These are cartels, dude. They have people infiltrating the government and policemen who have been threatened to death to comply or die. Corruption is rampant at very top levels of government and part of it is fueled by the US itself, directly and indirectly. We’ve been waging a war against them for for decades and you know what they do when the local government “oversteps”? They go on shooting sprees downtown killing anyone in sight and go decapitate politicians so they can hang their heads off bridges. It’s brutal. This is not the USA.
There are so many things I’m not even touching that have happened in the past decade that make this so much more complicated than it seems. They can easily rile up a month-long standoff with authorities, as they did in Michoacán vs the local government and then the military. They’re well-coordinated and they have modern equipment, warehouses, free labor in the form of slaves, an underground network, connections to people in high places, and anything you could ask for to avoid the law. It’s quite insane.
Just to paint you a picture, a local governmentkidnapped and murdered 43 students who dared protest in 2014 with the help of the cartels in a top-down operation, and where 26 more people were murdered who dared investigate. That’s the level of shit we’re up against.