REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
Mexico is gearing up for the largest election in its history, with over 21,000 offices at stake.
One of the candidates is on the DEA s most-wanted list, but he has denied the allegations, calling them part of a dirty war against him.
Mexico s political and criminal worlds have long overlapped, and violence tends to increase around elections.
MEXICO - Mexico s midterm elections on June 6 will be the largest in the country s history, with voters choosing candidates for more than 21,000 offices.
One of those candidates is already well known by some in the US: Rogelio Portillo Jaramillo, 41, who the DEA describes as an armed and dangerous fugitive.
Reuters
The Drug Enforcement Administration s latest report on illicit drugs and drug trafficking details what the agency says is cartel influence in the US.
Security experts and cartel operatives in Mexico dispute the DEA s depiction, however, arguing the links are more tenuous than the DEA describes them.
Ciudad Juarez, MEXICO The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently released its annual National Drug Threat Assessment, in which it maps out the states where Mexican drug cartels have gained influence.
Asked about that depiction of cartel presence in the US, security experts and cartel sources told Insider it s bullshit.
The DEA s report says Mexican transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, maintain great influence in most US states, with the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion showing the biggest signs of expansion.