The Inverted Pyramid of Power

November 16, 2025

Luis Rubio

The confusion could hardly be greater. President Sheinbaum is right to reject a return to Mexico’s “war on drugs.” But in the same breath, she equates confronting cartels with upholding the rule of law—missing the point entirely. The issue is not whether the state should hunt down drug lords; it’s whether it can protect its citizens. Public safety is not a talking point; it’s the government’s first duty.

The real crisis in Mexico isn’t narcotics—it’s insecurity. Ordinary people live surrounded by extortion, kidnapping, theft, and violence. If security isn’t the government’s top priority, what is? Protecting fuel thieves (huachicol)? Keeping drug routes open? Shielding loyalists from prosecution? Preserving the clientelist networks that sustain power? Or simply staying in office while leaving the country’s problems to fester?

This isn’t a partisan jab. It’s a question of priorities. Without peace and order, there can be no growth, no investment, no real reduction in poverty. The administration’s value system is upside down. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan showed decades ago, poverty is reduced by incentivizing job creation, not by subsidizing idleness, as Morena’s programs do. And crime must be fought from the ground up, because nothing erodes social progress faster than the normalization of lawlessness.

Yet the president now accuses “the right” of demanding tougher action against organized crime—as if security were an ideological cause. It isn’t. It’s the second rung on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right after food and shelter. Without safety, nothing else matters.

The deeper tragedy is that Mexicans have learned to live with this violence. The daily killings, the burned-out businesses, the silence of local officials—all of it has become background noise. And when the government wonders why there’s stagnation, why the country feels adrift, it might start by looking in the mirror: its legal reforms and its inaction on the security front.

The message from the top seems clear: accept crime, corruption, and abuse as the new normal. Keep quiet and carry on.

As this administration enters its second year, it appears committed to the same failed playbook that has produced only paralysis and decay. But security crises have a way of reshaping history—sometimes abruptly. The Zapatista uprising did. The Acteal massacre did. And Morena’s 2018 triumph might never have happened without the outrage over Ayotzinapa. It would be naïve to think the story ends in Uruapan.

Benjamin Franklin once warned that entire kingdoms can fall “for want of a nail.” “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the battle was lost; for want of a battle the kingdom was lost; all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

In Mexico today, the missing nail is security—and without it, everything else might crumble.