Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaking during his morning press conference this Friday Mario Guzman Mario Guzmán (EFE)
Andrés Manuel López Obrador this Friday filed new charges against a group of Republican congressmen’s proposal to declare the drug cartels terrorist organizations and use the US army against them. “This is not the way, that of threat, that of submission, that of invasion, what do these small, interventionist, arrogant think they are! Mexico is respected,” the Mexican President said during his morning press briefing. López Obrador also announced that he had ordered his administration’s consuls in the United States to communicate more clearly the achievements of the Mexican executive branch’s anti-drug trafficking policy. Specifically, on fentanyl, the opioid wreaking havoc, especially north of the border.
It’s not the first time this week that López Obrador has reacted sharply to the Republican congressmen’s controversial proposal. Last Thursday, he called them “opportunists” when he considered they would use Mexico as a punching bag in an electoral key. “What about fentanyl? Nothing more than the statements of the opportunistic Republican Party legislators taking advantage of human pain lol because there is a lot of hypocrisy,” he said at his morning conference call this Thursday.
The declaration of the Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations is an old idea of former President Donald Trump that was revived by two Republican senators this week. The feasibility of the initiative is low as the Democratic Party controls the lower house. Faced with the difficulty of moving forward, two other Republican senators, Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz, made the proposal to use the army. The relationship between the two countries was marked this week by the kidnapping of four US citizens and the killing of two of them in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, a situation that has prompted the United States to ask the Mexican authorities to end their efforts to Fighting organizations to step up Mexican criminals.
Regarding the order for the consuls to be more vigorous in their communication policy, the President announced: “A meeting will be held in Washington on Monday, chaired by Marcelo Ebrard, with all the Mexican consuls in the United States to provide information on what we have to say about the Do United States support to keep fentanyl from arriving”. The President also took the opportunity to present the latest official figures in this regard: “More fentanyl has been seized in the period we are in, six tons, and do the math, for every kilo of fentanyl there is a million Cans and what we confiscated is 60,000 kilos. Nobody made it.”
Bilateral plan against fentanyl
In parallel, the United States Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said Friday that a coalition has been formed between the two countries to fight the spread of fentanyl. The diplomat has confirmed that a delegation of US officials arrived this Thursday to meet with the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, including Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, and the director of the Office of Political White House Drug Enforcement Officer Rahul Gupta. “The fentanyl case needs to be resolved with Mexico as a partner, with the Mexican security forces and with the US counterparts, which is why the delegation that came yesterday was so important,” the ambassador said.
“They were good meetings, although the work ahead is difficult,” said Salazar, who insisted the fentanyl epidemic is a global problem as the chemicals reach Mexican ports like Manzanillo (Colima) and Lázaro Cárdenas (). Michoacán), often come from China and India. On the Mexican side, Public Safety Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez will be responsible for “working to ensure that good efforts are made,” the ambassador said.
Among the joint actions that Mexico and the United States will develop is an information campaign to raise awareness of the “great danger” posed by fentanyl, which the ambassador said killed 100,000 people in the United States last year. In addition, “security teams” are to be strengthened on both sides of the border. “We’re doing all this as partners, it’s different from what happened between Mexico and the United States in the past,” the diplomat assured.
In the same vein, Salazar resolutely rejects the Republican proposal to send the US army to Mexico: “The US military will not solve the problem of the cartels, these proposals will not bring the solutions that we need.” The diplomat says the congressman’s proposal has “a lot to do with politics”: “We want to be efficient, work together to find solutions to the insecurity that affects Mexico and the United States in many ways. That’s our priority.”
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