# Canada

Criminal organizations have an increasingly diversified and complex business portfolio. From their traditional activities—production, trafficking, and marketing of narcotics—they have expanded into fuel smuggling, transportation, extortion, kidnapping, private security, the construction industry, and a long and imaginative list of other activities. Organized crime was and is a very important power center in Mexico, which was already conveniently fragmented. Within this criminal framework, which is not monolithic, there is a constellation of organizations that compete with each other, fighting ruthlessly for business, where the only law is the one each imposes in its own realm, because that is the only way to survive.

The Mexican government is responding in extreme terms to two events that have changed the internal and external political and military situation. The ruling party’s response to events, apparently unrelated: the location and subsequent death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes (Mencho), and the government of Claudia Sheinbaum’s proposal for political and electoral reform.

Recent violence in Mexico highlights the failure of government strategies to manage organized crime. Previous approaches assumed negotiation or addressing poverty could reduce crime, but these have proven ineffective. The state struggles against deeply embedded criminal organizations, now a direct challenge to sovereignty. Public safety and economic stability must be prioritized.