Sheinbaum and Morena Leadership Directly Accuse Calderón of Protecting the Sinaloa Cartel

The long-running debate over Calderón's drug war legacy escalated sharply in July 2026 when President Claudia Sheinbaum, at her July 10 morning press conference, stated 'si hubo relación con este grupo delincuencial, con el Cártel de Sinaloa, fue con Fox y con Calderón' — directly accusing the Calderón and Fox governments of favoring the Sinaloa Cartel, and citing García Luna's US conviction as proof of a 'government-crime relationship.' Four days later, Morena's national leader Ariadna Montiel went further, calling Calderón and Fox the Sinaloa Cartel's 'principal accomplices' and linking García Luna directly to the cartel's rise. The exchange marked the most direct presidential-level accusation yet against Calderón's administration, following his own late-May defense of the drug war as 'the correct decision' at a PAN rally, and continues the pattern of legacy reassessment seen in the April 2026 UN disappearances referral and kingpin-strategy retrospectives.