By John Daniel Davidson | Commentary, The Federalist
News broke Wednesday that the State Department has named eight Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, two of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country.
The naming of Sinaloa in particular is important because it implicates the Mexican state at the highest levels. Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his ruling MORENA coalition are closely connected to the Sinaloa Cartel, as is his protégé and successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum. It’s not too much to say that if the Sinaloa Cartel is a terrorist organization, then MORENA and the Sheinbaum administration are its state sponsors.
There is a mountain of evidence for this. The Sinaloa Cartel has long been deeply invested in Mexican national politics, and began bankrolling López Obrador’s political career as early as 2006, when AMLO, as he is called in Mexico, ran for president and narrowly lost to Felipe Calderón, who launched the Mexican drug war by deploying the armed forces against the cartels.
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