Over the past two years, 155 U.S. citizens were murdered in Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department records - The kidnapping of four U.S. citizens on March 3 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, is thus simultaneously a horrific tragedy and perhaps less extraordinary than it appeared.

García Luna's conviction closes a chapter, but there are still more questions than answers about both the past and the future. What does the case tell us about the drug war? What are the implications for the future of US-Mexico security cooperation? Moving beyond the narco-novela stories of cash-filled duffel bags and clandestine meetings, there are four important considerations to understand the significance of the guilty verdict.

In a pre-dawn operation on January 5, Mexican army forces captured Ovidio Guzmán López, unleashing a wave of violence across the entire state of Sinaloa. The terror mimicked the events of October 17, 2019, when blockades and shootouts in Culiacán forced security forces to release Guzmán López after briefly detaining him.