Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, archbishop of Guadalajara in Jalisco state in Mexico, warned this week that “at the level of many municipalities, at the level of several states, the government, the decisions, are in the hands of organized crime.”
In a May 3 press conference, the Mexican cardinal noted that “this is nothing new; it’s what the people experience.”
The cardinal said this in response to a question from the press regarding recent controversy surrounding the unsealing of an indictment filed by a U.S. federal prosecutor, which was announced in an April 29 press release, against the governor of the state of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and nine other Mexican officials.
Rocha, a member of the ruling Morena party, is charged with “narcotics importation [into the U.S.] conspiracy,” “possession of machine guns and destructive devices,” and “conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.” U.S. authorities are seeking life imprisonment for the politician, who is currently on leave from his post.
Regarding the accusations made by U.S. authorities, Claudia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, said during her May 4 morning press conference that “we don’t cover for anyone” but demanded “evidence.”
“Let them send whatever evidence they have. And if warranted, the prosecutor’s office — the [federal] prosecutor’s office — will take action,” she said.
The power of organized crime in Mexico is ‘nothing new’
Robles noted that “the allegations made by the U.S. government are one thing, allegations which I am willing to assume are based on investigation, on firsthand knowledge, and which have some foundation.”
However, he emphasized, “as far as our own country is concerned, something we have been saying and lamenting for a long time now, we are experiencing, at the level of many municipalities and several states, that the government, the decisions, are in the hands of organized crime.”
The residents experience this through a financial “levy they call ‘protection money’ — demanded, threatened, and coerced — because they have a business or hold a job, and are forced to pay a fee to organized crime,” he said.
The archbishop noted that the actions of criminals have also made themselves felt “during election periods,” and that he knows of cases involving candidates who “received threats from organized crime if they continued their bid for the office to which they were legitimately aspiring.”
This, he warned, “indicates that organized crime in many places puts forward its candidates, imposes its candidates under threat,” in situations that “speak to the very real power that organized crime holds within the structure of our society.”
“I don’t know to what degree the authorities bear a shared responsibility — it could not be otherwise — or to what degree there is impunity, for we do not see these matters being brought to trial or subjected to the enforcement of the law,” he stated. “In that sense, we can say that the drug traffickers govern in certain jurisdictions, in certain places.”
Violence in Jalisco and the extent of organized crime in Mexico
Jalisco is the stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal groups, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State.
According to the 2025 Mexico Peace Index, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, “over the last two decades, Jalisco has recorded both the highest number of disappeared [missing and presumed dead] persons and the highest number of bodies exhumed from clandestine graves.”
“Of the 3,335 bodies exhumed nationwide between late 2018 and late 2021, one-third were found in Jalisco alone, representing by far the highest figure recorded in any state,” the report notes.
An especially dramatic case that brought these practices to international light in early 2025 was that of “Rancho Izaguirre,” about 40 miles from Guadalajara, where charred human remains, along with hundreds of scattered clothes and shoes, were discovered in what had apparently functioned as an organized crime training and extermination camp.
Based on leaked intelligence from the Secretariat of National Defense, the Mexican newspaper El Universal produced an “Organized Crime Map” of Mexico in October 2022, indicating that “40% of the country’s states have their entire territory divided among one or more organized crime groups.”
“Of the 2,471 municipalities in Mexico, at least one cartel, crime gang, or crime cell is listed in 1,198 of them [48%],” the Mexican newspaper states.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.