‘Mexico is nobody’s pinata’
On the evening of November 1, 2025, Carlos Manzo was out celebrating the Day of the Dead and carrying his infant son, who was dressed in a skeleton costume for the candlelit festival. The popular, cowboy hat-wearing mayor of Uruapan in Michoacan was outspoken against the gangsters terrorising his community and called on the federal government to intervene. Manzo put his son down to speak to his constituents, and moments later, a hooded teenage gunman walked up and shot him seven times.
Protests and riots erupted, the result of years of frustration with a seemingly endless crime wave. The protesters accused Sheinbaum of heading a “narco-government”.
Sheinbaum responded with a more proactive approach than her predecessor’s. Under her leadership, security forces have raided drug labs and taken out leaders such as Mencho. This has had some success. But, according to Amnesty International, while the overall murder rate fell by 27 percent last year, disappearances rose by 10.5 percent, leading some to question the statistics.
“I think [the drop] has to do with a lot of factors – with the rise of the disappearances in Mexico, but also with the changed methodologies that the government uses to measure homicides,” explained MUCD’s Reyes.
“When they find human remains, they categorise those remains not as a homicide, but as an unidentified cause of death … homicides committed by security forces, they are categorised as abuse of power instead of homicide.”
Since 2006, more than 130,000 people have gone missing in Mexico, at the hands of both criminal groups and elements within the security forces (though officials deny this). Search parties keep finding mass graves, and mothers scour burial sites reeking with the stench of death, sifting through human remains to look for their missing children.
In March last year, activists made a chilling discovery. At an abandoned ranch in Jalisco state, the birthplace of tequila, volunteers unearthed charred bone fragments, teeth and, hauntingly, hundreds of pairs of shoes. The property was believed to be an extermination site used by the CJNG. Three ovens found at the scene were thought to be used as makeshift crematoriums to dispose of victims.
The discovery shocked the nation and Sheinbaum ordered a review of the missing persons database. The authorities narrowed the 130,000 tally down to 43,600 for whom there were grounds to keep looking. But victims’ families argued this downplayed the problem: at least 72,100 bodies were lying unclaimed in Mexico’s morgues.
“A lack of information makes it impossible for the authorities to search and find the person that is missing, so they prioritise,” Reyes explained.
“But it is a crisis so great that there is this perception that the government is not doing enough.”
In April, when a UN committee concluded that disappearances in Mexico frequently involve the authorities and appear to constitute crimes against humanity, Sheinbaum hit back, saying “there are no enforced disappearances perpetrated by the state,” and solely blaming criminal gangs.
Mexico’s drug cartel problem has also become a political football north of the border, where fatal overdoses were claiming the lives of over 100,000 Americans a year by the early 2020s – largely from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid manufactured in Mexico using Chinese chemicals.
“The cartels are waging war on America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said last year.
Soon after returning to the White House, Trump threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China over fentanyl and undocumented migration. Mexico responded with high-level consultations and direct talks between Sheinbaum and Trump, and the tariff threats were repeatedly delayed or modified as negotiations continued
The tariffs were set to start on March 4, 2025, but Sheinbaum reached out to Trump and presented data showing a decline in fentanyl seizures at the border after her troop deployment. Shortly after, Trump announced he would waive most of the general tariffs, though not the sectoral tariffs on products such as steel and aluminium.
“Despite high US tariffs on Mexican steel, aluminum, copper and autos, among others, most Mexican products that meet USMCA rules of origin enter the US duty-free,” said David Gantz, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Sheinbaum understands that being confrontational with Trump will not help.
“So she’s been very pragmatic and smart in that regard, I would say… Claudia has made sure that she is collaborating closely with the United States,” said Correa-Cabrera. “But at the same time, working with her base of support, saying, ‘We don’t want intervention. We want to be sovereign.’”
Claudia has made sure that she is collaborating closely with the United States.
The latest round of economic pressure came on July 1, when the USMCA review was due. Originally signed by Trump in 2018 as a replacement for NAFTA — which he described as “the worst trade deal ever made” — his administration has refused to renew USMCA in its current form. Negotiations will continue for years to pressure the US’s two closest and biggest trade partners into concessions (for example, ramping up auto rules of origin percentages and other protectionist policies).
While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been openly defiant, using retaliatory tariffs and vowing the US won’t “dictate the terms,” Sheinbaum’s more accommodating approach to Trump’s demands may lead to a better deal for Mexico.
“Sheinbaum seems to be doing well in maintaining cordial relations with Trump, particularly compared to Carney,” Gantz said, suggesting that Mexico may be farther along in securing tangible benefits.
Though she once campaigned against NAFTA, Sheinbaum seems to have changed her mind about free trade — or, at the very least, taken a pragmatic approach to it.
“It seems clear to me that Sheinbaum, as a wise politician, realised long ago that NAFTA/USMCA was vital to Mexico’s economic success,” Gantz continued.
“Sheinbaum is a strong and vocal supporter of USMCA and, in my view, will do everything in her power to maintain Mexican access to the US market.”
Sheinbaum has repeatedly signalled she’s willing to cooperate with Trump while maintaining a strict line on US interference. Last February, she signed off on the mass extradition of 29 narco heavyweights but shut down any talk of US troops on Mexican soil – a painful topic, given how Mexico lost half its territory in the 1840s Mexican-American War.
“We have a saying here in Mexico, which is: ‘So far from God, but so close to the United States!’” quipped Gomez Perez, reflecting Mexican frustration with being trapped in America’s powerful shadow.
In any case, solving the cartel problem will take more than rounding up gangsters, because that does not address the demand for drugs. Sheinbaum has blamed the United States for not doing enough about addiction. But corruption within Mexico’s own government complicates the picture. In April, US prosecutors indicted Sinaloa state governor Ruben Rocha Moya over alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. He was a Morena politician and an ally of both AMLO and Sheinbaum, who questioned the evidence.
“The way that the United States has used its drug policy, it’s pretty directly to continue pressure on Mexico’s government,” said Correa-Cabrera, author of Carteles, Inc, adding that narco allegations are a common smear and that Sheinbaum is “probably right” to demand evidence.
As US pressure has escalated, Sheinbaum has denounced outside interference.
“When the idea that another country can interfere in matters that are solely the responsibility of Mexicans becomes normalised, we are no longer talking about cooperation; we are talking about interference,” Sheinbaum said recently.
“The legitimate question arises: Is it really a legitimate, genuine interest to help Mexico? Is it really a legitimate interest to combat organised crime?”
“No!” sounded the chorus through the crowd.
“Mexico,” Sheinbaum announced, “is nobody’s pinata!”
Pushing back against Trump’s pressure has boosted Sheinbaum’s image at home.
“The defence of the sovereignty that the president has made publicly, denying the entry of US troops in Mexico, I think it has made her image a bit stronger,” said Reyes.
“The accusation against the governor Rocha Moya hurts the image that Sheinbaum has built. But I think her popularity is still very high in Mexico, because of her position against these interventionist policies from the United States.”
Despite concerns about crime, Sheinbaum remains broadly popular and enjoys an approval rating of 68 percent, according to a May Enkoll poll. Particularly appreciated are her social programmes, with free universal healthcare set to start next year.
“I think she’s changed a lot as she’s matured,” reflected Gomez Perez.
He looked back on their school activism, noting their impulsivity.
“If there was a social problem, we’d immediately go and see what we could do: maybe support a strike, maybe support a farmers’ group,” he said.
“We were very spontaneous, very quick to act and offer support. I think she’s more mature now, in that she thinks about the decisions she makes, analyses them and discusses them with some people on her team… she is a very mature, very sensible and very calculating woman in all her positions and ideas.”
But not everyone is optimistic.
Last year, Sheinbaum faced criticism for pushing through a major justice reform that let voters choose judges nationwide, but critics said Morena used unfair tactics to back friendly candidates.
“There’s a lot of corruption, impunity, and now there’s a concentration of power in Mexico in the party, and that’s not very different from what the PRI was,” considered Correa-Cabrera.
