Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Mexico takes out a major drug boss, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling triggers some tariff relief for the region, and we remember a salsa legend.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Mexico takes out a major drug boss, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling triggers some tariff relief for the region, and we remember a salsa legend.

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Sheinbaum Flexes Security Muscle

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has long faced comparisons to her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Last weekend, however, around a year and a half into her term, she signaled a definitive break with López Obrador on security policy.

López Obrador advocated a largely nonconfrontational strategy toward organized crime dubbed “hugs, not bullets,” but on Sunday Sheinbaum’s administration carried out a major operation that killed the notorious boss of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” The United States provided intelligence support.

Sheinbaum’s security policies had already produced different results from López Obrador’s. During her tenure as mayor of Mexico City, her intelligence-driven approach led to better trends on homicide reduction than the country at large, according to official numbers. After Sheinbaum became president in October 2024, homicides linked to organized crime fell by 16 percent nationwide from 2024 to 2025, according to consulting firm Lantia Consultores.

The Sheinbaum administration has stepped up scrutiny of financial flows to drug gangs and sought to arrest the gangs’ logistical operators, as well as their most violent killers. Still, Sunday’s strike against El Mencho was an escalation.

Last year, Sheinbaum vowed to take security policy seriously but promised not to fight a “war on drugs.” What changed was pressure from Washington. U.S. officials have repeatedly floated sending troops over the border to attack gang sites, which would cross a red line for the Mexican government.

The hit against El Mencho “was related to U.S. pressure” for “more powerful blows against organized crime,” Eduardo Guerrero, the director of Lantia Consultores, said. The Trump administration promptly praised Sheinbaum following the operation. “The good guys are stronger than the bad guys,” one senior........

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