Flood the zone
The National Guard marks a milestone, plus Ovidio Guzmán makes a deal
Welcome to The Mexpatriate.
Dramatic rhetoric is of course the lingua franca of partisan politics—whether in the U.S. or Mexico, each bill or court decision or presidential decree seems like it could be the last; the nail in the coffin; the final straw; the end of the republic. The prevailing sense of urgency (and of doom) is heightened with a character like Trump leading a superpower. As someone who analyzes politics, I try to maintain a less reactive perspective, but admittedly, being the queen of cold takes isn’t easy in 2025.
In my last newsletter, I wrote about the new telecommunications law passed in Mexico’s Senate (which has since passed in the Chamber of Deputies) and of what I considered hyperbolic outrage from the opposition. I also wrote that overreaction can obscure legitimate worries about government overreach.
And then, I fear I fell into this trap myself.
I hadn’t yet taken a close enough look at the cluster of laws related to surveillance, intelligence and security that were pushed through the Chamber of Deputies and passed in the Senate last week, and it was a crucial missing part of this conversation. The expansion of the federal government’s access to citizen’s data, the heavy-handed requirements that will increase the bureaucratic burden on citizens and businesses, the vague use of AI, and the centralization of power are all serious concerns here.
There is of course always a compelling reason for enacting broader government data-gathering and surveillance powers: in the U.S. in 2001 with the Patriot Act, it was to counter terrorism, and in Mexico in 2025, it’s to fight organized crime (and more specifically, the crisis of disappearances).
To advocates, this legislation is critical for modernizing security and intelligence gathering, increasing coordination among law enforcement agencies and improving investigative capacity. They argue that the current fragmented system helps foster rampant impunity, and that it is disingenuous for the opposition to criticize the Morena government for being both lax on security, and a police state. Also, they say that the requirements for judicial orders have been left unchanged.
However, opponents point out that the laws grant the government unfettered access to both public and private data, without proper oversight and safeguards in place, which criminals themselves could exploit (not to mention, future governments). There are far too many examples of collusion between criminal actors and the state in recent Mexican history to simply trust that sensitive information won’t fall into the wrong hands.
I’ll be writing more on how this complex, significant and hotly debated issue plays out in the national conversation soon.
In today’s letter, I cover the six-year anniversary of the National Guard, Ovidio Guzmán’s plea deal and the anti-gentrification protest in Mexico City.
NOTE: I will be taking off this coming week, returning with a new schedule and other updates the week of July 14.
On June 30, 2019, then-President López Obrador announced the creation of “an army of peace” that would be called the Guardia Nacional (GN). This came after his government dissolved the Federal Police, which had been created in 2009, and which AMLO asserted was hopelessly corrupt. The GN today has 130,000 members and while it was created as a civilian security force, it now operates under the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) following a constitutional reform passed in September 2024, at the end of AMLO’s term. The GN was never much like a police force—the majority of its recruits have come from the army, followed by the navy and lastly, the former federal police. While members are supposed to receive police training, watchdogs have found that not all of them do and that it is often cursory.
At an event commemorating the anniversary, Sheinbaum credited the “noble institution” with helping bring homicides down 25% since she took office, and reiterated that it is not part of the army, but has its own command and training. The “consolidation” of the GN is one of the pillars of Sheinbaum’s national security strategy, and she also highlighted its good reputation among Mexicans. In the latest survey published by INEGI in September, 80.6% of respondents had confidence in the GN, coming in third behind the navy and the army, and only 30% perceived GN members as corrupt (the worst-ranked are traffic cops).
Is the GN actually effective in combating crime? The data are hard to parse.
Between 2019 and 2023, according to data from INEGI, the GN turned over 29,993 suspects to law enforcement (an average of just seven per day). The main crime these suspects committed? Theft.
However, an information request from Animal Político last year showed that only 5,991 arrests as “first responder” on the scene had been made by the GN between 2019 and April 2024.
The fact is that the GN isn’t really equipped to investigate and arrest suspected criminals, or bring down criminal networks. But it’s been busy with other tasks. In 2024, migrant detentions (“rescues” in official parlance) in Mexico increased 266% year-over-year to reach nearly 357,000—many of these are carried out by the GN (with large deployments on the northern and southern borders) and the army. Also, the seizures of illegal fuel taps by the GN increased from just 82 in 2019 to 2,745 in 2023.
While the GN does enjoy a better reputation than the federales did, there have been some notable cases of corruption—most recently, 11 members who were caught in the act carrying out fuel theft in Guanajuato.
“The capture of a criminal can’t be more valuable than people’s lives.”
These were the words of President López Obrador when he decided to release Ovidio Guzmán (alias “El Ratón”) in October 2019 in what became known as the “Culiacanazo.” The son of “El Chapo” was arrested by federal forces and the blowback had turned the capital of Sinaloa into a combat zone, leaving 16 people dead. AMLO was skewered for this decision, and it would haunt the feeble security record of his term.
In January 2023, “El Ratón” was trapped again and this time, it wasn’t a catch and release. The operation left 29 people dead, including 10 soldiers. His extradition to the United States was expedited, to face drug trafficking charges.
An impending plea deal with prosecutors was reported in May, around the same time that 17 members of the extended Guzmán family crossed into the U.S. as part of the negotiations. And now it’s official: according to a June 30 court document, Guzmán will plead guilty to the charges and cooperate with U.S. authorities to reduce his sentence. His brother, Joaquín, is reportedly also negotiating a plea—he was arrested a year ago with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in an operation that split the Sinaloa Cartel into those loyal to the “Chapitos” and to “El Mayo,” causing a civil war that has left over 1,400 dead and 2,000 missing. Mexico bleeds; the U.S. negotiates.
In other drug war news, ICE detained Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr., son of legendary Julio César Chávez, describing him as a “Sinaloa Cartel affiliate.” Chávez is being processed for “expedited removal” to Mexico, where he has an open arrest warrant on weapons trafficking and organized crime charges. According to journalist Luis Chaparro, Chávez Jr. and Ovidio Guzmán were among 13 Sinaloa Cartel suspects listed on an arrest warrant issued in Mexico in 2023. The 39-year old boxing champion is married to Frida Muñoz, the widow of one of El Chapo’s sons, Édgar, who was killed in a shootout in 2008.
On July 4, an anti-gentrification march was held in the heart of some of the Mexico City neighborhoods that have been most popular with foreigners, particularly since the pandemic—Roma and Condesa. The slogan of the organizers was “It’s not progress, it’s displacement” and they said they were focused on the structural problems leading to rising costs of living and loss of neighborhood identity. But of course, protesting against faceless ideologies and systems has its limits.
The photos of the protests splashed across social media and newspapers showed signs that read “Gringos go back to your fucking country,” and “Foreigners love Mexico but hate Mexicans.” Some showed Trump’s face, others Elon Musk’s and told gringos to learn Spanish. The turnout was estimated to be in the hundreds, and included some “encapuchados” who vandalized restaurants and cafés, leaving behind graffiti and broken glass, as people hid inside.
It seems the protest wasn’t just about the lack of affordable housing (which is driven of course by many complex and often homegrown factors), but also about linked issues like class divides, a burgeoning resentment of foreigners—in particular, Americans—and a sense of cultural displacement.
Mayor Clara Brugada published a statement on Friday that acknowledged concerns about the displacement of residents from neighborhoods “they’ve lived in all their lives” and the lack of housing, which she says her government is working to address, but also condemned “xenophobic language” and any resorts to violence.
Meanwhile, the city’s efforts to regulate short-term rentals have stalled (I wrote about this in March) and the massive arrival of tourists for the 2026 World Cup is increasing concerns about their impact.
I’ll be coming back to this topic soon, from a more personal perspective.
Comments, questions or criticism? Email me: hola@themexpatriate.com. And if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it.