The formal accusations from the United States against the governor of Sinaloa, and the direct involvement of a senator of the Republic, along with several officials from the ruling party, are not an isolated incident. They are the indisputable proof that the so-called “narcogovernment” is not an opposition invention, but an operational reality that has turned Sinaloa into the perfect laboratory to elevate the narco, subdue political opposition, and make Mexico, no longer the perfect dictatorship, but the perfect narco-state.
The U.S. complaint is explicit; those accused, according to the files, acted as the link between the leaders of Los Chapitos and the disgraced governor. Before the 2021 elections, the one who holds a seat in the Senate of the Republic and is president of the Commission on Legislative Studies, Enrique Inzunza, handed over names and addresses of opposition candidates so that organized crime could threaten, kidnap, or disappear them and thus ensure the victory of the official candidate, Rubén Rocha Moya.
This is not a case of “infiltration.” It is a State operation. The same government that operated under the mantra of “no lying, no stealing, no betraying” has turned that cliché into a rhetorical shield to protect exactly the opposite. The lie has been institutionalized as official discourse; theft, as a system of political financing; betrayal, as a method of territorial control. Corruption ceased to be a vice and became the fuel that drives the devastating machinery of the State. Without it, the project cannot stand. With it, the narco stops being an enemy and becomes a strategic partner.
Since the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the treatment of “gentlemen” toward the gentlemen of the narco has been perfected. Fifteen visits to Sinaloa, twenty-three tours, six months in Badiraguato, cradle of the Sinaloa Cartel, some of them private, without press and with a reduced entourage. “I already received your letter,” López Obrador once said to Consuelo Loera, mother of “El Chapo,” as evidenced in a video that is now conclusive and irrefutable. Greetings almost of servitude to the grandmother of the Chapitos. Visits to the land of Caro Quintero, the Beltrán Leyva, and the Chapitos. The message was clear: the narco is not persecuted, it is received with presidential deference because “they are also human beings.”
Sinaloa was not a state to promote well-being. It was the laboratory where the formula was tested to use the State to shield organized crime and use organized crime to shield the State. The names of opponents handed over to the narco were not an electoral strategy; they were the imposition of terror and violence as a resource. The narco not only financed; it decided who could compete and who had to disappear.
In the face of this rot, the moral and political responsibility of Catholics is very high. It is not about partisan preferences; it is about coherence with the faith. No Catholic can vote for parties that protect the narco, that constitute narcogovernments, and that shelter in systematic corruption. Even less so when those same parties ally against life because being with the narco is to attack life, peace, and well-being. The social doctrine of the Church is clear: subsidiarity, truth, and justice are not optional.
The formulas of great Christian thinkers like the brothers Chesterton and Belloc against corrupt politicians are current. In The Party System, Joseph Hilaire Belloc and Cecile Edward Chesterton warned that partyocracy corrupts until it turns corruption into a national habit. The solution is not to change parties, but to change the system, to pact the truth, to publicly expose the corrupt as one extirpates a cancer, to bring them to the courts without fear, and to demand that citizens can judge the failure to keep electoral promises. Belloc added that a return to faith is indispensable to redeem the economy and politics.
What do we Catholics say? Mexican Catholics, in conscience, cannot continue tolerating this accumulation of abuses by lending their vote to those who have made the narco a partner and corruption the fuel of the State. The responsibility is moral; whoever votes for evil participates in evil. The responsibility is political; whoever remains silent legitimizes.
It is time for a pact for the truth. It is time to demand justice. It is time for Catholics to say, as Chesterton wielded and the social doctrine of the Church demands: Enough! As the title of a book says like a sure dart: This is the fourth transformation… of the narco. Because what happened this week is not a mere anecdote; it is the reality that in seven years has built one of the worst political systems that has made lies its customary truth. What more has to happen for us to realize?