Even a mexican telenovela would struggle to come up with a better second season. In 2019 a court in New York sentenced to life in prison Joaquín Guzmán (better known as “El Chapo”), a leading drug trafficker who headed the Sinaloa gang. This week in the same room sat Genaro García Luna, who was the federal security minister during President Felipe Calderón’s “war on drugs” between 2006 and 2012 and a lauded ally of the United States. He was arrested in Texas in 2019, and the following year pled not guilty to five charges, including one of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

The trial is a reminder of a basic lack of trust that has long dogged the United States and Mexico in tackling the drugs trade and the criminal groups running it. “All the Americans’ Mexican counterparts at one time or another have been suspected of being in cahoots with the criminals,” says Andrés Rozental, a former Mexican diplomat. The paradox is that Mr García Luna was in office at a time when the joint fight against drugs was in its heyday. Today the biggest obstacle to security co-operation is not concern about official corruption, but the policies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.