I start from the premise that drug trafficking has permeated society and the state. In this view, the so-called conflict or war against and among drug cartels has three key aspects for analysis: necropolitics, which is the most severe; state capture; and the Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC).
Capture is not just bribery; it is the replacement of authority. To achieve this, drug trafficking captures local governments: in several municipalities in the Sierra and the border regions, and beyond, we can see it in various municipalities throughout Chiapas. Organized crime not only decides who wins elections but also appoints the heads of security and public works. The municipal budget becomes a slush fund for the war effort (fuel, food, salaries for lookouts).
Justice as a Weapon: When capture occurs, the judicial system is used to persecute rivals or human rights defenders who denounce the conflict, while guaranteeing total impunity for the dominant group. State institutions that are supposed to provide justice are, in reality, threatened, bought off, or co-opted by drug cartels or so-called organized crime.
There is a clear use of social organizations to secure government support, conditioning it on participation in roadblocks or demonstrations in favor of the criminal group (using the population as “human shields”). Furthermore, social organizations pressure and obtain public resources, which empowers and allies criminal groups, as seen in the example of the so-called MAIZ in Frontera Comalapa, or those who provide protection, as in the case of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
Dynamics of the NIAC: Militarized Territorial Control
Under the NIAC framework, territory is not “administered,” it is “occupied.” The disputed sovereignties—which signify control of border corridors and the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, or of the interior borders toward the Isthmus or the Gulf—are not only for trafficking, but also to establish secure rear guard zones. The capture of municipal police forces allows these groups to move with complete freedom, using uniforms or official vehicles for cartel logistical tasks. The installation of checkpoints with surveillance technology and the control of basic supplies (gasoline, gas, tortillas) are indicators of total criminal governance. Induced shortages are a war tactic to break community resistance.
People are “abducted,” which means disappearance; entire families are taken away, leading us to ask: where do they go, and what do they do with the thousands of disappeared people?
Deployment of Forces and the Dilemma of Collusion: From the perspective of State Capture, the military presence takes on an ambivalent dimension: tactical Immobility. The perception that federal forces “only watch” can be interpreted as a symptom of institutional capture at mid- to high-level levels, where the order is to avoid confrontation so as not to alter the balance of power or passively favor one side over the other. There are many reports of checkpoints that simply observe, but nothing happens.
Local Forces (FRIP/Pakales): Under this model, these forces run the risk of becoming “private armies” with public funding, used for social cleansing or the control of community insurgencies that oppose criminal control.
The Dismantling of State and Municipal Police Forces: They are not “weakened,” they are assimilated. In a NIAC with state capture, the local police function as the first intelligence ring for the non-state armed actor.
Finally, there is the issue of judicialization and victimization in a captured state, where we find patterns of lethal violence such as homicides and disappearances that are not merely isolated “settling of scores”; they are territorial cleansing operations. The victims are frequently community leaders who maintain social cohesion, since an organized community is the greatest obstacle to state capture. The justice system acts as a barrier, as the challenge is not the technical capacity of judges, but rather systemic integrity. Judicial capture implies that there are no complaints because the prosecutor’s office is seen as an extension of the criminal group, not to mention that the victims are forcibly recruited youth (cannon fodder), migrants (a source of funding), and land defenders (a political obstacle).
Therefore, from this perspective, drug trafficking in its narco-political phase originated during the PRI’s hegemony, continued and shifted its landscape under the PAN, and exploded in terms of violence during MORENA’s time in power. Chiapas is the prime example.
The mayor of Uruapan responds to a question about whether she has had any contact with drug trafficking: “No,” is her emphatic answer, despite her husband being a victim of what appears to be a drug cartel-related murder. This is the kind of co-optation or capture that organized crime employs. Previously, it operated in the shadows, in collusion with police, judicial officials, and other authorities, through its struggles for territorial control and drug distribution. This has been going on for many years, far too many.
In the political dispute, in the political polarization, the victims, society itself, are left out, because the capture of the state is not limited to its institutions; it also encompasses the narrative. Everything becomes the problem of whoever holds political power when organized crime requires consumption, transportation, sale, and even export! In other words, it operates both locally and globally.
Yesterday it was the Guadalajara Cartel, then the Federation, followed by the territories: Tijuana, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, until becoming a global actor, where airports, ports, money laundering, and governments revealed the face of power and the networks that devour people. The drug war has its victims: kidnapped, abducted, disappeared, thousands of mass graves, thousands of lives extinguished by a power born of capital.
The businesses are vast, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, but the mobilization of so many resources and so much money involves arms smuggling and various networks exploiting children and women.
If we leave the matter as merely a problem for those in power, nothing will change. It is time for society to relieve the burden on the families of the victims of this war, of this capture, of this barbarity.
Chiapas is a charade of medals, of humanism. It is time to put a stop to it; there are already too many victims.
Original article by Gerardo González Figueroa, Chiapas Paralelo, May 10th, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.