Mexico's revolving door (YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

It is no big secret that Mexican police officers moonlight for drug traffickers. As far back as 2010, a state commander nicknamed “El Tyson” admitted in a confession video on national television that he was not only a high-ranking cartel member, but that he made young narco recruits cut up bodies to lose their fear of blood. El Tyson was arrested by the federal police when it was controlled by Genaro García Luna, a square-jawed intelligence agent who was a key architect of the country’s war on cartels.
In a twist of fate, however, García Luna is now himself on trial in New York, accused of pocketing millions of dollars from those same kingpins after helping them traffic tons of cocaine to America. The trial, which began on 17 January in a federal court in Brooklyn and is expected to last eight weeks, breaks new ground in the drug war. Since Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs in 1971, the US has taken down a vast array of Mexican traffickers — most famously Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was convicted in the same Brooklyn courthouse in 2019. But never before has such a high-ranking Mexican official faced a US jury on drug charges.
Journalists and activists have for years pointed out that it is no use targeting the mobsters if you don’t go after their political protection. This case therefore marks a serious turning point for US law enforcement. But it also rings alarm bells. The level of corruption alleged by the witnesses goes beyond anything I’ve seen in my two decades covering Mexico’s drug war. At the very least, the trial is deeply embarrassing for Washington’s drug agents and politicians who schmoozed with García Luna. (There are photos of him with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder.) More seriously, the far-reaching allegations also suggest that, unless the United States can reduce the amount that Americans spend on illegal drugs — estimated at close to $150 billion a year in one study — this narco corruption may just carry on with catastrophic consequences.
What’s more, it is by no means guaranteed that the jury will convict García Luna. In his opening argument, defence lawyer César de Castro claimed the prosecution does not have hard evidence that his client led a double life as law enforcer and crime boss. “No money. No photos. No videos. No texts. No emails. No records,” De Castro said. “No credible, believable, plausible evidence Mr García Luna helped the cartels.”
Prosecutors are, however, using the testimony of so-called cooperating witnesses, including scarred and grizzly cartel operatives who could have made deals with prosecutors to take the stand. Some have confessed to killing multiple victims and were major traffickers. Before the trial started, the judge even had to rule that the defence could not ask them about potential acts of cannibalism — a practice that various gangsters have been found to engage in — because it might be “distracting”.
As the jury was selected, prosecutors rigorously made sure the candidates agreed they could believe such witnesses and convict someone on their evidence, even if it were not backed up by physical proof. If the jury were to find García Luna not guilty, it would be, as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Tuesday, “a fiasco — the agencies and government of the United States would look very bad”. There is a lot at stake.
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