The Cartels Didn’t Attack the Tourists. They Sent a Memo cover art

The Cartels Didn’t Attack the Tourists. They Sent a Memo

The Cartels Didn’t Attack the Tourists. They Sent a Memo

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 From a balcony above the Pacific — where the ocean sparkles and the air carries the faint perfume of gasoline and geopolitics.Geopolitics is plumbing. Pressure applied in one pipe bursts another in a different district.I speak of my apartment in the middle of a war zone. I was supposed to be on the very flight that was set ablaze in the Puerto Vallarta airport yesterday. I was also supposed to be on the Boston flight on the morning of 9-11 when the sky turned into a weapon. I stayed one more night in Provincetown that day because the weather was nice. .Small deviation. A life.You learn something when history rearranges your itinerary: It doesn’t consult you first. And it never asks if you’re comfortable.The official story is tidy.The unofficial one is honest.Somewhere between the two is Mexico.I’m writing this from Puerto Vallarta, where the sunset looks like a tourism commercial and the streets — for a few hours — looked like a war movie directed by someone with a grudge. Cars burned. Roads closed. Smoke rose in thick black punctuation marks against a blue sky that refused to cooperate with the mood.The name circulating through bars, encrypted chats, and nervous phone calls is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — El Mencho.For years, he ran his operation like a multinational corporation with exceptional logistics and medieval ethics. When the state moved on him, the city responded the way cartels respond: not with press conferences, but with fire.This is not new.When Joaquín Guzmán — El Chapo — was captured, highways turned into bonfires. When his son was grabbed, the asphalt ignited again.This is choreography.Arrest the king.Ignite the streets.Remind the palace who still controls the oxygen.The Question No One Wants to AskNow let’s be adult about this.A lot of people are angry at the chaos. They blame the government. They say this never would have happened if the authorities had “just left it alone.”Fine.So answer this plainly:Would you prefer a violent cartel leader remain free — extorting, disappearing, brutalizing — so that your commute remains photogenic?Order or anesthesia?Because those are often the real options.On one end, it is undeniably good when a man synonymous with mass graves exits the board.On the other end, his removal does not dissolve the cartel. It opens a vacancy.Killing a king does not end a war.It begins a succession.The Sovereignty ProblemEnter Claudia Sheinbaum.She governs a country that exists in permanent negotiation — federal authority layered over regional realities layered over shadow municipalities that collect taxes in cash and bullets.And then there is the northern neighbor, A golfer and the world's greatest real estate developer, ever. He'll be the first to tell you.Fifteen million dollars placed on the table for El jefe. A bounty large enough to rattle any cabinet meeting. A reminder that if Mexico didn’t tidy up its own backyard, “assistance” might arrive.You know what that word means in diplomatic language. You're about to receive a bunch of drones right up the kazoo.Pressure is rarely theatrical. It’s administrative. It happens in meetings. It happens in private.So something was done.And the city flared.Burning cars are not random. They are a press release written in gasoline.They weren’t targeting tourists. They weren’t hunting “gringos.” They were making a point.“Remember who can stop traffic.”The Cartel Reality No One Prints on the BrochureLet’s drop the cartoon version.Mexico is not governed by a kingpin taking dictation calls with the president.It is governed within a daily truce.Power is layered. Negotiated. Rebalanced constantly.Stability here is not the absence of violence. It is the management of it.When that equilibrium shifts, the response is spectacle.You may not like that.Neither do the people who live here.But pretending that arresting a violent man is worse than allowing him to continue uninterrupted is moral laziness dressed up as pragmatism.El Mencho free would not have meant peace.It would have meant a quieter hemorrhage.Extortion normalized.Disappearances routine.Terror bureaucratized.The Succession ProblemHere is the part that matters:El Mencho dead does not mean the war is over.It means the board has shifted.Someone younger, hungrier, possibly more reckless will step forward.Or someone smarter. More disciplined. More “compliant.” Someone who understands diversification, optics, and perhaps even profit-sharing with powerful friends north of the border.Criminal enterprises evolve.They professionalize.They modernize.They hold shareholder meetings — minus the minutes.The Illusion of ResolutionThe northern neighbor gets a headline.Mexico asserts sovereignty.A bounty gets paid.It looks like closure.It isn’t.What This Actually MeansFrom this balcony in Puerto Vallarta, watching smoke dissolve into a sky that insists on being beautiful, here’s what’s clear:States assert.Cartels ...
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