All the elements that Mexico had planned for the worst scenario at the start of the Donald Trump administration were there. The first deportations, the announcement of a tariff war, teasing and provocations in social networks. This time, however, it was Colombia and not the Mexican government the country that ended up starring in the first diplomatic conflict between the United States and Latin America for the immigration crisis in the Trump era.
President Gustavo Petro planted face to Washington’s pressures and entered melee combat, but shortly after he was forced to recover and accept the terms of his rival to avoid a greater confrontation. Diplomatic tensions lasted less than 24 hours, although they were a demonstration of strength and a warning of what can come in the second presidency of the Republican politician. Also the Brazilian government, another Latin American giant, said its anger without nuances. However, faithful to his tradition, he prioritized diplomacy to express his disagreement with the Trump administration for deportations in conditions that he considers unworthy. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry summoned the higher -ranking diplomat on the United States Embassy in Brasilia on Monday to ask that an incident such as the one suffered by 88 Brazilian undocumented immigrants repaids repatriated over the weekend is not repeated.
Along the same lines, the clash between Petro and the Republican tycoon reaffirmed the strategy of the Mexican authorities – not only from what happened this weekend, but also by the experiences acquired during the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador -, convinced Now more than ever they have to avoid a encounter with Trump at all costs and bet on a negotiated exit to the challenge raised by the US president.
“The important thing, I said from the first day, is always acting with a cold head, defending the sovereignty of each country and respect between nations and peoples,” Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday. The president chose to stay out of the brief diplomatic conflict so as not to put between the sword and the wall. At one end was Petro, one of its main allies in the region, but in the other was the United States, no matter how much its most important and complex relationship. “With Latin America always our solidarity, our support,” he said in his last press conference, but also had words for his main commercial partner. “The relationship with the United States is special,” he said. “We are obliged to have a good relationship,” he added.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva opted for a similar strategy. The return of 88 Brazilians on a flight chartered by the US authorities in which they had to “travel handcuffed hands and feet on an American plane in poor condition with the broken air conditioning,” the president, which immediately mobilized several ministers immediately irritated. The meeting between the representative of Brazil and the American business manager was positive and focused on preventing incidents to repeat for the interests of both countries, according to a spokesman for the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.
The meeting was held the next day that the Brazilian government claimed Trump’s, in a note, “a dignified, respectful and human treatment” for Brazilian immigrants without papers to deport. The controversial situation of the repatriated transcended Friday during a scale in Manaos, in the Amazon. Lula ordered them to withdraw the wives and sent a plane from the Brazilian Air Force to pick them up and take them to their final destination, Belo Horizonte. “We had a very sober reaction. We do not want to provoke the American government, ”Brazilian Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, in a meeting with businessmen, said Monday morning.
Trump entails a complex challenge on the diplomatic plane. Mexico has witnessed how they punish those who croup their heads and sin of weakness, but also how it is relentless against those who bite the hook of their provocations. After a several -month learning curve, not without misunderstandings or stumbling blocks, Sheinbaum has signs that he can maintain that balance in his speeches and send the signal to the interior that he can maintain the interlocution with the White House without sacrificing his dignity . Petro was less cautious and paid the consequences.
The president of the United States, always prone to put his opponents against the ropes, took an exceptional opportunity to test his threats at a relatively low price and send the message to the rest of the world that he is serious. It is a negotiation pattern that made it clear since its first mandate. Trump starts from a maximalist position in each negotiation, with exaggerated demands, to force to give in to his counterpart and end up doing what he expects from them. “Unlike eight years ago, when Trump was still an enigma, his return was much more anticipated,” said Miguel Basáñez, an ambassador of Mexico between 2015 and 2016, in an interview with this newspaper. “The first thing we have seen is more of the same.”
It is a film that Mexico, Trump’s favorite target, has seen again and again. At the end of May 2019, Trump announced a 5% tariff as punishment for irregular immigration, with the intention of gradually increasing it to 25%. The López Obrador government, who until then had promoted an open doors migration policy, acknowledged that his first impulse, “the natural” was to bet on the “eye for an eye” and the mirror measures. “Remember that I do not lack value, that I am not a coward,” said the then Mexican president, who described the situation as a “painful matter.”
But there was a lot at risk. López Obrador sent his Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, to negotiate a departure with Trump. Mexico explored other alternatives, convened a United States allied summit willing to close ranks with its cause, but in the end it agreed to take a radical turn to immigration management and deployed the National Guard to turn the southern border into the new wall of the Republican and stop thousands of immigrants. But for the first week of June there was an agreement and the tariffs did not arrive.
The solution was no stranger to the questions, not only of a moral nature, but also because of the strategy in the answer. “The mistake made by the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was to attend a tweet where we threatened that if we did not stop the Central American migration, the tariffs were going to increase,” said Ildefonso Guajardo, former secretary of Economy, to this newspaper. “We feed a tendency to make cross threats.”
The countergument is that, probably, there was not much more margin of action for the Mexican authorities and that, at that point, there were not really precedents of a similar attack by Trump. In the end, the Mexican authorities did not want or could not look for another exit. Although the pressures were maintained, the tensions did not reach another similar peak until Trump left the presidency in January 2021.
“An agreement between both governments was reached and that is good,” said Sheinbaum after the clash between Trump and Petro. “It is what we have sought in the relationship with the United States: dialogue, respect; Always with our principles of defense of our sovereignty, of defense of Mexicans abroad, to guarantee the human rights of those who arrive repatriated to our country, ”added the president, about her own challenge with the new United States government .
“It was torture since we left Louisiana”
Sandra de Souza, a Brazilian deported with her husband and two children, spoke to the press, as soon as he lands in Belo Horizonte, of the enormous tension lived during the flight: “A hell, a torture since we left Louisiana. It was clear that the plane had a problem. A lack of commitment to human beings. We were dying to die, ”he said in statements collected by the portal G-1.
Lula’s government has already notified from the moment of the incident that he would ask for explanations to Washington about what happened on the flight in question. A Foreign Ministry spokesman details that so far this year, Brazil has received two flights with deportees. The annual average was about 15 flights between 2022 and 2024. With these premises, Itamaraty has summoned the business manager, Gabriel Escobar, given that the ambassador’s post is vacant by the change of administration in Washington. The government now wants to focus on the deportees recommend their lives in Brazil.
Lula’s complaints and his executive had a large impact during the weekend in Brazil, but were received, at least publicly, with indifference from the newly released Trump government. Both the Brazilian president and his Mexican counterpart will have on Thursday to reiterate their position at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) urgently convened by the Honduran president, Xiomara Castro, to treat deportations.
