Mexican president’s state of the union avoids drugs, violence despite high levels

Experts and residents agree that drug cartels effectively control wide swaths of Mexico, but President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mentioned gangs — and drugs — exactly zero times.

Mexico’s president on Friday delivered his second-to-last state of the union, and perhaps what was most striking of his roughly 1 1/2 hour speech was what he didn’t talk about: drugs, crime or drug cartels.

Experts and residents agree that wide swaths of Mexico are under the de-facto control of drug cartels, but President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mentioned gangs — and drugs — exactly zero times.

Mexico also has over 111,000 missing people, who weren’t mentioned in the speech.

Crime in general merited less than one minute of the president’s speech, which focused almost entirely on what the president viewed as successes of his administration.

For example, he cited a decline in the poverty rate in Mexico from 49.9% of the population in 2018 to 43.5% in 2022, though that was in some part due to the huge rise in remittances, the money sent home by Mexicans working abroad.

The only thing Lopez Obrador had to say about security policy was that his anti-crime strategy was working, even though homicides remain at historically high levels.

“Our strategy of applying the principle that peace is the fruit of justice is working well,” the president said, a reference to job-training and youth programs he says will reduce the ranks of recruits for drug gangs.

He claimed Mexico has seen a drop of 17% in homicides under his administration, but in fact homicides had already fallen about 7% from their mid-2018 peak when Lopez Obrador took office in December of that year. The president is essentially taking credit for a drop that started under his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto.