Sheinbaum said Calderón's pacts with the Sinaloa Cartel and unchecked US operations drove homicides up 148%, citing Fast and Furious.

This article by Anahí Del Ángel originally appeared in the July 10, 2026 edition of Contralínea, a Mexican investigative journalism magazine.

The alleged interference in the country by US authorities and any kind of deal with organized crime groups, like the one established during Felipe Calderón‘s term to favor the Sinaloa Cartel, “never produces results, on the contrary, it generates more violence,” President Claudia Sheinbaum stated.

She recalled that the PAN member’s administration maintained pacts with criminals and allowed US agencies to operate in the country without any limits, and that this did not pacify the country; on the contrary, she said, intentional homicides rose by 148 percent compared to Vicente Fox’s term.

On that trend of violence, she stressed that Enrique Peña’s term continued upward, and closed with more than one hundred intentional homicides per day; while, during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term, it was stabilized and began to decrease; and so far in her administration, that trend has been brought down even further, registering 45 percent fewer intentional homicides.

The president openly accused:

“Calderón protected the Sinaloa Cartel against other groups, and it provoked more violence.”

To illustrate how interference likewise does not serve pacification and encourages violence, she recalled cases such as the Fast and Furious operation, in which Calderón’s government allowed US agencies to introduce more than 2,000 weapons with chips for the cartels, and that these could never be traced and were used to kill people. She also recalled the operation in which Arturo Beltrán Leyva, alias el Barbas, was killed, in which the Navy submitted to the DEA’s decisions.

In that context, President Sheinbaum Pardo rejected the recent clandestine actions of US agencies, such as what happened with the kidnapping of Ismael “el Mayo” Zambada. That, she said, because the evidence makes it possible to show that “taking a criminal kidnapped by another criminal to the United States with the alleged participation of the United States” only provoked violence in Sinaloa and in other states of the country. This stemmed from the dispute between two factions of the Pacific Cartel: Los Chapitos and Los Mayos.

She considered that, within the framework of bilateral security cooperation, the US authorities should have shared with Mexico the information on Zambada García’s location so that it would be the Mexican State that carried out the arrest and, with that, “the result would have been different.”

The head of the federal Executive reiterated that there are inconsistencies between the US versions: on one hand, one narrative holds that Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán arrived “by chance” at the border with the United States. On the other, a version from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that presents the small plane used as part of an operation of its own. “By saying, ‘it was my operation,’ well, that means they participated, not that they arrived by chance, so, at the least there is a contradiction.”

Nevertheless, she clarified that it is up to the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to determine whether there are grounds to file a criminal complaint, but she insisted that it is important to make clear what happened in Sinaloa.

Sheinbaum Pardo stressed that her government does not defend any drug trafficker and that, if there is sufficient evidence, everyone involved in organized crime must be investigated and prosecuted, “of course el Mayo must be detained, el Chapo must be detained, their sons must be detained, and all those who are linked.”

Likewise, she emphasized that her government does not make pacts with criminal groups. “No one is defending any drug trafficker, we would never do it because we do not make deals like the ones Calderón made in his day.” Finally, the president affirmed that the Mexican government must act in accordance with the law and within the rule of law when pursuing any alleged criminal, without distinction of criminal group. “The Mexican State must act against any alleged criminal, whether in a state of the Republic or at the federal level.”

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