The power of the drug cartels is putting Mexico and parts of Central America on a collision course with the USA

At the end of January, Donald Trump made serious accusations against the Mexican government. The government is working hand in hand with the cartels that are flooding the USA with illegal immigrants and drugs such as the synthetic opioid fentanyl. At the beginning of March, Trump will decide whether to impose tariffs of 25 percent on Mexican goods, which would only be lifted once Mexico secures the border.

The tariffs could plunge Mexico into recession, which is why President Claudia Sheinbaum is defending herself against Trump's accusations: Since taking office in October, she has stepped up the fight against the gangs and arrested more than 10,000 suspects. She has also now sent 10,000 soldiers to the border to appease Donald Trump.

But an even sharper sword of Damocles hangs over bilateral relations. Of the eight drug cartels that Trump classified as terrorist organizations at the end of January, six are from Mexico. Among them is the Sinaloa cartel, which is considered the largest producer of fentanyl. In addition, there is the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which is active in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua.

Mike Waltz, Trump's national security adviser, says the gangs must be fought like the Islamic State (IS) once was. He refers to a law passed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, which allows the president to use the military against terrorists abroad. Bombings or the deployment of special forces in Mexico would theoretically be possible.

In Central America, military operations would bring back memories of a dark chapter. During the Cold War, the USA used brutal force to combat the spread of left-wing guerrilla ideologies in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. And in Panama, President Manuel Noriega was overthrown in 1990. Although he helped the American drug agency DEA in the fight against the Central American guerrillas, he also did business with Pablo Escobar's Colombian Medellín cartel.

The killing of Escobar in 1993 was part of the DEA's "Kingpin Strategy," the dismantling of the gangs by eliminating the big bosses. But as in the Escobar case, the arrests of "El Chapo" Guzmán in 2016 and his partner in the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, "El Mayo" Zambada, in July 2024 did not bring the hoped-for success. Rather, such actions lead to the fragmentation of the cartels and to bloody internal power struggles, as studies show. The result is more violence from more and more drug gangs.

For Armando Vargas of the security think tank México Evalúa in Mexico City, the arrest of "El Mayo" Zambada on Mexican territory without the knowledge of the Mexican government shows that the USA does not trust Mexico. "Organized crime cannot succeed without some form of support from state actors," says Vargas. And the USA knows this.

El Mayo's statements to the American judiciary could prove explosive for Mexican politics. At the end of February, El Mayo called on the Mexican government to agree on his return to Mexico with the USA. Otherwise, his statements threatened to lead to the collapse of bilateral relations. Apparently he has something important to report.

As early as 2024, media reported on DEA investigations into then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He is said to have received money from the Sinaloa cartel during the 2006 elections. There is no concrete evidence, but rumors are also circulating in Mexico about his leniency towards the cartel. The case also reinforces the bad reputation of Mexican politics in the USA.

In 2024, the judiciary there sentenced former Mexican Security Minister Genaro García Luna (2006-2012) to 38 years in prison for collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel. A diplomatic crisis triggered the arrest of former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos in the United States in 2020, who was alleged to have protected drug cartels from prosecution. After López Obrador threatened to end his cooperation with the DEA, he was released.

Mexico's government is facing a dilemma, says Vargas. Peace in the country cannot be achieved through violence, but depends on the goodwill of the gangs to make agreements with each other and with the government to renounce violence. But the USA does not like this, as the cases of García Luna and Salvador Cienfuegos show.

The example of Honduras shows how difficult cooperation in the fight against drugs is. The economy, politics and the security apparatus there are deeply permeated by organized crime. Located halfway between South America and the USA, the country is considered an ideal transshipment point for drugs. Cocaine production is also increasing here.

In 2008, then-President Manuel Zelaya came under scrutiny by the US judiciary. In Honduras, he and his brothers were also investigated for links to Mexican and Colombian cartels. It is unclear to what extent the Obama administration was involved in the military's overthrow of Zelaya in 2009. However, the Honduran masterminds of the coup themselves were suspected of being linked to organized crime. The son of Zelaya's successor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, was arrested by the DEA in 2015 and sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2017.

Sosa's successor, Juan Orlando Hernández, was long considered the USA's ideal partner in the fight against drugs, especially since he had drug lords extradited to the USA from 2014 onwards. He was friends with Donald Trump. But in 2018, his brother Tony Hernández was arrested in the USA and later sentenced to life imprisonment. He is said to have smuggled tons of cocaine into the USA. During the trial, it emerged that President Hernández was the head of the gang.

For example, in the 2021 elections, the Biden administration supported Xiomara Castro, the wife of former President Zelaya, who promised to extradite Juan Orlando Hernández to the United States. This happened in early 2022, and two years later he was sentenced to 45 years in prison. But the partnership with the Castro government quickly ended when new evidence emerged against Castro's husband, former President Zelaya, and his family. This allegedly involved links to Venezuelan drug gangs.

In mid-2024, a video from 2013 also surfaced showing Zelaya's brother accepting $650,000 from a Honduran cartel. President Castro had threatened to terminate the extradition agreement in light of the American investigations, but withdrew this threat last week under pressure from the Trump administration.

As in Honduras and Guatemala, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), which Trump has classified as a terrorist organization, is also active in El Salvador. It terrorized the population for decades before President Nayib Bukele declared war on it in 2019. To this end, he has repeatedly extended the state of emergency since 2022, which means that basic rights are suspended. Bukele has now had around 83,000 people arrested, with NGOs and the Biden administration accusing him of serious human rights violations.

Meanwhile, the investigative platform El Faro reported on secret negotiations between Bukele's government and the Mara Salvatrucha. Gang leaders wanted for terrorism and drug trafficking are said to have been protected from the US justice system by Bukele. Bukele's employees were subsequently sanctioned by the Biden administration, which led to a rift with Washington.

Since Trump took office, the situation has eased for Bukele. The avowed Trump fan even offered American Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the beginning of February to take illegal immigrants and convicted US citizens into his prisons. Trump himself attests to Bukele's excellent work in fighting the criminal gangs. Bukele does not have to worry about the Pentagon taking action against the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador.

It is questionable whether Donald Trump will actually use the military against the gangs. In the case of Mexico, this would disrupt relations with the USA's most important trading partner. But Trump is dependent on Mexico to combat human smuggling and drug trafficking. USA-friendly countries such as Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala have already promised Trump that they will take action against the gangs and increase control of their borders.

Threats of military deployment are also likely to serve to persuade Washington's antagonists such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Honduras to take back their compatriots deported from the USA. The fact that governments violate human rights in the fight against the gangs, as in the case of El Salvador, does not seem to play a role for the Trump administration.

Other means are needed to effectively combat drug gangs. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called on Trump to combat the cartels' sales networks and financial flows in the USA and to introduce prevention and care measures for drug addicts there. The USA must also take action against the smuggling of modern American-made weapons to the gangs. Experts agree with Sheinbaum. But Trump has not yet taken any steps in this direction.