On February 22, cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was killed in a hideout in the town of Tapalpa, a well-known tourist center in Mexico’s Jalisco state. The Mexican military soon presented a broad version of the events: the country’s intelligence agencies, aided by U.S. counterparts, had been closely tracking the Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader and his associates for two days before elite Mexican forces launched a capture operation that turned violent, ending with El Mencho’s death. It was President Claudia Sheinbaum’s first operation against a major criminal leader, and probably not her last.

Since beginning her term in October 2024, Sheinbaum has revamped the government’s campaign against criminal organizations. The February mission appeared to be a military and political success. Sheinbaum has faced increasing pressure to crack down on cartels since President Donald Trump returned to office in the United States, and the operation demonstrated the Mexican military’s capacity to strike high-value targets using time-sensitive intelligence. It also helped Sheinbaum prove the point that, although Mexico City and Washington benefit from close security cooperation and intelligence sharing, there is no need to deploy U.S. troops on Mexican soil to confront drug cartels, as Trump and other members of the Republican party have suggested. Domestically, early polling showed that a clear majority of Mexican voters supported the government’s actions.

The aftermath of the operation was less reassuring. The Jalisco cartel responded with a wave of arson attacks and road blockades in over 20 states, displaying its geographical reach and quasi-military discipline. Dozens of troops and criminal suspects died in the clashes, and one bystander was killed. Meanwhile, journalists gained access to the abandoned crime scene in Tapalpa, where they found a trove of expense reports, payroll forms, and handwritten notes that offered a glimpse at the criminal group’s financial structure, its drug business, and its links to local governments across the country. But when presented with the journalists’ findings, Mexico’s top prosecutor said that the crime scene had been too dangerous to secure immediately, which meant the findings revealed by the press were compromised and could not be used in future legal proceedings.

The entire episode is emblematic of Mexico’s standing in the fight against organized crime. Two decades of a military-led “war on drugs” have brought the country no closer to peace, leading instead to record rates of violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, tens of thousands disappeared, and many more forcibly displaced. Sheinbaum is now trying to strike a difficult balance, still relying on the military as the state’s most effective bulwark against criminal groups but also strengthening the intelligence and investigative bodies as part of a comprehensive strategy to diminish the groups’ political and economic power. Yet investigative agencies botched the job at El Mencho’s hideout, wasting an opportunity to uncover the connections between the Jalisco cartel and state authorities. If Mexico’s war on drugs is to achieve more than fleeting military victories, the government must dislodge criminal groups from the areas they control and dismantle the support systems that keep them afloat. Sheinbaum understands what is needed to get lasting results. The question is whether she can manage political resistance at home and a tricky relationship with Washington well enough to make it happen.

DON’T CALL IT A “WAR ON DRUGS”

Sheinbaum has insisted that the operation against El Mencho was distinct from others conducted during the war on drugs, largely because it had been “the product of months-long investigations and judicial warrants issued” against the kingpin. This argument is not entirely convincing; other high-profile drug bosses killed by government forces also faced arrest warrants at the time. Yet it is the president’s attempt to soften what is indeed a departure from recent history—not from the war on drugs, which she rightly criticizes, but from her own party’s security doctrine.

That doctrine was shaped by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who founded Mexico’s ruling Morena party. López Obrador won his 2018 election on a progressive agenda that pledged to address the socioeconomic roots of violence—namely, poverty and inequality—and to reform the militarized approach to crime. In practice, his policies bordered on incoherence: during his six-year term, the security forces were given broad authority over public security and an increased role in building and managing critical infrastructure, from airports to rail systems. Yet they largely avoided direct confrontation with criminal groups and, in some cases, pursued arrangements that allowed cartels to operate as long as they refrained........

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