‘I Am Under Threat’: Why Mexico Politician Calls Her Country a ‘Narco-State’

Virginia Allen Virginia Allen is a senior news producer for The Daily Signal and host of “The Daily Signal Podcast” and “Problematic Women.”

A Mexican senator has received death threats for speaking out boldly against the criminal cartels operating in her country.

“I am under threat,” Sen. Lilly Tellez told The Daily Signal. “But I have faith in God, and that’s why I do this. And if we don’t speak about it, this will get worse, and no one is safe.”

Tellez has been serving in Mexico’s Senate since 2018 and is outspoken about the country’s crime and drug problems, going so far as to call Mexico a “narco-state, because the former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made a pact with the cartels.”

“He took money from them to get into power, and in exchange, he didn’t go after the cartels,” Tellez claimed.

Tellez is not the only political leader to make the allegation. The Texas Public Policy Foundation has accused Lopez Obrador of taking payments from the Sinaloa Cartel.

In 2024, The New York Times reported that U.S. law enforcement spent years looking into allegations, but a formal investigation was never launched. Law enforcement reportedly dropped the inquiry over a lack of “appetite to pursue allegations against the leader of one of America’s top allies.”

Lopez Obrador has denied that the United States inquired about his alleged deals with the cartels and has called accusations that he took money from the cartels “completely false.”

However, Tellez asserts that Lopez Obrador allowed the cartels to influence Mexico’s government and that the criminal organizations continue to exploit that access today.

Mexico’s Education Secretary Mario Delgado is a “narco-politician,” Tellez claims, accusing him of being involved “with the cartel that smuggles oil.” She accuses Coordinator of Advisors to the President Jesús Ramírez Cuevas of the same.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is “protecting these narco-politicians,” Tellez says.