Chapo, Mayo, Mencho: another Mexican kingpin falls

The economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. After a look yesterday at the impact of four years of war on Ukraine. Today we get a rare look inside Russia and we have some surprising advice for runners. You might think that if you want a good marathon time, the simple aim is to get faster and faster. When training, we dig into piles of data to find a more nuanced plan. First up, though, A Mexican journalist can't even get the question out before President Claudia Sheinbaum cuts in with the answer.

0:03

Toilet guarantees, toyless guarantees.

1:22

What guarantees are there that the World cup will happen at this venue? All of them. All the guarantees, she replies. It's a fair question. On Sunday, a notorious drug lord named Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes and known simply as El Mencho was captured and mortally wounded in scenes that Mexico has seen before that sparked grotesque violence on the streets. Not the kind of press that one of the World cup host countries once right about now and Ms. Schoenbaum wants to calm nerves. But even though things seem to have quietened down for the moment, experience suggests that the violence is not over.

1:26

El Mincho was the head of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which is one of the two biggest cartels in Mexico and it's in fact the one with the biggest national spread, most brutal and incredibly diversified in terms of what it's into.

2:07

Sarah Burke is our Mexico City bureau chief.

2:21

He was a 59 year old former policeman who has headed this cartel since the start and probably Mexico's most wanted person. But this killing threatens to have a very long term impact on the country for good or potentially for bad as well.

2:24

Well, the for bad for now is that there seems to be widespread violence since his killing.

2:39

He was captured and died on Sunday and immediately violence broke out after that. So at least 15 to 20 states, there was roadblocks, there was torching of bus, airlines had to cancel flights. People who were visiting the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, which is in Jalisco state where he was captured, were told to shelter in place. So a huge amount of violence across the country. By Monday things had calmed down quite a lot and by Tuesday things were getting somewhat back to normal. But the concern is this is not over yet because what happens, and we've seen in the past in Mexico and in other countries is that when you take out the head of a cartel, often you get fragmentation, internecine conflict and that ends up generating more violent. So while everyone thinks this is a huge success, taking out El Mencho, which undoubtedly it is, I mean, it's a huge coup for the Mexicans and also pleases the Americans, this could generate a lot more violence.

2:44

And tell me more about the gang that El Mancho headed.

3:38

This had grown to be Mexico's most important significant criminal player. It has an international presence. It has extremely widely spread. It operates in all 32 Mexican states. It has a hugely diversified fuel theft, corruption, extortion, drug trafficking, timeshare fraud. You name it, they're in it. And it's known for being incredibly brutal, ruthless in terms of its use of violence, incredibly well armed and equipped. It has things that can shoot down military helicopters from the sky, and it uses drones as well to dump explosives in areas. So this cartel is an amalgam of affiliated groups up to around 92 by some estimates. And it was a very vertical command structure, because El Mintra was very good at keeping everyone in order, particularly because of just his complete, utter ruthlessness in terms of using violence. But that makes it also very prone to fragmentation. So if there is no succession plan, or if the people who were killed alongside him happen to be part of that succession plan, what you might see is this fragmentation. Just to give you another idea of this group and the challenge it poses to the Mexican authorities, in 2020, it tried to assassinate, in broad daylight in a very rich district of Mexico City, the then city security chief, who is now the Federal Security Minister, Omar Hafouche. It failed, but it was something that people didn't think could have happened before.

3:42

And so if you say this is a group that's particularly prone to fragmentation, and it is that kind of fragmentation and internecine fighting that leads to the violence. Why take out El Mencho at all? Why go about it that way?

5:08

I think there are two reasons for that. Claudia Schoenbaum is very serious about security. Since she came to power around 18 months ago, she has really made it clear that she is going to do something about the dire security situation in the country, which is a break from her predecessor. So she's boosted intelligence capability. She's appointed a very professional, good security minister who she also worked with in the city. And the second thing is she's under a lot of pressure from her American counterpart, Donald Trump, to do more to tackle criminal groups in the country. And he's threatened to carry out unilateral American strikes if she doesn't do so. So the Mexicans are under a huge amount of pressure on this. I also think this is a security team that knows what they're doing. So while they have taken out a kingpin and this might cause them immense problems, this isn't necessarily the start of a return to the kingpin strategy, which Shanebaum herself has on numerous occasions criticized. And I think everyone within Mexico and beyond is aware of the dangers, but I think she might have been pushed into it because there's much so such a valuable target. It's one that the Americans were really after and indeed it shows the capabilities that the Mexican forces have. Everyone across the political spectrum is very impressed by this operation.

5:20

And you said what started as quite a sharp spike in violence has already kind of tailed off. Do you think that's the end of this episode or just the end of this chapter?

6:29

We should not read anything into the fact it's tailed off or not too much. What you see is often there's a lull of a few weeks, sometimes even months as groups figure out what they're going to do, arm themselves, make the alliances they need. We saw this last year or a couple of years ago when one of the big leaders of the Sinaloa cartel was arrested and taken to the US in summer 2024. And there was a bit of violence and then there was a calm, or more or less a calm. And then in September, war in Sinaloa state broke out between the two factions of the cartel. And that violence continues to this day. And the government, despite having sent thousands of troops, is unable to quell. It is still a huge risk of this one that in fact the security Minister mentioned in a press conference a couple of days ago. And they're going to have to be very alert to any sense of anything breaking out, because if you don't immediately tamper down the flames, that can threaten to become an epidemic of violence. And this all matters and comes at a very crucial time for Mexico. This is not just about Ms. Shanebaum and her legacy, which she has staked on security, but it's also about the economy. Jalisco State is an extremely important business hub and investment hub. But moreover, or more interestingly, the World cup is going to be co hosted by Mexico, the US and Canada in just four months time. And one of the matches at least is scheduled to be played in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco. So if there is any form of huge violent fallout from this, it's very likely to affect Mexico in many, many different ways, including affecting the World Cup. So what happens between now and then is really crucial and not just Mexico, but the world's Eye is will be on it.

6:37

Sarah, thanks very much for joining us.

8:19

Thanks for having me, Jason.

8:21

The narrative in a country that's been invaded is clear cut. Terrible, but clear. The narrative for the invading country can be a lot more subtle. In Russia, no one voted for the war. In Ukraine, they were told it would be quick and righteous and in its way, glorious. They now know better. Our Russia editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, has been speaking to people on the ground, including a network of local reporters, to get a sense of how the war is affecting day to day life and how that has changed over four long years.

8:39

If you're in a big city like Moscow, St. Petersburg or Yekaterinburg in the Urals, you have a very strange experience. On the one hand you see posters advertising recruitment, but on the whole you don't see any presence of the war, but you experience it. And life has changed in the way people travel, in the way people communicate, in the way people fear, in the way, in the way they cover up their phones. So actually look closer and the war is everywhere.

9:13

Let's talk about people who live in the cities who are being told to

9:44

pretend as if the war isn't happening.

9:48

What ways has the war changed life for them?

9:50

Most Russian people are trying to live their normal life because they never chose this war, they never wanted this war. The vast majority wants this war to end as soon as possible. So they're kind of trying not to let it impinge on their life. And war is impinging. Let's say you get into a car and you have to drive somewhere and you have a sat nav in your car, you can't really use it because this spoofing, which is aimed to confuse Ukrainian drones, makes it impossible to use navigation. So your navigator might show you you're 50 miles away from where you are. Airports do get shut down a lot because of the drone threats. Flights get cancelled. Traveling to Europe, which is what a lot of urban middle class Russians used to do, is now really a forgotten experience there. Direct flights, you can get to Turkey, you can get to Georgia, Armenia, you can fly to Dubai, but you can't fly to Paris and you can't fly to Berlin. And even flying within Russia can be hazardous and risky because sanctions means that servicing and maintenance and spare parts are hard to get. And of course, perhaps the most immediate thing is communicating with each other. When I was in Moscow before the war, very few people used vpn. Now, for socially mobile Russians, VPN is just a fact of life. But all these things, of course, create the sense of isolation and create the sense of abnormality, even if you've adapted to them.

9:55

And what about on the business side of things? How have things changed there?

11:26

Russian economy effectively consists now of two parts. Money that's been thrown at war and into military industrial sector. That's what generates growth that you see in the figures, although that growth has now slowed down. That part of the economy produces stuff that is designed to be destroyed. All that stuff which shows up in the increased output and therefore in economic growth figures is not something that is useful for ordinary Russians or that something that can be counted as investment in Russia's future. The second part of the economy, it's the services, it's the restaurants, it's the clothing, it's timber, it's metal constructions. That part of the economy is doing a lot worse now, because what's happening is that the first part of the economy, the military industrial sector, is sucking out resources from the civilian economy. Now, the resilience of Russian business is quite extraordinary. It lived through crisis to crisis. It's learned to deal with corrupt legal system, learned to navigate in all sorts of ways. But what's been happening lately, I think, exceeds all of this. The biggest problem is complete lack of property rights. Russia, since the beginning of the war, has been going through one of the biggest redistribution of assets in its modern history. And it started with foreign companies that left Russia, and their assets been just grabbed and redistributed to cronies and to people close to Putin and close to the war. And then it went on to Russian businesses. Some 500 Russian companies have been effectively expropriated under all sorts of excuses. You know, something can be strategic of an airport I used to fly in and out of that's been grabbed from its own. And in that environment, investment just doesn't make any sense.

11:30

And one thing we haven't talked about, which must be very present for people

13:24

on the ground in Russia today, is

13:27

the veterans, the people who are coming back from the front as much as

13:29

the ones who are not.

13:32

So if you're in the big city or you go to an airport or you're on the train, you're very likely to bump into somebody who is wearing camouflage, who's a participant in the special military operation, which is how the war is known. You don't so much see them hanging around in bars or restaurants. They keep to themselves. You can see how ordinary Russians are actually trying to avoid any contact with them. They're trying to avert their Eyes. If basically what you're trying to do is not to let the war into your life, then these are unwelcome reminders. And people are scared of this man. They don't see them as heroes. They come back and they're having difficulty finding jobs because a lot of employers don't want this man. They didn't have many skills before they went to war, and the skills they had in the war, they're not needed now.

13:33

It's not a good advertisement for any sort of onward recruitment drive.

14:24

Right.

14:28

There is still a grand need for

14:28

more people to go to the front, go into what you've called many times the meat grinder.

14:29

Yeah. And that's still going on, although getting people is harder. As one foreign diplomat put it to me in a very crude but true terms, Putin has found the way to monetize desperately poor, in his view, useless lives. He's created this deathonomics. If you sign up, you get a one off bonus, which is about €35,000, plus you get about $2,000 a month, which is a lot. Russia now spends nearly 2 1/2% of its GDP, the equivalent of the entire Russian budget deficit, on getting this man. And it's getting more expensive and it puts pressure on the economy, but it's struggling to replenish the losses because it uses a lot of this man just as cannon fodder.

14:34

All of this, Arcady, speaks to a kind of unsustainability on the recruitment, on the robustness of the economy around business being able to be done, around the sheer number of men available to throw at the front. This doesn't sound like it can carry on.

15:26

I don't think this is very sustainable for a long time. What you see in Russia is now a contradiction, and people are realizing that something is just not right. And the hardest thing that people have described to me when I talk to them is this sense of complete lack of future. There is a Russian word for it, and the word is bisvreminya. And it means literally the absence of time. That's when time goes on. But your own lifetime has been frozen, unable to plan, unable to think what comes after, unable to imagine it. And for now, at least, the best thing that people can do is defending their normal life against all the stuff that Putin has inflicted on them. In four years, I haven't seen a mood quite as dark as it is today since the very beginning. And this is not a prediction. But sometimes in Russian history, as somebody once said to me, big changes come later than you think. And earlier than you expect. Those are not necessarily changes for the better.

15:38

Arkady, thanks very much for joining us.

16:48

Thank you for having me.

16:50

As Arkady was hinting at there, the one man who could put a stop to this war is resolutely choosing not to in a way he can't. That's the topic of the latest episode of Insider, our subscriber only video series. Arkady joins our top editors and correspondents to discuss how Vladimir Putin is stuck in a trap of his own making. Find Insider on our app every week.

16:52

Okay, so I'm here to tell you about marathon training. The surprising thing about marathon training is I think most people think you've got to train really, really hard if you want to do well. But the finding from this huge scientific study is that actually the best way to race fast is to train very slow.

17:28

Very slow.

17:49

Yeah.

17:50

Now, Ainsley, you are not only a data journalist at the Economist, but apparently a running enthusiast.

17:51

Yeah, I've done a couple of marathons, some trail marathons as well, just to spice things up a little bit. But most of what I've learned for this piece has definitely come from the literature rather than from my own experience.

17:56

And Tim Cross here in the studio with us too, you're our science correspondent, but you also write the well informed newsletter, often edit the well informed pieces, the spirit strand of science articles tackling real world questions about how to live better or run better. I guess you're also an enthusiast.

18:10

Wouldn't say I was an enthusiast. I do a couple of runs a week to keep fit, but it's not my favourite sport.

18:25

Okay, so angel, you did the data deep dive for this well informed. What did you find?

18:30

So probably the first thing that's useful to think about is what actually makes you good at running. There are three things, all of which you can train, but there's also a genetic component. So the first is your lactate threshold. So that's the point at which lactate builds up in your muscles faster that it can be cleared away.

18:36

The feeling tired stuff.

18:56

Yeah, you physically feel that. What that actually means is a little bit complicated. But yeah, it's basically that point that you can feel the real burning in your muscles. The second is VO2 max. So that is the rate that you can actually use oxygen. You can actually take it in and get it to where it needs to go. And then the final part is running economy. So, so that's basically just how efficient you are at traveling a certain distance in a certain time. That depends a lot on your physiology. So, you know the length of your legs, the calf to thigh ratio, all of that's very important, but it's also about your technique as well.

18:57

So those are the things that we're trying to optimize. How did you get into them?

19:31

Yeah, so the question I guess is what works best? What's the training regime that really is best for improving all of these three things? And that's actually quite a difficult question to answer from the data that's out there. There aren't really any good randomised control trials.

19:36

But Tim, you're a long term man of science, you must have seen studies looking into exactly these questions before, how all of that relates to, well, running performance.

19:54

Yeah. So, you know, the best studies in a given field tend to be randomised controlled trials. So ideally what you would do is you would take some large number of people and give them training plan A and some large number of people and give them training plan B and see who end up running faster at the end of it. That hasn't really been done in running. We have small studies that look at maybe a few dozen people, but nothing really big. One of the things that we did manage to find though was a very big observational study that looked at data on Strava, which is one of these exercise apps where you can log all the training you do. They managed to get hold of information from about 120,000 runners looking at the 16 weeks before they ran a marathon. So what that lets you do is look back in time and you can divide the people into to people who ran the marathon quickly and people who didn't run quite so fast and see what the differences were in their training plans. And that might tell you something about how well those training plans work.

20:01

Giant pile of data. This is where the data journalist comes in.

20:54

Yeah, well, it wasn't my number crunching, but I got to dig into the paper that was written by some of these academics. What they found was that comparing the fastest marathon runners, so that was people who were running the marathon in about two to two and a half hours. Goodness, very quick. Seriously, to the slowest people, they found that the fastest runners were running around three times more distance each week in their training. So really a lot more. They also had more sessions per week, which I guess makes sense to fit all that in. But crucially, what they found was that most of this additional time, almost all of this additional time that these runners were spending and running these distances was done very slow, just a really low intensity jogging, easily running an absolute ton,

20:58

but not really going very Hard at it. Why might that be?

21:44

Yeah. So I wonder if there are several things going on here. I mean, one is we know generally from exercise that sort of volume matters. Right. The more you do, the fitter you get. We also know that intensity matters, but the problem with that is it's just not physically possible to train really hard day after day after day after day. Because what the training does is it makes you tired, it fatigues you, and it sends a stimulus to your body saying, okay, we need to improve things. We need to build more mitochondria in our muscles, we need to have more capillaries to get oxygen there and so on. It's when you're resting that you're actually getting fitter and stronger.

21:47

So take home message here is I should be running as far as I can each time, as often as I can each week, and kind of taking it easy.

22:16

Yeah, I think that's essentially right. One twist, I guess, is that if you're training for a race, as the race starts to loom, when it's a few weeks away, you probably want to be running less and less. You want to taper, as they call it. The training sends the stimulus, but it's the rest that actually makes you fitter.

22:24

Yeah, yeah. There's some numbers actually that came up in my research that were pretty amazing. So increasing your taper from just one week to three weeks, so starting to come down on the training volume three weeks before can increase your performance by 3%. So improve your time in a marathon by 3%. Which, if you're trying to get a PB, that can make a really big difference.

22:40

Personal best for the personal best amateurs out there. So what if I follow all this advice to the letter? How much faster will my notional marathon be?

23:02

It's going to obviously vary on your experience in running, but if you want to try and run the best marathon you possibly can, it's definitely worth just getting out there for another extra run.

23:13

And Tim, as for well informed more generally, what else is coming down the pipe?

23:23

So we've got a piece coming out soon. Looking at the RFK diet, raw milk

23:27

is in there, I'm sure.

23:33

Beef is in there. Beef and butter and cheese. Lots of beef and butter and cheese is in there.

23:33

I may unwittingly already be on the RFK diet.

23:37

He's very keen on protein.

23:40

And I should point out that other burning questions of listeners and viewers should be sent to well informedconus.com and Tim, you will help to tackle them. For now, thank you both for joining us and well, see you out on the pavements, I guess.

23:41

Thank you, Jason.

23:52

Thanks, Jason.

23:53

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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