The Mexican state of Chihuahua is spelled with the letters “CIA”. The mysterious deaths of two CIA agents in an alleged car accident on a treacherous mountain road in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua last week has triggered a diplomatic crisis between Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum government and the Trump administration. It has also sparked a standoff between Mexico’s federal authorities and the state authorities of Chihuahua, which are governed by the right-wing, Washington-aligned National Action Party (PAN). As the British Mexico-based journalist Ioan Grillo reports , the CIA agents, who numbered between two and four, were allegedly assisting Chihuahua’s State Investigation Agency, or AEI, in dismantling a network of mega labs for synthetic drugs, which Chihuahua attorney general César Jáuregui described as “one of the biggest seizures in the country”: Run by a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, which has long controlled crime in the region, the labs boasted dozens of barrels of powder, liquids, ovens and…