THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DECEIVING ITSELF ABOUT DRUG TRAFFICKING

Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated at a press conference in Brooklyn, New York, after Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty to the charges against him before Judge Brian Cogan.

Attorney General Bondi practically decreed the end of the Sinaloa cartel and pointed out that Zambada had flooded the United States with drugs for decades (Zambada himself told Judge Cogan that he had been doing so since 1980), killing thousands of Americans. He also murdered numerous rivals in the drug trafficking business and bribed Mexican authorities, both public officials and representatives of law enforcement agencies.

According to Bondi, Zambada's admission of his crimes and his life imprisonment is a major triumph for the Donald Trump administration, demonstrating their determination to put an end to drug cartels, which she referred to as "foreign terrorist organizations."

Only when specifically asked by a reporter did Bondi acknowledge that there had been assistance from the Mexican government; but in general, her speech focused on highlighting the enormous damage Zambada had done to the United States and the significant achievement of admitting his crimes to Judge Cogan, for which he will be sentenced to life in prison.

We have to ask ourselves what the administrations of eight US presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden) were doing for 44 years (1980 to 2024), given that a farmer, barely out of primary school, was able to send up to 1.5 million kilos of cocaine to the United States, establish a drug distribution network throughout the country, and escape being caught for almost half a century by any US security or intelligence agencies.

What were US federal, state, and local authorities doing while Zambada and his associates flooded the country with drugs, causing the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and leaving 35 million US citizens still addicted to drugs to this day?

Apparently, they did little, if anything, to prevent it. It will be said that the Sinaloa cartel and other Mexican drug cartels have grown thanks to the aid, protection, and alliance they have received from successive Mexican governments (at the federal, state, and municipal levels). And that is true.

But how can we explain why the world's leading power has succumbed to a criminal organization from an underdeveloped country, even though that organization was supported by the Mexican government?

The explanation has several aspects.

First, the United States authorities were negligent, and/or complicit with the Sinaloa cartel, and other Mexican, Colombian, and other cartels, in the distribution and production of drugs within the United States.

It is impossible that an operation of such magnitude, would have been carried out for decades, without the knowledge, consent, and assistance of numerous United States authorities.

Otherwise, we would be accepting that a group of peasants, illiterate criminals, and corrupt politicians from an underdeveloped country have overtaken, controlled, and mocked the entire political, legal, and security structure of the world's leading power.

This is not the case. Drug trafficking remains a big business in the United States because many sectors of that country want it to be.

Banks that launder dirty money; authorities that receive juicy bribes; police officers at various levels who supplement their salaries with drug money; and millions of consumers who are unwilling to stop using drugs, for various reasons (health issues; psychological problems like PTSD; loneliness; alienation; lifestyle, etc.).

Furthermore, the US government uses the issue of drug trafficking to maintain pressure and blackmail on the corrupt Latin American political classes; and it's always better to blame the "others" for domestic ills. For an administration like Trump's, blaming the world for the US's problems is politically and electorally profitable.

Trump, Bondi, Rubio, and the entire Trump administration may decree the end of the Sinaloa Cartel and of drug trafficking (surely the sons of "El Chapo" Guzmán, who are still at large, and of "El Mayo" Zambada, who are vying for control of the cartel, must have smiled when they heard that); they may bomb Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, etc., and hope that this will put an end "once and for all" to the drug cartels; they may declare a "definitive" victory against these "foreign terrorist organizations"; but none of this will be true as long as authorities in Mexico, the United States and other countries, businessmen, and banks benefit economically from such activity; and above all, as long as millions of people around the world remain addicted to drugs, this will continue to create a market that must be supplied every day.