Feb. 22 was not a routine operation. It was an X-ray into the nature of power in Mexico. That’s the day the Mexican army killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes — the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — and six others.

The operation did not merely reveal the operational capacity of the state. It revealed its limits. It exposed the architecture of organized crime. And, above all, it exposed a vacuum of political leadership at the most delicate moment.