NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day of February 8th, 2026, shows a sunspot visible above a hill in Zacatecas. Here it is:
“Active Sunspot Region 4366 Crosses the Sun” Source: Daniel Korona
From the NASA caption: “Explanation: An unusually active sunspot region is now crossing the Sun. The region, labelled AR 4366, is much larger than the Earth and has produced several powerful solar flares over the past ten days. In the featured image, the region is marked by large and dark sunspots toward the upper right of the Sun’s disk. The image captured the Sun over a hill in Zacatecas, Mexico, 5 days ago. AR 4366 has become a candidate for the most active solar region in this entire 11-year solar cycle. Active solar regions are frequently associated with increased auroral activity on the Earth. Now reaching the edge, AR 4366 will begin facing away from the Earth during the coming week. It is not known, though, if the active region will survive long enough to reappear in about two weeks’ time, as the Sun rotates.”
Trump’s noose is tightening on Cuba and Mexico is not sending oil there. (See here and here).
U.S. in orange, Mexico in green, Cuba in red, Venezuela in blue. Source: mapchart.net
From the New York Times: “When President Trump declared a ‘national emergency’ last month, accusing Cuba of harboring Russian spies and ‘welcoming’ enemies like Iran and Hamas, it came with a warning: Countries that sell or provide oil to the Caribbean nation could be subject to high tariffs. The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba.”
Since communism was installed in Cuba in 1959, Mexico has maintained a close relationship with the island.
“Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington.”
On the other hand, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum doesn’t want to endanger Mexico’s trade with the United States.
“Ms. Sheinbaum now faces a fraught balancing act: upholding her country’s historical alliance with Havana, while managing its vital yet increasingly tense relationship with the United States.”
So how is President Sheinbaum squaring that circle?
“The Sheinbaum administration has been careful not to provoke Mr. Trump, who has strained Mexico’s economy with tariffs and threats of military action to stop fentanyl from crossing the border. He has also threatened to withdraw from the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partner.”
So Sheinbaum is sending aid to Cuba but is now not sending oil.
“Ms. Sheinbaum has largely held to her country’s commitment to Cuba, a Communist country, where people are struggling with surging food costs, constant blackouts, a lack of critical medicine and dwindling fuel. But Mexico has not sent any oil to Cuba since early last month.”
“ ‘No one can ignore the situation that the Cuban people are currently experiencing because of the sanctions that the United States is imposing in a very unfair manner,’ she said during a news conference on Monday [November 9th]. She added that Mexico had deployed two Navy ships carrying more than 814 tons of humanitarian aid — mostly staple foods and hygiene supplies — to Cuba.”
“Cuba, whose main oil provider was Venezuela, has faced chronic fuel shortages for years, but the situation has become far more severe since last month, when President Trump took control of Venezuela’s oil supply. He halted deliveries to Cuba, which now only has a fraction of the oil it needs.”
“Mexico had been sending about 22,000 barrels a day, but that figure dropped to about 7,000 toward the end of 2025 — which was still far less than Venezuela was sending, according to Jorge Piñon, a University of Texas oil expert who tracks the shipments closely. The last delivery from Mexico arrived in early January, he said, days after President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces.”
“To navigate the crisis, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to distinguish between commercial contracts between Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex and the Cuban government, and humanitarian aid, which she insists must continue. She has also called for diplomatic talks between Mexico and the United States, and has offered her country as a mediator for discussions between Washington and Havana.”
It’s time for the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Italy. It’s known as the Milano Cortina 2026. The opening ceremony is February 6th, but competition actually began on February 4th.
Mexico is fielding its biggest Winter Olympics team since 1992, with five competitors. Mexico has never won a Winter Olympics medal.
CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING (Esquí de Fondo) – Allan Corona and Regina Martinez. Regina Martinez is a doctor.
ALPINE SKIING (Esquí Alpino)- Mother and Son Sarah Schleper and Lasse Gaxiola. Colorado-born Sarah Schleper is 47 years old and has participated in six Winter Olympics, four for the U.S. and two for Mexico. Sarah is married to Federico Gaxiola and their 18-year old son is Lasse Gaxiola, the other competitor in Alpine Skiing for Mexico.
In a recent article I reported the case of Ryan Wedding, a Canadian snowboarder in the 2002 Winter Olympics who is now in U.S. custody, accused of being a major drug trafficker with the Sinaloa Cartel.
From the Toronto Star: “Ryan Wedding walked into a California courtroom with a sneer, eyeing investigators in the front row and a swarm of journalists packing the gallery. Once a top FBI fugitive, Wedding finally faced a U.S. judge in federal court this week, where he pleaded not guilty to 17 felony charges — including murder, drug trafficking and other alleged crimes…Mexican and American authorities had cast a wide dragnet to catch the fugitive, and now they have their target. Still, many of the biggest mysteries in this unfolding crime story remain unanswered.”
The U.S. and Mexican governments publicly disagree about how Wedding was arrested.
“Wedding’s capture has become a major diplomatic flashpoint between two governments. At issue: What exactly did U.S. agents do inside Mexico? According to Mexican officials, Wedding voluntarily surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. If you ask American law enforcement leaders, and Wedding’s lawyer, they’d tell you that’s wrong; he was nabbed in what the FBI Director Kash Patel has called a “high-stakes” tactical operation by U.S. agents. The problem is that from the Mexican perspective, the FBI isn’t supposed to be operating on Mexican soil. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has challenged Patel’s description, saying her government would never allow a foreign power to execute such an operation…While the FBI has declined to share more details about the nature of his arrest, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Mexican security forces were closing in when they were joined by U.S. authorities who, following an intense negotiation, apprehended Wedding. It remains unclear if we’ll ever learn the truth.”
Interestingly, FBI Director Kash Patel was in Mexico City when Wedding was detained. And how about this photo of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, and FBI Director Kash Patel, together?
Excelsior reports a thriving business in the state of Chiapas (bordering Guatemala) of selling fake birth certificates to foreigners.
Chiapas state in red, Guatemala to the east and southeast, in grey. Source: TUBS
From Excelsior: “Authorities of Chiapas are investigating a network dedicated to the trafficking of birth certificates for foreigners in 12 border municipios, an operation that has resulted in 3 detentions…”
In Mexico, a municipio is a city or town with the area around it, and the jurisdiction of that government.
“…[T]he investigation began after irregularities were detected in the public registry of the Tzimol municipio..
So what foreigners are they selling them to? “...[T]hese birth certificates are principally sold to citizens of Cuban and Haitian origin. The costs of the documents range from 1,500 to 2,500 dollars apiece.”
The article says “citizens of Cuban and Haitian origin”. It must mean Cuban citizens and Haitian citizens currently in Mexico. If they were Mexican citizens of Cuban or Haitian ancestry why would they want fake birth certificates? After all, the article calls them “foreigners” and the caption of a photo refers to “Haitian migrants”.
In the municipio of Altamirano they discovered over 1000 of these fake birth certificates in the registry system, and they didn’t even have signatures or fingerprints.
From the Associated Press: “Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday [January 27] her government has at least temporarily stopped oil shipments to Cuba, but struck an ambiguous tone, saying the pause was part of general fluctuations in oil supplies and that it was a ‘sovereign decision’ not made under pressure from the United States.”
That’s a little hard to believe.
“Sheinbaum was responding to inquiries on whether the state oil company Pemex had cut off oil shipments to Cuba in the wake of mounting pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump that Mexico distance itself from the Cuban government, though U.S. officials have not publicly requested that Mexico stop the oil.”
“ ‘Pemex makes decisions in the contractual relationship it has with Cuba,’ Sheinbaum said in her morning news briefing. ‘Suspending is a sovereign decision and is taken when necessary.’ ”
“Sheinbaum’s vague statements come as Trump has sought to isolate Cuba and further ramp up the pressure on the island, a longtime adversary under strict economic sanctions from Washington. Trump has said the Cuban government is ready to fall, and that the island would receive no more oil shipments from Venezuela after a U.S. military operation deposed former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.”
U.S. in orange, Mexico in green, Cuba in red, Venezuela in blue. Source: mapchart.net
Mexico has had close relations with Cuba ever since the communist takeover in 1959. One reason, I believe, is for Mexico to demonstrate its independence from the United States. It certainly doesn’t profit much from it.
When I visited Cuba in 2014, I hardly saw any Mexican products for sale.
The Mexican government is well aware that trade with the U.S. is much more profitable than its relationship with Cuba.
From the Mexico News Daily article: “On Jan. 8, the federal government presented preliminary statistics that showed that homicides declined 30% in 2025 compared to the previous year. At face value, it certainly appears to be good news, even though homicide numbers in Mexico remain high, with more than 23,000 victims reported last year. Standing next to a bar graph, Sheinbaum frequently lauds the sustained reduction in murders as a testament to the effectiveness of her government’s security strategy; on Jan. 8, she highlighted that the murder rate in 2025 was the lowest since 2016.”
“However, there is a growing skepticism about the accuracy of the government’s numbers. On one hand, there are concerns that authorities in Mexico’s 32 federal entities are not accurately reporting homicides because they are incorrectly classifying some murders as less serious crimes. On the other hand, there are claims that the decline in homicides during Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency is related to an increase in disappearances. It’s not the first time that homicide numbers touted by a government led by Sheinbaum have been called into question. That also happened when the current president was mayor of Mexico City, from 2018-2024.”
What is the source of the Mexican federal government’s statistics?
“The homicide data the federal government presents on a monthly basis is derived from reports it receives from the Attorney General’s Offices in Mexico’s 31 states and Mexico City.”
And…
“The reliability of the statistics the state-based Attorney General’s Offices provide to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System is considered by many to be questionable. ‘State Attorney General’s Offices don’t work in a vacuum,’ Alberto Guerrero Baena, a public security consultant and academic, wrote in a column published by the news outlet Expansión on Jan. 9. ‘They operate under budgetary, political and media pressures. When a homicide is difficult to prove or requires lengthy investigation, there is an incentive to reclassify it as injury, accidental death or a lesser crime,’ he wrote. ‘… An unresolved homicide looks bad in the statistics. A [fatal] injury unrelated to homicide looks better,’ Guerrero wrote.”
Guerrero gives examples of a couple of states.
“He [Guerrero] said that ‘in states such as Jalisco, where multiple cartels operate, and Chihuahua, where violence is structural, these practices of reclassification are systematically documented by independent organizations.’ “
There are other sources.
“ ‘The official statistics show declines [in homicides] while defense lawyers, forensic doctors and journalists document that violent deaths continue,’ Guerrero wrote.”
“In a report published last November under the title ‘La Transformación de los Asesinatos en Propaganda‘ (The Transformation of Murders into Propaganda), the non-governmental organization Causa en Común also wrote about the ‘possible/probable reclassification’ of homicides as other crimes. ‘Adjacent to the category of intentional homicide, there are two other categories whose behavior has been peculiar in recent years: culpable homicide (accidents) and “other crimes against life and integrity,” states the report. ‘… In the past six years, the number of victims recorded in the category of intentional homicide has supposedly declined 11%. In contrast, the number of victims of culpable homicide and ‘other crimes against life and integrity’ has increased 11% and 103%, respectively,’ the NGO said.”
There’s another report. “A June 2025 report by Ibero University similarly flags the ‘reclassification of crimes’ as a possible ‘common strategy to reduce the visibility of high-impact crimes.’ ”
According to the Ibero report, “the apparent reduction in homicide numbers doesn’t necessarily imply a real decrease in violence, but [could indicate] a sophisticated concealment of [intentional homicide] victims through [their classification in] other categories such as disappearances, atypical culpable homicides, unidentified deceased persons or bodies hidden in clandestine graves.”
Then there’s this: “In an interview with the EFE news agency last November, Armando Vargas, the coordinator of the security program at the think tank México Evaluá, said that to speak of a significant decline in homicides ‘is politically very profitable.’ However, he too noted that other ‘forms of violence’ have increased, ‘amplifying suspicions’ that criminal data is being manipulated. ‘The expert,’ EFE reported, highlighted that ‘some entities record more deaths from accidents (homicidio culposo) than from homicidio doloso [intentional homicide], without there being public reports of mass accidents that justify this anomaly.’ ”
Then there are the disappearances.
“A total of 34,554 people were reported as missing in 2025, according to data on Mexico’s national missing persons register. In Sheinbaum’s first 12 months in office — Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025 — 14,765 of the people reported as missing in the period remained unaccounted for when the president completed the first year of her term. That figure represents an increase of 16% compared to the final year of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s presidency, and an increase of 54% compared to the annual average during AMLO’s six-year term. Is this increase in disappearances related to the decrease in homicides? According to many observers, the answer is yes. Reuters reported on Jan. 8 that government critics claim that the increase in ‘forced disappearances’ is ‘masking the violence in the country.’ ”
“In an opinion article published by The New York Times in December, Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist with extensive experience reporting on organized crime, wrote that ‘opposition figures’ assert that the reduction in homicides is ‘just because cartels are now disappearing more people, rather than leaving corpses to be counted.’ ”
But if you add up the figures… “If the number of homicide victims in the first year of Sheinbaum’s presidency is added to the number of disappearances in that period, the total is 40,265.”
And…
“That figure represents a decline of just 5% compared to the average annual combined total of homicides and disappearances during López Obrador’s six-year term. It represents a significant increase compared to the average number of homicides and disappearances annually in the sexenios (six-year terms) of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-18) and Felipe Calderón (2006-12).”
Definitely, there are things about these stats that bear looking into.
Alberto Guerrero Baena, public security consultant and academic has four suggestions to improve the federal government’s statistics:
“The carrying out of independent audits of State Attorney General’s Offices’ crime data.”
“Reform the SESNSP [Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública] to give it ‘independent verification’ powers.”
“Create a ‘national observatory of anomalous mortality’ that cross-checks Civil Registry data on deaths with information from prosecutors, medical examiners and forensic medicine institutes.”
“Conduct ‘methodologically rigorous’ victimization surveys every three months in order to gauge the ‘lived experience’ of Mexicans with regard to violence.”
According to Guerrero, these four steps “are just the beginning of a necessary transformation.”
Here’s a bizarre story, of a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada who allegedly became a drug lord in Mexico and is now in U.S. custody.
Ryan Wedding in 2002 Winter Olympics, before his drug trafficking days. Source: CP Photo/COC/Andre Forget
Ryan Wedding is a Canadian Olympic snowboarder allegedly turned drug kingpin, but his crime career is over for now. Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and is now in the U.S. awaiting trial.
You may have wondered about the surname “Wedding”, I hadn’t heard it before. It actually derives from a place called “Wadding” in Yorkshire, England.
Ryan James Wadding was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, in 1981 and competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics (Salt Lake City) as a snowboarder.
After that, Wedding became a drug trafficker and made quite a name for himself, winding up in Mexico in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Wedding ran an operation transporting cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the U.S. and Canada. His operation would move it by truck from Mexico to Los Angeles.
By 2005, Wedding made it to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Wedding’s FBI wanted poster reads“Ryan James Wedding is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the United States. Additionally, it is alleged that Wedding was involved in orchestrating multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”
The Canadian drug lord used the aliases “James Conrad King” and “Jesse King”, as well as a number of colorful nicknames: “Giant”, “Public Enemy”, “Boss”, “Buddy”, “Grande”, “El Jefe”, “El Guerro” and “El Toro”.
So why did he turn himself in and what does the deal consist of? Is Wedding going to rat out a lot of other people?
Another curiousity is that the day he turned himself in, FBI Director Kash Patel was at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, on an unpublicized visit. Hmm, that’s interesting.
Here’s a photo of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Ambassador Johnson, Secretary Garcia Harfush, Director Patel. Source: Excelsior
On the 23rd, Wedding was flown to California (landing in, coincidentally, Ontario, California) to face charges on cocaine trafficking and murder.
Nicolas Maduro has been removed as president of Venezuela and U.S. President Donald Trump has set his sights on the communist island of Cuba.
Mexico is now Cuba’s main supplier of petroleum. And the Trump administration is ok with that.
What’s going on?
U.S. in orange, Mexico in green, Cuba in red, Venezuela in blue. Source: mapchart.net
Mexico has been sending oil to Cuba since the 1980s. But by 2025, even before Maduro’s removal, Mexico had surpassed Venezuela in the quantity of oil shipped to Cuba.
According to CiberCuba, in calendar year 2025, “…Mexico exported an average of 12,284 barrels of crude oil per day to Cuba last year, which accounts for about 44% of the island’s total oil imports and represents a 56% increase compared to 2024. In contrast, Venezuela contributed only 9,528 barrels per day, a 63% decrease compared to 2023.”
So even before Trump’s arrest and removal of Maduro, Mexico had become Cuba’s biggest suplier.
According to Reuters, the last shipment of Venezuelan oil sent to Cuba was mid-December, 2025. Maduro was removed on January 3rd, 2026.
From another article in CiberCuba: “Amid a deep energy crisis in Cuba and growing geopolitical pressure from Washington, Mexico has emerged as the main supplier of oil and fuels for the island, replacing the collapsed flow from Venezuela.”
Venezuela and Cuba had an arrangement: “Venezuela, which for decades sustained the Cuban regime with subsidized oil in exchange for medical and intelligence services, has seen its production and export capacity plummet due to sanctions and structural collapse.”
With Maduro out of the picture, and Trump’s new relationship with Venezuela, Mexico remains as the communist island’s main petroleum supplier.
“The recent arrival of the ship Ocean Mariner in Havana Bay, carrying 86,000 barrels of fuel from Mexico, confirms this.”
“The loss of Venezuelan oil, combined with the limited national refining capacity and a collapsed electrical system, keeps millions of Cubans experiencing power outages of up to 20 hours a day. The Cuban regime has tried to survive by reselling part of the imported oil, while maintaining relations with Russia—limited by the war in Ukraine—and with Mexico as its main current support.”
“In this context, Mexican shipments have avoided a total collapse, and they are even tolerated by Washington, which fears a new migratory or social outbreak if the country falls into a prolonged and widespread blackout.”
What does Mexican President Sheinbaum say about the situation?
“President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the shipments to Cuba as part of a long-term humanitarian agreement. ‘No more oil is being sent than what has historically been sent,’ the leader assured at the beginning of this month during a press conference, responding to revelations from the Financial Times, which estimate a current volume of 12,000 barrels per day being sent to the island.”
But Mexico doesn’t profit off of petroleum exportation to Cuba.
According to Gonzalo Monroy, director of the consulting firm GMEC, “…Cuba does not pay, and the current scheme includes discounts and lenient conditions that end up accumulating as ‘accounts receivable’ that never get settled. ‘That debt accumulates and then is forgiven, as Enrique Peña Nieto did in 2013,’ he explained.“
“The situation creates internal tensions, not only due to the lack of transparency regarding the data -Pemex has not officially responded about the volumes or the amounts involved- but also because of the precedent of multimillion-dollar debts that end up being forgiven in the name of foreign policy.”
Mexico has had close relations with Cuba ever since the communist takeover in 1959. One reason, I believe, is for Mexico to demonstrate its independence from the United States. It certainly doesn’t profit much from it.
When I visited Cuba in 2014, I hardly saw any Mexican products for sale.
Then there’s another issue. Can PEMEX, Mexico’s state oil company, handle supplying Cuba with oil?
“PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company, has not met its production targets, and experts like Ramsés Pech doubt its ability to maintain consistent exports abroad if the current trend continues.“
“ ‘Pemex and its private partners produce 1.6 million barrels per day (mbd), of which only 1.3 mbd are from Pemex, falling short of the official target of 1.8 mbd,’ ” noted Pech, a partner at the energy consulting firm Grupo Caraiva.”
“Each barrel sent to Cuba additionally competes with internal needs and profitable export goals, which could trigger alarms within the company if the production backlog continues.”
“‘The opportunity cost can become unsustainable,’ agree Pech and Monroy.”
As for the Trump administration, it is totally aware of Mexico’s oil exports to Cuba, and doesn’t oppose it.
As reported by CBS News, “…the current U.S. policy is to allow Mexico to continue to provide oil to the island, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright and another U.S. official. Cuba desperately needs the oil, since Venezuela is no longer supplying it, after Nicolás Maduro’s ouster…“
So what’s the administration’s thinking here?
“The U.S. does not seek to trigger a collapse of the Cuban government, but rather seeks to negotiate with Havana to transition away from its authoritarian communist system, according to a U.S. official. Mr. Trump’s post Sunday morning [January 11th] threatened Cuba, advising the island to make a deal ‘before it is too late.’ ”
The administration doesn’t really want a total cutoff to Cuba.
“The U.S. assesses that a total cutoff or embargo of Cuba would be a shock to Havana’s already overtaxed and decrepit electrical grid, which has been suffering from rolling blackouts. Cuba’s economic condition is dire — a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that the regime has been so cash strapped that its leaders were reselling some Venezuelan oil to China, the New York Times first reported. This was exacerbating the ongoing energy shortage on the island even before Maduro’s arrest. “
“That economic strain on Havana intensified, now that it has lost virtually all its patrons, and Russia has been tied up in Ukraine.”
Is the communist regime on Cuba in its last days? Or will the regime survive this crisis as it has since 1959 ?
There’s a lot of talk nowadays about the U.S. government attacking Mexican drug cartels in Mexico.
A recent example is Sean Hannity’s interview with President Trump on January 8th, in which Trump said that “And we are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch, see what happened to that country. But the cartels are running and killing 250-300,000 in our country every single year.”
What would a U.S. attack on Mexican drug cartels consist of?
Would lobbing missiles at cartel bosses solve the problem?
To begin with, which cartels?
A January 9th CNN article by Mary Beth Sheridan is entitled Trump wants Mexico to ‘take out the cartels.’ Here’s why that’s so hard. It explains the challenge: “Most of the old cartels have splintered. Around 400 groups of different sizes now operate around the country, said Eduardo Guerrero, director of Lantia Intelligence, a Mexican consulting group that tracks them. ‘They’re practically everywhere,’ he said. The biggest ones have become more sophisticated and more complicated. The most powerful, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, is composed of around 90 organizations, Guerrero said, up from 45 just a few years ago. ‘This fragmentation has meant that you’ll need a more complex, more sophisticated strategy to weaken and dismember them,’ he said.”
What about sending in Delta Force to kidnap drug lords, as they just did with Maduro of Venezuela?
“Even snatching several of the top drug lords wouldn’t necessarily cripple a trade worth billions of dollars a year. Mexican authorities tried that approach in an aggressive, decade-long hunt for narcotics ‘kingpins’ starting around 2007. The Mexican military and police, backed by US intelligence and equipment, arrested or killed dozens of leading cartel figures. But others emerged to take their place. Tons of drugs continued to flow over the US border.”
“The cartels have evolved into intricate economic networks with a large consumer base, more like multinational corporations than traditional terrorist groups, said Benjamin T. Smith, author of ‘The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade.’ ”
” ‘If you took out the CEO of Coca-Cola tomorrow, you wouldn’t stop Coca-Cola sales,’ he said. ‘As long as you have a major demand for the drugs, you’re not going to get rid of the supply.’ ”
“Indeed, many analysts argue the ‘kingpin’ strategy backfired, fracturing cartels into smaller groups that battled each other and the government and leading them to change the way they operate.”
“Increasingly, they have sought to control territory and impose ‘taxes’ on nearly everyone in their turf. That includes both legitimate businesses like avocado growers, and smugglers moving drugs and migrants toward the United States. Those who don’t pay risk being killed.”
We often hear that the cartels “run Mexico”? Is that really correct?
“What makes the country’s security particularly challenging is that ‘no one is firmly in control, neither the cartels nor the government,’ said Falko Ernst, a researcher of Mexican organized crime. In some areas, like Mexico City, the government has the upper hand. In others, armed groups rule.”
“ ‘You have a mosaic of different forms of power,’ he said. ‘This makes it so complex that you cannot simply execute one simple solution for the entire country. Power, conflict violence, drugs and crime don’t follow one model. They follow 1,000 models.’ ”
“The cartels have become ever more resilient as they have penetrated the country’s political structure. That was evident in the 2024 national elections, when crime groups openly sought to install their own mayors in different regions. Three dozen candidates were killed during the campaign, and hundreds more dropped out because of intimidation.”
“Crime groups are embedded in many local police forces and have assumed a growing role in the economy. In some areas they effectively operate their own intelligence services, paying or threatening local street vendors, construction workers, taxi drivers and others to report on the movements of security forces.”
“Removing the leaders of cartels won’t eliminate that kind of structure, Smith said.”
This all indicates that defeating the cartels is much more difficult than shooting rockets or missiles at them. It’s very complex.
We often hear Americans talk about drug cartels spreading their poison in our country and thus killing people.
That’s true, but there’s another side to it.
Many Americans are willingly seeking and purchasing their products.
Part of defeating the drug cartels is reducing the demand for the products.
If drug users don’t get their drugs from the Mexican cartels wouldn’t they look elsewhere for them?
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