ZACATECAS, ZAC.— The recent discovery of ten bodies in Zacatecas has reignited national debate over whether the Mexican state’s dramatic drop in homicides was genuine institutional progress or merely a fragile truce between rival cartels, political analyst Pascal Beltrán del Río writes in Excélsior.
Throughout 2025, government spokespeople hailed Zacatecas as a premier security success story. Official statistics showed murders falling nearly 80%, with notoriously violent hubs like Fresnillo relinquishing their titles as Mexico’s most dangerous areas. Authorities credited coordinated law enforcement efforts and strategic state policing for the statistical turn.
However, Beltrán del Río argues that recent violence exposes a far darker reality: the apparent calm was actually a “pax narca”—an unwritten cartel truce—rather than a triumph of law enforcement.
According to the analysis, the region’s two dominant criminal organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel in the north and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in the south, entered a pragmatic agreement to divide transit corridors, markets, and territory. As long as both factions respected established borders, explicit violence plummeted, giving local authorities a statistical illusion of safety that they prematurely claimed as their own.
That fragile balance shattered after ten people were abducted and executed. Tensions escalated further when a video linked to a Sinaloa Cartel faction accused local officials of breaching implicit pacts.
Beltrán del Río emphasizes that genuine peace requires the rule of law, institutional justice, and dismantling criminal networks. In contrast, relying on cartel pacts leaves public safety at the mercy of rival gangs. When these criminal agreements inevitably fracture over betrayal or shifting interests, violence erupts anew, proving that the state never held real control over public security.
Source: Excélsior
