María del Carmen López in a photo released by the FBI, testifying about her kidnapping.FBI
The FBI sent out a new alert this Thursday about the kidnapping of an American woman in the state of Colima in eastern Mexico. The statement comes amid tensions between the United States and Mexico that stem from the kidnapping of four Americans in early March in the municipality of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an event that ended in the killing of two of them.
María del Carmen López, 63, was kidnapped from her home in the small town of Pueblo Nuevo on February 9. Security has offered $20,000 in exchange for information to help locate the woman, who they say is a “US citizen.” The FBI has started an investigation together with the Mexican authorities.
The disappearance of the four Americans has so far led to the arrest of six people on kidnapping charges, five of whom are also charged with murder. The latter were allegedly delivered by the Gulf Cartel, tied up and accompanied by a piece of cardboard stating that the individuals had acted “of their own determination and lack of discipline.”
What happened in Matamoros has given American conservatives wings to support their electoral strategy fueled by an anti-Mexican discourse. In recent days, some Republican congressmen have tried to pressure Mexico to reconsider its security strategy to defuse drug trafficking in the region and have proposed designating Mexican cartels as terrorist groups. The replies from the executive chaired by Andrés Manuel López Obrador were not long in coming. The president called the politicians who proposed using the US army against the cartels inside the Mexican border “sissies and interventionists”.
“The US military will not solve the problem of the cartels, these proposals do not bring the solutions that we need,” he said in one of his morning conferences last week. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, for his part, also expressed his dissatisfaction with the US’s critical discourse and assured that it would not be allowed to “overrun Mexico”. Last Monday, López Obrador asserted that “Mexico is much safer than the US,” and assured that he would endeavor to facilitate dialogue with the Joe Biden administration.
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