Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Head Games

| February 26, 2014

Mexico's president promised a new approach to the drug wars. So why is he still going after big fish?

It was only a little over a year ago that Mexico's president Enrique Peña Nieto drew a sharp distinction between the policies of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, and his own plan for taking on the scourge of the drug trafficking organizations (DTO) roiling the country. Calderón's military-style crackdowns — which emphasized taking out the kingpins and drug lords leading the cartels — had proved a failure, the new administration argued. Instead, Peña Nieto promised a new strategy, one that, as he put it, would take on the structural roots of drug trafficking and "focus institutional efforts on attending to the [social] causes of the criminal phenomenon."

And yet, on Feb. 22, it was Peña Nieto's government that celebrated the capture of the biggest prize of them all: Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, head of the Sinaloa cartel....

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For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Krache Morris, Evelyn.“Head Games.” Foreign Policy, February 26, 2014.

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