What’s at stake is a matter of sovereignty and the difficult relationship with the United States. With the governor’s silence still hanging in the air, many things remain to be clarified.
A specter is haunting national politics. Following the deaths of two of its agents, who were not accredited in Mexico, in a car accident in Chihuahua, the role and presence of the CIA has stirred enormous controversy. The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the fight against drug trafficking, allied with local governments (like that of Chihuahua), and operating independently of the federal government, is now under debate.
The intelligence agency was created at the initiative of US President Harry Truman, in the midst of the Cold War, at the end of World War II, after the signing of the National Security Act on July 26th, 1947. The CIA began operating in September of that year. It has also been called the Company, the Farm, and the Invisible Government. Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, murdered in May 1984, dedicated himself to investigating and exposing the men and actions of the CIA in Mexico. He considered it one of the most important tasks of his professional life. As a result of this work, he published a pioneering book in 1983, an essential reference work, in which he compiled the columns he wrote for El Día, El Sol, El Universal, and Excélsior about the Company’s espionage network in our country: ‘’The CIA in Mexico’’.
The book recovers the results of his investigations into the links between Mexican officials and US agents to finance the Nicaraguan Contras, created to confront the Sandinista government. Some associate Buendía’s murder with the disclosure of these connections. Philip Agee was a CIA officer from 1957 and carried out espionage work in Mexico between 1960 and 1963. In 1975, his pioneering book on the agency’s dirty work was published: ‘’Inside the Company: A CIA Diary’’. In it, he revealed the agency’s operations in Latin America and Mexico. According to him, local politicians, such as former presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría Álvarez, known as Litempo-14, and the Federal Security Directorate were key allies of the CIA’s secret service.
Pursued by the U.S. government, he found refuge in Havana. Upon his death in 2008, an obituary appeared in Granma describing him as: “a loyal friend of Cuba and a fervent defender of the people’s struggle for a better world.”
The CIA, as depicted in books such as ‘’The CIA and the Cult of Espionage’’, by former agent Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks; ‘’The CIA as Organized Crime’’, by Douglas Valentine; ‘’CIA: History of the Company’’, by Eric Frattini; and ‘’The CIA and the Cultural Cold War’’, by Frances Stonors Saunder, demonstrate that the CIA is the empire’s primary instrument of espionage and counter-espionage, propaganda apparatus, and disseminator of toxic information. It is allied with the worst dictatorships on the planet and has a long history of destabilizing progressive governments through illegal methods and without any ethical considerations.
As Valentine shows, the Invisible Government financed and armed death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala, Somoza’s Nicaragua, South Korea, Iran, Chile, and Uruguay. It carried out covert operations to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende and collaborated with the Chilean military to compile a list of 20,000 people to be eliminated on the morning of the coup.
The CIA plays a fundamental role in the war on drugs in the country, even displacing the DEA. The designation of drug cartels as terrorists, and therefore as a matter of national security for Washington, strengthened the Company within Mexico.
According to a Reuters special report on the CIA’s secret war against drug cartels, dated September 10th, 2025, the agency has been conducting covert operations for years in collaboration with special counter-narcotics units within the Mexican Army. With the authorization of the Mexican government, it provides training and equipment to these units, as well as financial support for activities such as travel.
“Mexican Army and Navy units, investigated by the CIA, have played a key role in planning and executing most of the high-profile drug trafficker captures in recent years. The Army is composed of hundreds of CIA-trained special forces and is considered the most capable military force in Mexico for capturing heavily armed drug traffickers entrenched in fortified mountain hideouts, according to security sources,” the report stated (https://shorturl.at/lIR5v). On September 12th, 2025, President Claudia Sheinbaum emphatically denied the report. “What Reuters says is false. That report claims that CIA agents are working with the Mexican Army in operations. That is absolutely false, it is not true,” she stated at her morning press conference.
The tragic accident in Chihuahua only adds insult to injury. According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA has participated in three anti-drug operations in the state this year. If true, Governor Maru Campos would be committing a very serious offense. After offering different versions of what happened and meeting with Secretary Omar García Harfuch, the state governor thanked the President for her openness and willingness to cooperate.
These events have been used by both the PAN and MORENA parties to position themselves for the upcoming state elections. PAN is presenting its governor as a great stateswoman committed to the fight against drugs. The ruling party, to accuse her of treason. What happened doesn’t seem to be an “exception.” The matter goes beyond an electoral issue. What’s at stake is a question of sovereignty and the difficult relationship with the United States. With the governor’s silence, many things still need to be clarified.
Let’s hope that the state attorney general’s resignation helps in this direction.
Original article by Luis Hernández Navarro, La Jornada, April 28th, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.