Why Mexico tolerates corrupt politicians

The uses and abuses of Morena's cartel-linked governors.

There has only really been one dark spot amidst the love-in between Mexican and US officials following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit: The demand that corrupt Mexican officials working with organised crime be properly prosecuted.

One does not need special access to CIA documents to see that it has become increasingly obvious that some of Mexico’s top functionaries are at least tied in one way or another to cartels.

Prominent opposition figures like Lilly Téllez or most recently, the media and supermarket mogul, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, have taken to the airwaves in the US to push the narrative that these collaborators are tolerated because, actually, the whole of president Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration is a “narco-government.” Their claims that all the left-wing politicians in power are in league to criminals and terrorists has more to do with their inability to dislodge Sheinbaum’s Morena party government, and their personal hatred against it.

There is another reason for which Sheinbaum tolerates corrupt actors within her ruling Morena party: