Persuasion Magazine Editor: ‘Mexico’s System Is Seriously Disrupted by Its Enormously Powerful Drug Cartels’

Quico Toro said Mexico’s justice system is largely run by cartels, which operate as a “quasi-government” and have taken control of the Mexican government under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Toro’s comments come in a commentary in Persuasion Magazine on September 16.

“Elections, in other words, will be little more than a cover for a coup to monopolize state power in the hands of López Obrador,” said Toro, guest editor at Persuasion. “But it is worse than that, because the Mexican system is deeply distorted by its enormously powerful drug cartels. These are not just vast criminal enterprises, but in many cases quasi-governments that monopolize violence and administer some form of justice over large swaths of the territory.”

According to Toro, Obrador proposed judicial reforms three weeks before he left office. The reforms would change the appointment of Mexican judges to elections, which Toro said would give cartels more power to influence and control the government through elections: “Mexican elections are increasingly marred by the toxic influence of the cartels: they intimidate voters, fund friendly political bosses and assassinate inconvenient candidates as a matter of course.” This potential shift would allow cartels to operate with impunity, effectively turning the Mexican justice system into a tool for their benefit.

Toro explained that Mexican cartels already operate as state institutions in areas of Mexico where democratic stability is lacking. By subjecting judges to elections, Obrador’s “soft-soft approach” will allow the cartels to influence the judiciary, aligning the justice system with criminal interests rather than enforcing the law for ordinary Mexicans. He added that this degradation of democracy in Mexico will turn the country into a “mafia state.” In the long run, this will have implications for the U.S., as immigration is dependent on the economic security of neighboring countries and cartel-controlled territory bordering the U.S. affects national security issues.

The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have enabled the presence of fentanyl in all 50 U.S. states by producing the drug in Mexico and smuggling it into the United States for profit, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment. Fentanyl has been described as the deadliest drug in U.S. history, primarily produced and smuggled into the U.S. by cartels.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, cartels’ drug trafficking and human smuggling operations generate nearly $1 billion a month. This money is used to expand operations across the southwest border into the United States.

Quico Toro is an editor at Persuasion, a nonprofit magazine, according to his biography on Substack.