The fatal shooting of Valentín Lavín Romero, the mayor of Temoac, a municipality in the eastern Mexican state of Morelos, inside town hall on Wednesday has once again drawn attention to a stark indicator of violence and insecurity in Mexico, where municipal officials are increasingly targeted by organized crime.

With Lavín Romero’s killing, 14 mayors have died violent deaths so far during President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, a figure that already exceeds the toll recorded over some previous presidential terms in their entirety. According to Víctor Sánchez, a scholar at the Autonomous University of Coahuila, the trend points to a broader and more troubling phenomenon: the growing capture of municipal governments by criminal organizations.

Oaxaca, with five cases, has recorded the highest number of killings of sitting mayors over the past 18 months, followed by Michoacán with four. Lavín Romero had already survived a similar attack in January, when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle along the Mexico-Oaxaca highway. He took a leave of absence after that first attack.

His death adds to a grim tally that began with three cases in 2024, rose to eight in 2025 and has already reached three so far this year. Besides the mayor of Temoac, Eduardo Saavedra López, who was killed on July 12, and Joel Ángel Bravo Martínez, murdered on June 13, were both shot dead this year. They were the mayors of Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz and San Miguel Amatitlán, respectively, in the state of Oaxaca.

Sheinbaum’s administration took office on October 1, 2024, and has been in office for just one year and nine months. With four years still remaining in her term, the number of mayors killed during her presidency is already approaching the total recorded under her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when 26 mayors were murdered over six years.

The figure remains below the toll recorded during the administrations of Felipe Calderón, when 37 mayors were killed, and Enrique Peña Nieto, whose presidency was the deadliest on record for local elected officials, with 42 murdered mayors, according to data compiled by nongovernmental organizations and local media.

One of the most high-profile attacks was the killing of Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, who was shot dead in November 2025 by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The murder shocked the country and prompted the federal government to deploy additional security forces to the state.

Another case that drew national attention was the murder of Alejandro Arcos Catalán, the mayor of Chilpancingo, Guerrero, who was beheaded on October 6, 2024, just six days after taking office.

Mario Vázquez, a senator from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) representing the northern state of Chihuahua, has described the situation as the result of the federal government’s abandonment of municipalities, arguing this neglect is costing lives.

“They [municipal governments] have been left to face organized crime on their own, in a failure so grave that its consequences are themselves criminal,” he said in a statement issued at the end of June. “A mayor is the leader of a community. When a mayor is murdered, the goal is to instill fear in an entire town and demonstrate that criminal organizations can prevail over public institutions.”

EL PAÍS sought comment from Mexico’s Interior Ministry regarding those claims, but had received no response by the time this article went to press.

Sánchez, who is also a security and organized crime specialist, argues that the ability of criminal groups to exert such an impact on local politics is further evidence of their growing grip on municipal governments. According to him, municipalities serve multiple purposes for criminal organizations. Control over local authorities can ensure cooperation from police forces, advance warning of federal security operations, and even intelligence on rival criminal groups.

“That’s why we see these conflicts where organizations get involved politically, finance campaigns, cause violence and intimidate candidates,” Sánchez explains by phone. “In other words, the attacks against mayors hide a bigger problem than the struggle for territorial control by the organizations themselves. Political violence is a symptom of the fight between two or more organizations to control an area.”

Erubiel Tirado, a professor at the Ibero-American University and an expert on national security, argues that despite the Mexican government’s claims that high-impact crime has fallen by 31% since October 2024, the federal security strategy is not being implemented evenly across the country.

“Municipal governments are the first level of government people come into contact with, but the security strategy has not been applied uniformly in terms of building capacities and containing violence,” he says.

Sánchez is realistic and believes confronting organized crime is impossible, especially given these organizations’ military capacity. In that context, he says, only sustained support from the federal government can enable municipalities to push back against criminal organizations.

“The abandonment of municipal governments in the face of organized crime is a chronic problem. The same reflection applies to when the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] and PAN governed, but I agree that it must be addressed by the federal executive and that now, with the Morena party leading the government, it is their responsibility.”

The Ibero-American University scholar notes that the municipalities where these killings occur are “almost always” small jurisdictions. “That is, the ones that are hit hardest,” he says. “Larger municipalities are left alone for political reasons. Take into account that of the more than 2,500 municipalities in the country, 500 of them have very few police officers. Some have between three and 10 officers.”

Next year, Mexico will head to the polls to elect 17 governors, as well as mayors, state lawmakers and federal legislators. During the 2024 election cycle, 37 aspiring pre-candidates and official candidates were murdered, the vast majority of them seeking municipal offices such as mayor, council member and municipal trustee.

Tirado notes that less than a year remains before the elections, yet violence against elected officials is already escalating, much as political parties have begun their campaigns ahead of schedule.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

The succession at the helm of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) following the death of Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho,” appears settled. Leadership of the organization has fallen to Juan Carlos Valencia González, known as “R3,” one of the kingpin’s stepsons. That became clear after sanctions announced Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department, in coordination with Mexico’s Finance Ministry, against 55 individuals and entities linked to the powerful criminal organization.

Washington has identified the core group of men supporting Valencia in running the cartel. They are longtime CJNG operatives who held strategic positions under El Mencho and have now sworn allegiance to R3. With the exception of one figure who has already been arrested, the group consists of five senior leaders who remain at large and active in Mexico.

Until a few months ago, there was widespread speculation about who would inherit El Mencho’s position, with several names emerging as possible successors alongside Valencia. In the organizational chart released by U.S. authorities, some of those same figures now appear beneath R3. Valencia, also known as “El Pelón,” comes from a family with deep criminal roots. Beyond his relationship to El Mencho, his mother and uncle, Rosalinda González Valencia and Abigael González Valencia, are linked to the Los Cuinis criminal network, which has strong ties to the state of Michoacán. Washington is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Valencia’s capture.

Gonzalo Mendoza Gaytán, alias “El Sapo,” is the highest-ranking member of Valencia’s new inner circle and effectively serves as his right-hand man. Valencia’s other key lieutenant, Audias Flores Silva, alias “El Jardinero,” was arrested in April. El Sapo, 37, has served as CJNG’s regional boss in Puerto Vallarta, the jewel of Jalisco’s coastline, and has overseen the cartel’s forced recruitment operations in the state. Jalisco prosecutors have identified him as being responsible for the Izaguirre ranch in Teuchitlán, the notorious training camp where the CJNG allegedly trained and tortured recruits, many of whom were forcibly enlisted.

El Sapo has a reputation for extreme violence. He has been linked to the disappearance of five young men in Lagos de Moreno in 2023, a case that shocked Mexico after a video surfaced showing CJNG gunmen forcing the victims to kill one another. He has also been connected to the 2020 assassination of former Jalisco governor Aristóteles Sandoval and is accused of orchestrating a 2015 ambush on state police officers that left 15 officers dead.

The organizational chart also includes Francisco Javier Gudiño Haro, alias “La Gallina,” 38, who was likewise identified by Jalisco prosecutors as one of those responsible for the Izaguirre ranch alongside El Sapo. U.S. authorities also identified Gudiño Haro and Carlos Andrés Rivera Varela, alias “La Firma” — another member of Valencia’s inner circle — as leaders of “a CJNG repression group based in Puerto Vallarta that orchestrates the assassinations of rivals and politicians with high-caliber weapons.”

According to the Trump administration, both La Gallina and La Firma had long answered to orders from El Sapo. Rivera Varela, 40, a Colombian national, was also involved in the murder of former Jalisco governor Aristóteles Sandoval.

An investigation by The Washington Post, drawing on findings from Mexican prosecutors, identified La Firma as the alleged mastermind behind the 2020 assassination attempt on Omar García Harfuch, then Mexico City’s security chief and now the country’s federal security minister. The newspaper also described him as the architect of the CJNG’s territorial expansion. U.S. authorities also accuse him of laundering money to finance the cartel’s illicit activities.

The Washington Post reported that while La Firma planned the attack on García Harfuch, the man who oversaw its execution on the ground, in broad daylight in the heart of Mexico City, was Julio César Montero Pinzón, known as “El Tarjetas.” The gunman, who that day commanded a heavily armed team of hitmen, played another pivotal role within the CJNG: generating revenue for the organization. Washington has accused El Tarjetas of obtaining $350 million through a timeshare fraud scheme that defrauded roughly 6,000 U.S. citizens between 2019 and 2024.

The third member of the Valencia clan is Julio Alberto Castillo Rodríguez, alias “El Chorro,” whom U.S. authorities identify as El Mencho’s son-in-law. According to Washington, El Chorro controls the port of Manzanillo, in the western state of Colima, from where he “has facilitated the procurement of precursor chemicals used for the manufacture of fentanyl and other illicit drugs trafficked into the United States.”

As early as July 2025, the U.S. government had described El Chorro as a “potential successor to Oseguera,” a prospect that now appears, at least for the time being, to have been set aside. Mexican authorities arrested him twice, in 2015 and 2016, but judges ordered his release on both occasions, allowing him to continue his criminal career a decade later.

The Trump administration designated the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), along with several other Mexican criminal groups, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February 2025. The move was part of a new approach to combating drug trafficking, one that places cartels in the same category as threats such as ISIS and other Islamist militant groups.

“President Trump has made clear that terrorist cartels will be dismantled,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on Thursday. “Today’s action strikes Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s leadership, financiers, and criminal networks, denying the cartel the resources it uses to traffic fentanyl, terrorize communities, and threaten American lives.”

In the often fraught relationship between Washington and Mexico City, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has in recent months chosen to cooperate with U.S. authorities on security matters. On Thursday, the two governments were also engaged in trade talks aimed at defining a new framework for their bilateral relationship, with the future of the USMCA trade pact increasingly uncertain amid Trump’s continued attacks on the agreement.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Mexico and the United States are preparing for a new trade showdown. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government will receive a delegation from the Trump administration this week to begin the first annual review of the USMCA, after Washington declined to renew the North American trade pact for another 16 years.

Work sessions with technical teams from both countries will begin on Tuesday, and a meeting at the National Palace between President Claudia Sheinbaum and the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Jamieson Greer, is scheduled for Wednesday. According to the U.S., discussions will cover economic security as well as labor issues, electronic payment services and trade in automobiles, steel, aluminum and agricultural products.

Given the importance of the USMCA, Sheinbaum accepted Trump’s invitation to attend the World Cup closing ceremony in New York last Sunday. After her brief trip, the Mexican president said the meeting was short but that she had the opportunity to speak with both the U.S. president and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the trade issue. “Our goal is that in this first year of review we can reach agreements so that in subsequent years it will just be a checklist, so to speak, a verification that what we agreed to this year is being complied with, and not a review every year that helps neither the United States, nor Canada, nor Mexico,” the president said at her regular morning press conference.

The meeting marks the start of a new phase in commercial integration between Mexico and the U.S. With a shared border of 1,954 miles, both countries recognize their economic interdependence; however, while Sheinbaum’s government sought to keep the current framework in place, Trump has aimed to change the rules of the game since his first day in the White House. This third round of negotiations in Mexico City aims to be a decisive step to clear up uncertainties about North America’s trade future, which has effectively shifted from a trilateral negotiating framework to bilateral talks.

Last week at an economic forum, Greer sounded optimistic about progress in talks with Mexican authorities. The U.S. official focused his concern on the United States’ trade deficit with Mexico. “Having a structural trade deficit like the one we have had for so long makes no economic sense and that is why, even with Mexico, we need to ensure that the trade deficit is under control,” he said. Greer said the order from the White House is to find, in any agreement reached with Mexico—whether through tariffs or quotas—a way to control the trade imbalance. The mission is not expected to be easy. In the first five months of the year alone, the United States’ trade deficit with its southern neighbor exceeded $81 billion, a 2.7% increase compared with the imbalance recorded in the same period of 2025.

In this new roadmap, the United States has set the pace for its North American partners. Hours after Trump welcomed his neighbors and trading partners to the VIP box at the World Cup, the US announced it will impose 50% tariffs on most Canadian products, alleging that Canada has discriminated against American cars, alcoholic beverages and dairy products. The tariffs, which take effect in 30 days, will exclude energy products, potash, fish and critical minerals, but will hit products that were previously exempt from tariffs under the USMCA.

In Mexico’s case, the debate has focused on Washington’s requests to raise the U.S. content of cars assembled in the region, as well as other labor and critical‑minerals rules. Although President Sheinbaum and her economic cabinet have insisted that relations with the U.S. remain in good shape and that there is no uncertainty, Mexican business leaders remain on edge about the direction of these talks in the face of a U.S. president who threatens to undermine the USMCA and exerts pressure through his tariff wall. Despite the treaty’s existence, Mexico pays tariffs to Washington under section 232 on its exports of steel, aluminum, copper, automobiles and other goods.

Ignacio Martínez Cortés, coordinator of the Laboratory for Analysis in Trade, Economics and Business at UNAM, says this meeting is a turning point because it marks the start of the USMCA’s first annual review and, at the same time, begins the countdown for the agreement’s future; if the partners fail to reach consensus, the pact will end in 2036. “Mexico will try to preserve preferential access and, if possible, secure a tariff preference—not necessarily 100%, but a significant percentage,” he predicts.

For the Latin American country, the trade agreement has been the cornerstone for supporting U.S. investment on its soil and the flow of exports that, despite Trump’s current protectionist measures, continues to break records month after month. Mexico is the United States’ top trading partner with nearly $900 billion in annual trade. More than 80% of Mexican exports end up in the U.S. market, which is why the uncertain outlook for the agreement complicates Mexico’s economic activity amid a slowdown, already weighed down by sectoral tariffs imposed by Trump on key products such as cars, steel, minerals and tomatoes.

Thirty years after North America’s economic integration, Mexico, Canada and the United States now face an unprecedented process that stretches the seams of the USMCA. Faced with a blunt and unpredictable negotiator in Trump, Mexico will have to negotiate uphill to keep afloat and even extend trade advantages while trying to contain uncertainty among businesses and investors. This new phase of the treaty will be a test for Sheinbaum’s government on the economic, political and diplomatic fronts—an intense exam that promises to be long, winding and surgical.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition