Mexico's war with the cartels

In December 2006 Mexico's president sent the army against the drug trafficking organisations. Twenty years on, more than four hundred thousand people have been killed and over a hundred thousand are missing. The large organisations have splintered into hundreds of groups that also extort farmers, steal fuel, smuggle migrants and decide who may stand for mayor. The present government says it has at last begun to turn the tide, with arrests, seizures and a fall in killings. Washington, and many Mexicans, say the state itself is part of the problem.

The quarrel with Washington and each side's full account: Mexico and the United States.

Where it stands · September 2026

On 1 September soldiers killed a suspected leader of Los Reyes in Michoacan. On 8 September the United States and Mexico ran the High Eagle operation against cartel drones at the border. Mexico arrested cartel leaders in a border operation on 9 September. On 17 September it arrested a Sinaloa Cartel suspect and issued a warrant in the killing of a Spanish student. On 24 September Nigeria's NDLEA arraigned two people in Enugu over a Nigerian-Mexican meth network. On 30 September UN experts urged Mexico to protect families searching for the disappeared.

What the dispute is about

Whether the numbers are real. The government reports homicides down by about a quarter. Critics note that disappearances are up, and that the dead who are never found are not counted as killed.

Kingpins. Arresting leaders is what Washington asks for and rewards. Each arrest has so far produced a war of succession, as in Sinaloa since 2024.

How deep it goes. Every large cartel has needed police, mayors, customs officers and sometimes governors. Whether that is corruption within a state or the capture of one is the argument.

How each side explains it

The Mexican government's account

For the first time there is a strategy: intelligence before firepower, a single national investigative force, attention to the young men the cartels recruit, and coordination with the United States on equal terms. Homicides have fallen month after month. Laboratories are being destroyed by the thousand, fentanyl seized by the tonne, and the heads of the largest organisations are in prison, many of them in American prisons because Mexico sent them. This is Mexico's fight, fought with Mexican lives, and it is being won without foreign soldiers.

In our coverage

Mexico's own offensive against the cartels is making progress →82 headlines
Covered by:El Universal · Mexico News Daily · Reuters · El País · Fox News · CNN

The account of Washington and of Mexican critics

A state in which cartels murder dozens of candidates in one election season, in which a mayor who asked for help is shot dead at a public festival, in which governors are indicted abroad and defended at home, is not winning. The killing has moved from the morgue to the clandestine grave. Groups of mothers search the hills with shovels because prosecutors will not. The government's party tolerates its own compromised politicians, and the arrests come when Washington threatens tariffs.

What each account leaves out

The government's leaves out that recorded disappearances have risen as recorded homicides fell; that several governors and mayors of its own party are accused, in Mexico or abroad, of working with the cartels; and that its predecessor from the same party spent six years avoiding confrontation while the groups spread.

Washington's and the critics' leaves out that the weapons come from the United States and the money from American users; that American agencies have for decades protected informants who went on trafficking; and that the strategy of removing leaders, which Washington still demands, is what broke the cartels into the more violent fragments of today.

The people's account leaves out that some communities live from the trade, and that the self-defence groups of a decade ago often became cartels themselves.

The ledger

The Mexican state

Wanted: control of its territory.
Did: twenty years of soldiers in the streets under three parties.
Gained: under this government, fewer recorded killings and Washington's grudging credit.
Paid: an army now used for everything, and regions it still does not govern.

The cartels

Wanted: to do business.
Gained: new trades to replace each one lost.
Paid: their old leaders, nearly all dead or in American prisons, which has not reduced their number.

Mexicans

Four hundred thousand killed, a hundred thousand missing, and a generation in some states that has known nothing else.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

cartels / organised crime / terrorist organisations
narco-state
disappeared
kingpin strategy
hugs, not bullets
pacification
self-defence groups

Events per week

Per-week distribution of events. Click a bar to see that week's top events.

Click a week bar to select. Light blue = active week.

Week of Sep 28, 2026(6)

UN experts urge Mexico to protect families searching for the disappeared

1 sourcesSep 30, 2026

Baja California described as a narco-state

1 sourcesOct 3, 2026

Mexican states hired firms sanctioned for money laundering

1 sourcesOct 2, 2026

Mexican politician demands probe into Baja California 'narco-politicians'