While the United States designated Mexican groups under anti-terrorist legislation, Mexico observes from legal ambiguity, as if naming the problem could conjure consequences worse than the crisis itself.
The legislative vacuum and its consequences
Mexico lacks a legal framework that formally classifies criminal organizations as existential threats to the State.
This absence is not a mere technicality: it prevents coordinating agencies, mobilizing extraordinary resources and establishing national emergency protocols.
The United States, through laws such as Foreign Terrorist Organization designation, can freeze assets, restrict movement, and commit massive federal resources. Mexico operates with fragmented legislation where each cartel is treated as a problem of aggravated common crime, never as a criminal insurgency that controls territories, collects taxes and administers parallel justice in Michoacán, Guerrero or Sinaloa.
The consequences are tangible: absence of cohesive national strategies, duplication of efforts between state prosecutors’ offices, and a systemic inability to dismantle criminal financial structures that operate as transnational business conglomerates.
Political lobbying in the context of criminal governance
How do you lobby for a law when the lobbyists could be on the criminal payroll?
In regions where criminal groups rule de facto, any legislator who pushes for aggressive legal frameworks faces existential dilemmas. We are not talking about abstract threats: mayors murdered in Michoacán, candidates executed in Guanajuato, officials who wake up dismembered for proposing anti-corruption reforms.
Traditional legislative lobbying assumes functional institutions.
But when organized crime controls supply chains, manages private security, and regulates local markets, real power resides not in state capitals but in fortified ranches and clandestine warehouses. Legislating against whoever finances your campaign, protects your family, or controls the local economy requires suicidal bravery or dangerous naivety.
Design of legislation similar to that of the United States
An equivalent Mexican law should establish objective criteria: groups with armed capacity greater than municipal police, documented territorial control, annual income greater than state budgets, and the ability to paralyze critical infrastructure. Declared a national threat, extraordinary powers would be activated: automatic federal intervention, coordination of military-civil intelligence, robust witness protection protocols, and expedited extradition mechanisms.
But here the paradox arises: an effective law requires political will that criminal governance has systematically eroded.
