In Mexico, following the February 22nd assassination of the drug trafficker Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed 'El Mencho,' a wave of violence erupted. Chaotic images of the destruction have circulated across news sites and social media, with residents and travelers being instructed to shelter in place. The most reported violence is in Jalisco. But there are roadblocks, fires, bombs in public places, and violence throughout the country.
El Mencho was born in the state of Michoacán, where we have supporters of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). This group was key in organizing the demonstration in the center of Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacán, to protest the disappearance of a teacher named Abril (see CHALLENGE, October 4, 2025). Shortly afterward, the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, was murdered during a public holiday. Many participants in the demonstration for Abril went to Mexico City to protest the assassination of the reformer Manzo, which seemed to represent a new level of impunity and was linked to the demonstration against Abril's disappearance (see CHALLENGE, December 10, 2025).
Now we see that the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum charged three local government officials and members of the same MORENA party are being accused of being the original perpetrators of the murder (El País, 2/17). The same article suggests that the Mexican state maintains there is a connection between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Manzo's murder. This is the same cartel attributed to being led by El Mencho.
The provocative title of the book, "Cartels Don't Exist," promotes a thesis well-known to the working class worldwide: that criminal organizations are symbols. These organizations are the outward form, the appearance, of capitalism. There is a relationship between businesspeople and politicians who take advantage of these organizations to implement the violence that maintains the social system and blame it on something external to themselves. These critics of the cartel concept are liberals and will not name the essence, which is capitalism.
The capitalist media meanwhile are experts in sensationalizing the violence in a country like Mexico, painting a caricature of workers across the greater region as having some kind of general connection to crime and drug trafficking. This racist characterization helps the capitalist state rationalize and launch the brutal attacks we are seeing in real time as ICE and Border Patrol shoot, kidnap, and deport our class sisters and brothers. The bosses and their media rarely if ever discuss the role of imperialism in destabilizing entire countries’ economies and displacing millions of workers, such as the effects of NAFTA signed into law by liberal racist President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The reactionary and sexist forces were local, and the liberal government of Sheinbaum and Morena had nothing for the working class except to send money and soldiers to serve the bosses. The question of class is fundamental and scientific. We must analyze the balance of class forces, as Mao Zedong and communists in China did nearly a century ago, and organize the workers to combat racism and sexism, organizing as a class in struggle—not to demand restitution or appeal to the bosses' class.
The challenge is great because death and life are the two sides of the scale. But this is the condition of the working class until the revolution. The counterattack of struggle is the only pressure our class has on the side of life, and all the pressure of weapons and money is on the side of death. We must get the soldiers and workers alike to take up arms under the leadership of the mass international PLP and confront the bosses to escape this ruthless capitalist hell and build a new communist world.
