23\/el-menchos-downfall-gives-a-boost-to-mexicos-security-strategy.html\">Omar Garc\u00eda Harfuch,<\/a>\u00a0the current secretary of security and civilian protection, and earned a deserved reputation for brutality. Or that\u2019s at least how the official narrative goes.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/insightcrime.org\/mexico-organized-crime-news\/jalisco-cartel-new-generation\/\">The CJNG<\/a>, according to think tanks and official reports, has a presence in every single Mexican state and all fifty US states, as well as numerous countries, in particular Ecuador and Colombia, with a reach as far as China and Australia in terms of its trafficking networks. It has billions of dollars in assets and is reportedly involved in everything from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/international\/2025-08-04\/mercury-trafficking-for-gold-mines-the-jalisco-new-generation-cartels-new-multimillion-dollar-business.html#:~:text=The%20range%20of%20businesses%20operated,year%20between%202019%20and%202024.\">illegal mining<\/a>\u00a0in Colombia to the illicit\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/insightcrime.org\/news\/mexico-cartels-corner-chinese-market-for-illegal-wildlife\/\">wildlife trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The CJNG\u2019s entry into Mexico\u2019s criminal landscape was a direct consequence of infighting and regrouping after the death and capture of past kingpins.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Logic of the War on Drugs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Since Richard Nixon\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2025\/11\/trump-killings-war-on-drugs\">first declared<\/a>\u00a0a war on drugs in 1971, in large part to justify a crackdown on the New Left, there are now\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/globalinitiative.net\/analysis\/the-global-organized-crime-index-2025\/\">more drugs<\/a>\u00a0on the market than ever before, and they have never been easier to get hold of; if anything, the price has been dropping from South Africa to Europe. As a thought experiment, it\u2019s worth asking at this point if actually winning the war on drugs is the goal, if the agencies waging it are dependent on the threat posed by narcotrafficking for continued budgets in the tens of billions, and if it serves as justification for repression at home and intervention abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To return to Mexico, its drug war, launched by Felipe Calder\u00f3n in 2006, has seen well over&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.latintimes.com\/mexicos-homicide-toll-tops-300000-over-last-decade-new-report-says-583083\">300,000 deaths<\/a>&nbsp;and over 130,000 disappearances, with at least 16,000 people&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/16\/mexico-disappearances-increase\">missing<\/a>&nbsp;in Jalisco alone. And yet the drugs are still flowing, the profits are still coming in, and even if they are more fragmented, Mexican organized crime groups are not&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/invisibles.info\/en\/mexico-new-old-drug-strategy-scepticism\/\">going away<\/a>&nbsp;anytime soon. While one should always take such reports with a grain of salt, given the highly fluid nature of the business and how exactly membership is designated, as of 2023, Mexican organized crime groups had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/21\/mexico-cartels-fifth-largest-employer-study\">175,000 members<\/a>&nbsp;\u2014 making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal&nbsp;<em>Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why then is Mexico\u2019s drug trade so violent? As Benjamin Smith argues in his book,&nbsp;<em>The Dope<\/em>, violence was rare in resolving disputes between traffickers until the 1970s; family ties and the state officials who regulated the trade were able to resolve disputes without violence. Violence became a systemic feature of the trade only after America\u2019s war on drugs arrived in Mexico through Operator Condor, a militarized campaign targeting poppy fields in the so-called Golden Triangle, the remote rural mountainous areas of Durango, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua that form the heartland of Mexico\u2019s drug trade. Operation Condor also enabled the state to target various radicals and peasant guerillas that had emerged in the 1970s, as the historian&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/10714839.2016.1201271\">Alexander Avi\u00f1a<\/a>&nbsp;has shown. The current levels of violence in Mexico are a direct result of a breakdown in the ability of the state or any single organization to regulate the drug trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the fall of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the vast profits being earned in the industry transformed the logic of organized crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Smith\u2019s words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Private protection rackets soon came into conflict as different groups sought a monopoly of certain zones. Trafficking organizations \u2014 which had previously concerned themselves with moving products \u2014 now got interested in controlling space. And they fought other organizations to do so. The drug trade became the drug war \u2014 or, more precisely, a conflict between drug trafficking organizations to control a distinct, geographically delimited protection racket.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>These protection rackets extend beyond the drug trade to taxing legitimate industries, to oil theft and everything from bootleg designer clothes to brothels, and increasingly the domestic drug trade. Dozens of smaller organizations and local factions compete over these rackets, driving conflicts beyond the state\u2019s ability to control and increasing levels of violent competition. At this point, it is at least worth asking if this is one of the goals of drug policy, rather than simply a consequence of shortsightedness and\/or misguided policies. After decades of the kingpin strategy, leading to more violence and drug trafficking, it is reasonable to wonder if its goal is to destabilize and fragment the sovereignty of Mexico and other states, even if Mencho was killed by Mexican special forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regardless of what happens following Mencho\u2019s death, the fall of another kingpin will do little to stem the power of organized crime and the interests that benefit from disorder, including those currently in the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was originally published by Jacobin ___ The killing of El Mencho, Mexico\u2019s most wanted drug lord, won\u2019t slow the cartels, reduce violence, or stop the flow of drugs. ___ While the United States is on the precipice of another war in West Asia, only a few months after the abduction of Venezuela\u2019s president [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"author-name":"Benjamin Fogel","choose-language":"EN","wds_primary_category":36,"wds_primary_alameda-themes":0,"wds_primary_projects":0,"wds_primary_dynamic-publications-cat":0,"wds_primary_type-tax":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[107,22],"alameda-themes":[],"projects":[104],"dynamic-publications-cat":[],"type-tax":[],"class_list":["post-23591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-benjamin-fogel","tag-en","projects-after-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23591"},{"taxonomy":"alameda-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/alameda-themes?post=23591"},{"taxonomy":"projects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/projects?post=23591"},{"taxonomy":"dynamic-publications-cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dynamic-publications-cat?post=23591"},{"taxonomy":"type-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-tax?post=23591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}