How might we explain that Terry Cole, the current director of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), recently praised the work of Omar García Harfuch, while at the same time Secretary of State Marco Rubio was threatening to send troops to Mexico to combat drug trafficking? Cole’s recognition of the Mexican Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection took place at the 40th International Conference on Drug Control, held August 18–20 in Buenos Aires.
Since its founding in 1973, relations between the DEA and other U.S. security agencies have not been easy and have frequently led to conflict. Some historians attribute one of the reasons for the DEA’s creation to the 1972 publication of historian Alfred W. McCoy’s book, *The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia*. The investigation reveals how the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) secret airline, Air America, was used to transport opium and heroin from Laos to the U.S. East Coast, while protecting Asian drug lords, who used the profits to fight communist guerrillas. The book’s publication sparked a scandal that lasted several weeks and challenged Congress. McCoy was called to testify before a special committee of senators and representatives who had launched an investigation into the matter. While the CIA was promoting the cultivation and sale of opiates in the jungles of Laos and Cambodia, police departments in cities across New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts were overwhelmed by the rapid growth of criminal groups.
Although under different circumstances, years later that same conflict between the DEA and the CIA was repeated along the coasts of Central America. The Reagan administration, which was barred from selling arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, secretly orchestrated a triangulation between Iran, Israel, and Mexico, in which Iranian opium was sold on the streets of Los Angeles to raise funds to arm the paramilitary groups besieging the Sandinista revolution. This was the time of the assassination in Mexico of Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent who had stumbled upon the operation by chance. The Mexican cartels were blamed, but today we know it was a crime perpetrated by security agencies under the direct command of the White House itself.
More recently, in Afghanistan, the Taliban shut down hashish and heroin production. Three years after the invasion by the European-U.S. coalition in search of Bin Laden, the country had become the world’s leading producer. This time, the complaint came directly from the DEA. No one wanted to listen.
Following this same pattern, the Trump administration devised a “new policy” toward Latin America. Except that the person tasked with implementing it was none other than Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. In the words of Maureen Tkacik, research editor at The American Prospect: “He is the architect of the most cynical part of Trump’s strategy: the scheme to place drug cartel leaders and their cronies at the top of Latin American governments in the name of fighting drug cartels.”
In September of last year, Rubio praised Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa for “achieving in the fight against drug trafficking in just two years what no previous administration had.” Five months earlier, an investigation found that the Noboa family’s fruit business had shipped 700 kilograms of cocaine to Europe between 2020 and 2022, wrapped in banana leaves. The same thing happened with convicted criminal Juan Orlando Hernández, who returned to Honduras after being pardoned to support the rise of right-wing politician Nasry Asfura. Not to mention Rubio’s tenacious defense of Álvaro Uribe in the 1990s, whom the Pentagon once described as one of Colombia’s leading narco-terrorists.
And the list goes on. Those already sworn in as presidents attended the meeting in Doral, Florida, where the creation of the Shield of the Americas was announced—an alliance that aims to protect the citizens of each country from the “scourge of narco-violence,” yet is made up precisely of some of the most violent figures in Latin American drug trafficking. “Old-fashioned imperialism,” commented some of the region’s leading newspapers. A new cartel—but one made up of presidents, one might add.
Cole’s (the current head of the DEA) support for García Harfuch sends, in a way, a message to Rubio that the drug enforcement agency does not plan to send its agents to Mexico. It already did so during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term, and the result was a disaster. It is also a message from the “deep state” to the White House regarding its policy toward Mexico.
Difficult months lie ahead for President Claudia Sheinbaum, García Harfuch, and the judiciary. At a time when Trump’s approval ratings are in free fall and midterm elections are just around the corner, the sudden arrest of a dozen alleged Mexican drug traffickers would appear to be an unparalleled media trophy—at a time when the last thing on anyone’s mind is how to support Mexican society in the face of the violence that plagues it. For this reason, the Sinaloa case has become a particularly delicate situation—an issue we will address in the next chapter of this text.
Original text by Ilán Semo published in La Jornada on August 27th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.