Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has quietly been abandoning the security framework of her predecessor, the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador famously took a soft-touch approach towards cartels in Mexico, saying that ultimately what would solve organized crime are “hugs, not bullets,” a statement which became the motto for the security plan used by Mexico during his six-year tenure as president.
This approach was based on the argument that cartel crime is ultimately motivated by economic inequality and instability and thus the correct way to reduce cartel violence is to provide young people with housing, education, and economic opportunities. This was a strong political position for López Obrador to take, as it provided additional justification for all sorts of welfare programs that he hoped to implement to reduce inequality among…
