The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Tariffs on steel for heavy-duty vehicles from Mexico to the US will be halved from 50% to 25%. The tax has been one of Donald Trump’s biggest trade war blows against his neighbours, so Mexican industry is celebrating. The joy might be short-lived.

The Mexico Political Economist predicted that steel tariffs would hurt the very industry that Trump was trying to protect—the US auto industry. A year later, reports began to emerge that higher duties were putting the sector, and particularly heavy-duty truck makers, at a competitive disadvantage… with Mexican truck manufacturers.

Tariffs on trucks followed, which in turn saw the devastation of the Mexican heavy-vehicle manufacturing sector.

So, while the tariff relief on steel may seem like good news for Mexico, the conditions set by the US to qualify send worrying signals. It is a new policy that is both a recognition of how the US auto industry is inextricably linked with Mexico’s and one which seeks to remedy and reverse this dependence.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

The ascent of Roberto Velasco to Foreign Minister dominated the conversation two weeks ago. And rightly so: His arrival at the Foreign Office marked a generational shift and showed what sort of figure president Claudia Sheinbaum wants in her government, particularly when facing the Trump administration.

A departure from a relatively more minor office of State to an undefined role understandably got far less coverage. But perhaps it shouldn’t have, given that it may define the future of Mexican politics for years to come even more than the current Foreign Secretary.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Mexico had placed the noose of natural gas dependency around its neck long before conflict with Iran strangled global hydrocarbon supplies. The country generates most of its electricity by burning natural gas, of which 75% is imported from the United States. The age of economic warfare must have had an effect on Claudia Sheinbaum’s government because last week the president announced that Mexico would now allow fracking.

It is a substantial—and rare—U-turn from her own and her predecessor’s policy.

Sheinbaum officials had been mulling the move for some time now, so the green light wasn’t all too surprising. What did raise eyebrows was how the Mexican government will try to square all of its aims.

When it comes to fracking, Sheinbaum said she intends to:

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

It’s a song and dance as old as time: When a President names a trusted figure who is not a career diplomat to high office, the procession of disapproving sounds from critics who bemoan the hollowing out of the foreign service follows inevitably.

Thus it was last week, when Roberto Velasco was named Mexico’s newest Foreign Minister. His youth, coupled with his meteoric rise baited critics who were already displeased by the fact that 38-year-old Velasco is not a career diplomat.

“A course isn’t enough,” decried one op-ed, referring to the course political appointees to top diplomatic positions get at Mexico’s prestigious foreign affairs academy, the Matías Romero Institute. Its mere existence suggests that this isn’t the first time this course has been needed to polish up the skills of amateur ambassadors-to-be.

Something is actually different this time though. Luckily for Velasco, in the age of Trump, previous handicaps may well now be advantages.

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Holy Week is slightly after Spring Break in the United States, making these weeks the first big travel spike of the year after the January and February slowdown. Yet, just as Semana Santa shifts depending on the liturgical calendar from late March to late April, who goes where is also affected by tidal economic and social forces.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

The yearly gathering of Mexico’s bankers has always hosted Mexican government officials. This time the feeling was different—and not in the way described last year with the arrival of a freshly-minted president Claudia Sheinbaum, whose administration has been seen as more pro-business than her predecessor’s.

The difference is one of tension—but in a good way, Fernando Gamez Carrillo, a compliance and risk manager in the Mexican banking sector, told The Mexico Political Economist.

“Both sides are challenging each other—in a good way. There is a sense of mutual responsibility,“ he said.

For first time it feels like both sides actually want to talk to each other. The resulting conversations consequently feel more like negotiations. Both sides agree the direction they want the country to go in—towards more investment and economic growth. It is the way each wants to get there that they are currently working out.

To get there, the Mexican banking sector had to wrestle with three fundamental questions at this year’s Banking Convention in Cancún:

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) is the most powerful Mexican politician in living memory. He also has kept relatively quiet since he left office, promising to reemerge only when it mattered. This has only happened thrice: To support Mexico’s unprecedented judicial election, to shill for his recently published book, and to raise funds for Cuba.

“I’ve retired, but it hurts me to see how they’re seeking to exterminate our Cuban brothers for their ideals of freedom and the defense of their sovereignty,” tweeted out López Obrador before sharing a set of bank details.

This was so surprising that many thought López Obrador’s Twitter account may have been hacked. The format of the plea certainly seemed like a scam: An exhortation to donate money on behalf of the Cuban people to a private Mexican bank account.

The account was later found to be legitimate—allegedly linked to an organisation run by a close political ally. But the question as to why this powerful former president had emerged from his political slumber, after far more dramatic moments on the domestic front, remained.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

The Mexican Economy Ministry and the US Trade Representative (USTR) have announced the first round of talks for the Joint Review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Kick off is set for March 16.

But wait, haven’t Mexico and the US been talking for months at this point?

Especially with the Trump administration’s volleys of tariffs against Mexico since February of last year, Mexican functionaries have been in close and constant talks with their US (and Canadian) counterparts. Economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard is in Washington on a weekly basis.

This is all true, but with the official start to the review, two things will now change—one as expected, the other in ways that were recently revealed.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

It was a well-known song and dance. The government of president Claudia Sheinbaum lauded Mexico’s investment figures for 2025, declaring they were at “historic highs.” Opponents howled in response, calling out what they said were “awful numbers.” On both their screens, sat a pretty boring bar graph—slowly sloping upwards. It would seem nothing to write home about either way.

The explanation without the political spin is this:

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

El Chapo captured Hollywood’s imagination but, as of late, it seemed like Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—a more discrete criminal kingpin known as El Mencho—had captured Mexican crime.

The 59-year-old head of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) turned a drug cartel born in Western Mexico into a country-spanning criminal enterprise. And, as powerful organisations under El Chapo and El Mayo Zambada waned, it became clear that CJNG would either have to be taken on by the Mexican government or it would take over Mexico.

Yesterday, the Sheinbaum administration struck. A military deployment sought to surround and detain the cartel’s top boss. In the ensuing firefight, El Mencho was hit and died of his wounds in a military aircraft after having been captured by Mexico’s armed forces.

Top US government officials immediately cheered the killing of the cartel boss with a $15 million dollar bounty on his head. The media proclaimed it “a victory” for the Mexican government.

The Mexican government has kept far more quiet. It is suggestive that it knows this is just the beginning, and that things could get bad in the coming days and weeks.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

After much delay, a proposal to reduce the legal length of Mexico’s working week is crawling through Congress. The comparison is stark: The ruling Morena party and its allies hold a decisive super-majority, which passed far more controversial constitutional reforms—most notably the one that revolutionised the country’s justice system—have been known to pass practically overnight.

This particular reform dragging workers’ rights into the 21st century should have been an easy one for the political movement that doubled the minimum wage. Yet the governing coalition has dithered to no end. The answer as to why is simple enough:

Political necessity is getting in the way of an increasingly obvious economic truth.

Economies of reason

Start with the basic facts of the proposed bill. The two big changes on the table are to bring the working week down from 48 to 40 hours, and to give Mexicans an extra day off. Mind you, this would barely give workers a two day weekend. All this as other countries experiment with the four-day week.

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Operation Swarm is back. It was initially showcased months ago as the new way in which Claudia Sheinbaum’s government would be tackling organised crime. It took a proactive, intelligence-based approach in investigating not just cartels generally, but the government officials who were actively working with criminals.

The first Swarm sting was carried out in the State of Mexico, with close collaboration between Mexico’s national civilian and military forces alongside the state’s own law enforcement.

Beyond sharing a name, this iteration of the operation in Jalisco felt markedly different. Its differences from the first time it was deployed reveals the worrying truths about criminal infiltration into the government.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

The Mexican government has been on a charm offensive with Mexico’s biggest lenders. Financial institutions of all kinds—from old global banks, like HSBC, to local fintechs—were summoned first by Mexico’s President and then by her Economy Secretary to drum up more investment in the country.

Their request to the banks was an old one: Lend more to Mexicans. Indeed, credit in Mexico is substantially lower even than in other, less developed economies. This, in turn, has limited economic growth in a country where big investors are waiting in the wings for geo-political turbulence to pass and where the government is reluctant to increase public spending.

Credit is consequently what’s needed, and especially for those small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that struggle to get any loans whatsoever. President Claudia Sheinbaum went as far as to complain that, in other countries, SMEs are offered credit even if it is at extortionate rates… but at least they have access to it.

The usual steps are being taken to increase lending rates. Red tape is being cut and financial institutions are getting more backing to take higher risk bets on SMEs.

Konfío, a smallish fintech compared to the banking titans in the room, pledged to lend $2.5 billion dollars to SMEs from 2026 and 2028. (Perhaps a clever way of speeding the approval of its banking licence). Larger institutions said “big announcements” would be made this week.

The government is taking these steps in the face of growing economic headwinds. Despite taking a more business friendly approach than her predecessor, during her watch Sheinbaum has seen year-on-year loan rates fall.

Source: Bank of Mexico

Going for broke on the basics

Despite good feelings and optimistic words by the bankers, the government is still expected to lead in these economically uncertain times.

Consequently, Mexico’s government and State development banks are being asked to take the lead. The promise is, behind them, will come backing for essential projects.

The bankers’ meeting with the president promised core infrastructure investments, including electricity transmission and renewables (which may have already been in the pipeline given that 2026 saw the coming into force of the country’s new Electricity Reform). There was also mention of roads and trains.

There is still a large missing middle. The big government investments being backed by the banks are essential but nevertheless means to an end—roads to move products; electricity to manufacture them. There still need to be big investments by companies actually producing the goods to make and move around.

Despite the government promise to give credit access to at least 30% of the country’s SMEs by 2030, smaller businesses simply won’t be able to fill in the missing growth Mexico needs in the short and medium term.

Once again, a lack of specificity as to where the government’s industrial priorities lie was a complaint among investors. “My worry is that little gets done in these forums with so many people,” a banker from a global financial institution told The Mexico Political Economist.

The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Well before his second term in office, Mexico proved a useful foil to Donald Trump. However, trade wars and threats of military action on Mexican soil have obscured the key strategic importance of Mexico elsewhere in the region.

With the Trump administration one must always read between the lines of blustery rhetoric. This of course doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously but instead it is important to try to understand the final designs of any foreign policy position the US takes.

Take the Mexico-Cuba relationship.

By most accounts, the Cuban regime is on the brink of collapse. Blackouts and economic crisis conspire, alongside the US government, to bring the Cuban Communists down.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is known to be single-minded about this goal, so it strikes many as strange that he has not only not spoken out against Mexico’s close relations with Cuba, but has also gone out of his way to praise Mexico whenever the question does come up.

Since the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, the media in the US and Mexico have been at pains to point out that Mexico is now Cuba’s greatest supplier of oil. Reports indicate that, apart from providing the island with 30% more fuel than Venezuela and 2.6 times more than Russia—its historic allies—it is also sending higher quality stuff than what Mexico keeps for itself. The reason is simple; Cuba’s old infrastructure does not have the capacity to refine all the oil it desperately needs to stay afloat.

Some estimates put the value of Mexican oil going to Cuba in 2025 at $3 billion dollars. That makes China’s recent pledge of $80 million dollars in aid look like peanuts.

Why hasn’t the US spoken out?

Venezuela may provide an explanation. The Trump administration has proved to be unshy about using force to impose itself in its latest drive to secure the Western Hemisphere. But, it is keenly aware that unbridled regime change can cause catastrophe. Rubio has said as much, explaining that Trump’s desire to keep the Chavista regime in place so long as it remains compliant is a better path to ensuring US interests in the region.

A Venezuela embroiled in a civil war or complete collapse would spell disaster—and a potentially even greater mass emigration from the country than before.

Cuba is much closer to the US, and though one million have already left the island in the past few years, about 10 million still remain. The total collapse of Cuba would consequently not be a desirable outcome for an administration hellbent on keeping migrants out and the region stable.

Mexico in this context provides a crucial backstop. The free flow of Venezuelan oil has stopped and Cuba virtually has no allies in the region. The edifice of the Communist-run country is creaking, but Mexican oil provides a modicum of stability, potentially allowing for a controlled demolition more to the Trump administration’s liking.

President Claudia Sheinbaum seems to understand that the US certainly cannot be seen to be managing the collapse by sending in aid. So, every time she is questioned about the oil going to Cuba, instead of expressing support for the island, she deflects or minimises the amounts being sent.

Recently, on being asked by a journalist whether or not she’d been pressured by the US to stop sending oil, Sheinbaum digressed and instead answered: “We’d be delighted, if the US would like us to, to be intermediaries between them and Cuba.”

It is that the people in power in each country are ideological opposites:

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is a traditional technocrat moulded within the global free trade consensus of the late 20th Century. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum is also a technocrat, but one forged in the nationalist anti-neoliberal movements of the left.

But this analysis does not hold up to scrutiny. When it comes to the North American free trade project, it often feels like Sheinbaum’s Morena party government is the region’s biggest defender.

Today, the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA as Canadians refer to the USMCA) is under threat. It is up for review in the middle of 2026 and Donald Trump has publicly stated his disdain for the project.

The US president’s position has moved his CUSMA partners in opposite directions. There are many cultural and political reasons for Mexico and Canada to react differently, but central to these has been the complementarity of their economies in relation to the US.

The US and Mexican economies are highly complimentary. The US sends aluminium and barley; Mexico returns beer made from those inputs. This means that, despite the Trump administration’s economic nationalism, bilateral trade has only increased since the trade wars began.

Canada’s case is the opposite. Its economy and that of its southern neighbour’s have converged, turning them into competitors. For instance, Canada’s shale sands now compete directly with Texas’ Permian Basin deposits and, perhaps eventually, with US controlled Venezuelan heavy crude.

Trump’s industrial priorities also put the US economy at odds with Canada’s, as vehicles, steel, and aluminium have been targeted for tariffs. Mexico doesn’t produce aluminium, while Canada is a major global producer. Mexican automakers continue to compete on price despite tariffs; Canadians not so much.

Leave the gun, take the canola

This dynamic has naturally affected how Mexico and Canada triangulate in relation to China, the other big economic player on the block. Carney recently headed to Beijing, opening Canada’s auto market to cheap Chinese imports in exchange for lower tariffs on agricultural exports. Meanwhile, Mexico is increasing tariffs on China to prevent these very sorts of wares from undercutting its industry.

What has gone unnoticed by Mexican and Canadian business and policymakers is that instead of alienating China or exposing themselves to its subsidised goods, both countries would be better served by increasing trade with each other’s largely complimentary economies.

Unfortunately, the urgency of ongoing geopolitical shifts has distracted these two CUSMA partners from the potential of integrating more closely with each other.

The Mexico Political Economist has argued for further economic integration and so has Export Development Canada—Canada’s export credit agency—which earlier this year said:

“There are many products, for example, that Mexico imports through China, which can easily be sourced from Canada, and vice versa. Of the US$114 billion worth of products that Mexico imports from China, Canada exports about US$4.8 billion worth of comparable products to China, including autos and parts.”

This is also true of the agricultural sector. Mexico is almost entirely dependent on canola seed imports while Canada is one of the world’s greatest producers. And yet, in recent years, Canadian canola imports to Mexico have fallen, giving way to further dependency on both sides—with Mexico depending more on the US for imports and Canada depending more on China’s market for its exports.

Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian International Merchandise Trade Database

Beyond canola, the story isn’t any more encouraging. Despite positive sounds made emerging from bilateral meetings in the wake of US economic nationalism—including an Action Plan signed by Carney and Sheinbaum last year—the Mexico-Canada trade relationship has only slowed.

One reason, according to Shauna Hemingway—senior special advisor for Mexico and the Americas at the Business Council of Canada—is “uncertainty around trade policy, particularly with regard to tariffs, [which] has had a noticeable impact on the deployment of capital, investment decisions, and business confidence across North America.”

Source: Radiografía del T-MEC, Mexican Chamber of Deputies.

Slowly but surely, however, there have been movements to mitigate the decline. Hemingway told The Mexico Political Economist that in a month’s time a high-level delegation of up to 300 Canadian companies and top governmental ministers will be heading to Mexico to deepen business-to-business ties.

Whether this will make a dent in the encroachment from Chinese and US trade in both countries remains to be seen.

The channel aired a few trailers of the programme showing the two going at each other over women’s rights and abortion. And then, without explanation, the interview was not aired. After much online clamour the channel’s audience advocacy agency published a brief document claiming the show contained “violations of the audience’s rights for promoting political notions that go against the fundamental rights of women and vulnerable people.” No more was said.

“It is a shame. And it will bring with it negative consequences for public TV,” Sabina Berman told The Mexico Political Economist. Its consequences could well spill over beyond television and into global politics at a time of particular strife. The reason: Eduardo Verástegui, apart from being a Mexican political figure, is a close ally and advisor to Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

For more on Eduardo Verástegui, his movement, links to MAGA, and Mexico’s old and new political right, take a look at La derecha no existe (pero ahí está) by The Mexico Political Economist’s Alex González Ormerod. Available now in Mexico in bookshops and online, and abroad via Amazon.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

“Something’s got to be done about Mexico.” Those were the US president’s words on Fox News hours after his government’s strike and abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

Fears that the US will attack Mexico militarily are not new. They date from before Donald Trump was re-elected. But the shocking operational success of the Venezuelan strikes have made observers all the more concerned that this has become a real possibility.

The thing is: Mexico is not Venezuela. That is not only a statement of the obvious but also an invitation to truly understand where Mexico lies in the midst of this massive geo-political reconfiguration.

It’s time to look at the political economy of Mexico in this new age of Great Power spheres of influence.

Great Power geo-politics

The attacks on Venezuela were geopolitical and not about democracy. To the extent that Trump was perfectly happy to throw María Corona Machado—the leader of the Venezuelan opposition—under the bus on day one to, instead, have pragmatic discussions with the remaining Chavista regime in Caracas.

Whereas previous international forays by the US were couched in the language of democracy and freedom, only cursory mentions of these have crossed Trump’s lips. Economic considerations (starting with oil) and the strategic consolidation of the US in the Western Hemisphere are his main concerns.

This nationalist approach and the success of the mission has fueled bravado and jingoistic sentiment across the US. So, while Mexicans fixated on Trump’s flippant comment that the attack on Venezuela “wasn’t meant to be” a warning to Mexico but “it could be,” other countries have focused on the far more explicit threats made against them:

The annexation of Greenland has been re-opened by Trump and his supporters. Cuba and Colombia were told in no uncertain terms to “watch their ass.” Yet, the more Trump talks about Mexico the clearer it becomes that his government’s approach would be totally different. When the military is mentioned, it is done so through the insistence of aid and cooperation in the fight against cartels alongside the Mexican government.

The US government has a good working relationship with president Claudia Sheinbaum, though Trump officials worry that she is surrounded by bad actors. If military strikes were put on the table, they would be almost the opposite of what we saw in Venezuela—a hit on anyone except for Sheinbaum and her inner circle.

Such action would undoubtedly destroy cooperation with the US from Mexico, so Trump is likely to try different forms of pressure.

It is already being applied, starting with the US Department of Justice’s indictment of Maduro where corrupt Mexican officials were accused of helping Venezuelan cartels move drugs and money under diplomatic immunity. This is where the biggest demands on Sheinbaum lie and there could be increasing issues if she continues to resist the calls from the US (and within her own country) to cleanse her government of such high-level corruption.

Will this translate into the bombing of Mexico City? Unlikely. Trump’s penchant for bravado is taken to be his main characteristic, yet while many are emphasising the “military” aspect of the “surgical military strikes” in Venezuela, it is worth considering the “surgical” part too. The US has other ways of pressing its case in Mexico.

It’s not the same economy, stupid

Venezuela was invadable because it was no longer working in the way the US wanted it to work. A principal reason for the strike was to secure the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil reserves for a potential conflict and supply chain disruption in other hemispheres.

Mexico’s supply chain integration with the US works. It works so well that Trump has already previously been moved to reconsider his guns-a-blazing approach on tariffs when it came to his southern neighbour.

Mexico is the US’s main trading partner. Venezuela barely features:

Yet, for this reason too the US holds much leverage over Mexico in economic terms. The “strike” will more likely come via the upcoming US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) negotiations. However, the US will have to be even more surgical than with Maduro here, because any adverse effect on the US-Mexico supply chain would spell disaster for the US economy.

The battle for public opinion

The bombs in Caracas have damaged the US-Mexico relationship in other ways. While at a high-level there seems to be a degree of trust between the Mexican and US governments, the way both societies see each other is crumbling.

The strikes in Venezuela threaten to poison the well of public opinion in Mexico. “Every time I talk to [Sheinbaum] I offer to send her troops,” said Trump in an interview last night. He seemed bewildered as to why she’d reject the sincere offer of help, concluding that the cartels must be threatening her.

Usually, to explain the real reason why Mexican governments are so obsessed with sovereignty, one must recount the country’s and the region’s checkered history with US military incursions. As of now, one need only look to the weekend to see how little the US cares about other nations’ sovereignty.

At the time of writing, the Mexican Congress had cancelled a session in which it was to rubber-stamp the entry of US troops for a recurrent training of Mexican soldiers. If this previously routine step in the bilateral cooperation agenda has stalled, imagine the rest.

While Mexicans say they dislike the US under Trump more than ever, the turn of the US media against Mexico—and specifically its government—has ramped up significantly too. Republican congresspeople openly attacked Sheinbaum after her mild response condemning the attack on Venezuela on the basis of the UN Charter.

And yet, the Mexican government has been unwilling or unable to address the broader US public effectively. Public opinion is a flank no government should leave unattended during the administration of the US’s first reality TV president.

The foreign leaders with the most influence on the US are often those who play the media game savvily. Think Bukele’s English-subtitled and high production value viral videos. Or Netanyahu’s constant forays onto Fox News. Even the Mexican right—so deflated at home—is far better than Sheinbaum’s surrogates at going on the news and influencing public opinion.

That should worry Mexico’s president, whose government was so easily brought into the cross-hairs of Donald Trump after being mentioned by a TV host in the same breath as the military attack on Venezuela.

One documented a Biden-era list of alleged Russian spies. The article accused Mexico of “letting them stay.” The other piece reported on Chinese displeasure after the approval of 50% tariffs on countries that Mexico does not have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with. This article accused Mexico of kowtowing to the US.

Both were based on a problematic set of assumptions that seem to plague outsider analysis on Mexico. Their theorising as to what motivates Mexico’s actions is more often than not based on their own external geopolitical prejudices. In both cases, the domestic political economy of Mexico was a far more important force in driving the decisions of the Sheinbaum administration.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Despite decades of scorning their opponents that the National Guard would forever be under civilian command, earlier this year the full and final transfer to the Mexican armed forces was completed.

The National Guard was a security force created in 2019 by president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) to replace the old Federal Police corps. The National Guard’s members were drawn from these defunct federales as well as from branches of the Armed Forces, including the dissolved presidential bodyguard.

Today, activists and critics despair that the National Guard has only really served to move Mexico further down a spiral of militarisation and away from a civilian-led solution to its security crisis. The Mexico Political Economist found last year that the National Guard was chiefly being deployed to address the flow of migrants mostly of concern to the government of Mexico’s northern neighbour, rather than tackling domestic crime.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has publicly continued her predecessor’s security strategy. Her latest budget saw continued large cuts to the civilian-led Security Ministry whose budget has fallen by 22.1% in real terms between 2019 and 2025. The Armed Forces have grown by 4.6% in the same period.

Behind these broad numbers something new and more subtle is happening though. A different security apparatus—unique to Sheinbaum—has begun to emerge. As opposed to springing from a whole new enforcement force, as virtually all her predecessors this century have done, this apparatus is somewhat more decentralised—emerging from ministries and agencies in control of her closest officials.

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The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

One can always tell there is a rough reshuffle in store when top Mexican officials start publishing gushing and vague letters about their future in politics.

Last week, Alejandro Gertz Manero published a letter thanking president Claudia Sheinbaum for working with him as Mexico’s federal attorney general and for considering appointing him to a new post as ambassador “to a friendly country.” He was likely pushed out.

Being an official technically independent of the president, the letter was addressed at the Senate. This branch of government, controlled by Sheinbaum’s Morena party, accepted the attorney’s resignation and considered who would replace Gertz Manero—for the first time, behind closed doors.

What happened behind the scenes soon became apparent. The person who replaced a hastily departing Gertz Manero was Ernestina Godoy. She was formerly Sheinbaum’s chief legal advisor, both as president and during her time as Mexico City’s mayor.

Now, as the country’s top lawyer, Godoy has wasted no time in replacing important staff in the attorney’s office, replacing old faces with experts in dealing with organised crime networks. Beyond honing in on their tactical anti-crime experience, these new hires also carry another essential qualification:

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