Is Mexico Winning the Drug War?

Peña Nieto has many reasons for wanting to reëvaluate his country’s posture in the drug war—and its codependency with the United States. For one thing, the U.S. is in the process of legalizing a narcotic whose prohibition we still ask our friends in Mexico to lay down their lives to defend. There is no question that the worst consequences of the Zetas’ misdeeds have been endured by the Mexican people. But the criminal organizations have accumulated such power, and wrought such carnage, that it would be folly for Peña Nieto to seek an accommodation with the cartels, or to adopt the old PRI posture of well-compensated neglect. To be sure, the capture of Z-40 is a promising sign. But the real test of Peña Nieto’s resolve will be whether he is prepared to sacrifice Mexico’s autonomy in the interests of justice—and send the most feared criminal in his country’s history to face trial in the United States.