Is Mexico a Narco-State?
What we miss when we talk about Mexico and the cartels
The idea that Mexico is run by drug traffickers masquerading as politicians is so entrenched it just won an Oscar.
This year’s Academy Award for Best Original Song went to “El mal,” a number from the film Emilia Pérez, which paints a vivid, stylized portrait of Mexico as a narco-state. The film features Zoe Saldaña as the lawyer of a reformed drug lord, singing in a crimson velvet suit at a lavish gala in Mexico City, surrounded by politicians and business elites.
The lyrics offer a chilling narrative: secretaries of state are portrayed as chemists specializing in fentanyl production, governors owe their positions to cartel votes, and the entire apparatus of government is depicted as a subsidiary of organized crime.
But is that Mexico’s reality? Is the nation’s political class simply organized crime in suits, with the state serving not as a bulwark against criminal power but as its vehicle?
