The State of Mexico, the most populated entity in the country, has been a topic of national interest in recent days. The reason is positive: in coordination, federal and state authorities deployed an intelligence plan to arrest officials from 11 Mexican municipalities.
Under the name “Operativo Enjambre”, the Federal Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, the Secretariat of National Defense and the Secretariat of the Navy, in coordination with the Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Mexico and the State Secretariat of Security, detained municipal public officials for crimes related to organized crime in Mexican territory.
There is not a single ideological current that links the detained and fugitive people, including the director of Security of Texcaltitán who took his own life at the time of being detained. On the contrary, there are all political parties, including Morena and allied parties that have governed the State of Mexico since 2023, under the leadership of teacher Delfina Gómez.
There is also no “territorial” or regional criterion in arrests. The operation involves public officials from municipalities as diverse as Amanalco, Tejupilco, Naucalpan, Ixtapaluca, Tonatico, Santo Tomás de los Plátanos, Coacalco and Jilotzingo.
The above explains, in part, the forcefulness of Operation Swarm, which surprised public opinion from the early hours of last November 22. But what encourages us to think that “Enjambre” responds to a better articulated strategy based on police intelligence is its objective: the arrest not of alleged leaders of the drug cartels but of their facilitators from public power.
And the logic behind Operation Swarm evokes what numerous studies point out to explain the success of organized crime around the world. According to them, the enormous reach of criminal groups cannot be explained without the shelter or protection of political corruption. Thus, criminal groups that manage to integrate with political power create increasingly complex protection networks that minimize the costs of their illegal transactions, while capturing the governance of the territories in which they operate.
Consequently, the dismantling of criminal networks requires that the State put as much effort against criminal groups as against their political protectors.
And that, in the particular case of Operation Swarm, translates into inter-institutional coordination at the federal and state level and a more strategic and intelligence approach to go against authorities that have allegedly given protection and facilities from the municipal government apparatus to criminal groups.
The commotion caused by this operation, which is not minor, has wanted to be quickly taken advantage of to compare it with Felipe Calderón’s “Michoacanazo”, thereby attempting to predict an equally unsuccessful result against organized crime.
Given this, it is important to remember that, in 2009, Felipe Calderón conducted a mega-operation as part of the strategy designed by Genaro García Luna to combat Mexican cartels. What came after the arrest of state and municipal officials ended in protections that left those allegedly involved completely free, including the immunity of one of them when he took office as a federal deputy – Julio César Godoy – and, worst of all, the resurgence of violence in Michoacan territory.
Operation Swarm promises more arrests based on investigations and intelligence, including more mayors. What will follow these high-profile arrests will be key: bringing robust investigations to court that will be the basis for judicial decisions that break the harmful circle of impunity in Mexico.
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Palmira Tapia has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Oxford and a degree in Political Science and International Relations from the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).
Twitter: @palmiratapia
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.
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