They were a handful of words in an ocean of phrases, but they were enough, as is often the case with their author, Donald Trump, to set off alarm bells on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. In addition to considerable commotion, the declaration that the American president-elect plans to designate Mexican cartels as “terrorist organizations” once he takes office on January 20 also left more questions than answers. When, how and at what cost do you plan to do it, if you carry out your threat? What implications would that designation have? Will its inclusion on the State Department’s list be the first step for controlled attacks in Mexican territory to decapitate these powerful groups dedicated to drug trafficking? And how could the southern neighbor respond to an action that may involve crossing an unprecedented red line in bilateral relations?
On Sunday itself and the day after Trump’s statements, the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, reacted to the Republican’s idea, raised at a meeting of the ultra-conservative entity Turning Point in Phoenix (Arizona) in which the conservative leader defined the Mexican president as a “wonderful woman.” “We collaborate, we coordinate, we work together, but we will never subordinate ourselves,” Sheinbaum warned. “Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country and we do not accept interference. It is collaboration, it is coordination, but it is not subordination. And we are going to build peace,” he declared.
The list of foreign terrorist organizations is managed, removing and adding names, by the State Department. Currently, there are 68 groups or individuals included. The oldest joined in 1997, as part of a group that includes Hamas, the Colombian National Liberation Army and the Peruvian Shining Path. The last two names to enter, in December 2021, were the FARC and one of its divisions, Segunda Marquetalia. Among the organizations that were once in the crosshairs of the United States until they were deregistered is ETA or the Khmer Rouge.
The main consequences of ending up on that list are financial. It gives authorities powers to stop money flows through US banks, facilitates the fight against money laundering and, as detailed on the State Department website, “increases public awareness and knowledge of terrorist organizations”, by time that sends a signal “to other governments about the concern [que suscitan] those groups.”
“Designating the cartels as terrorist organizations would be a strategic error with unpredictable consequences for both countries,” a senior official at the Mexican Embassy considered this Monday. “Organized crime is not fought with labels, but with cooperation and institutional strengthening.” According to this diplomatic source, the idea released by Trump “mixes concepts that respond to different dynamics.” “Organized crime seeks profit, not ideology, and treating it as terrorism only diverts resources and attention from real solutions,” he considers.
In the background, there is the idea, cherished in recent years by some Republican congressmen, members of the hardest wing of Trumpism, of intervening militarily in Mexican territory with selective raids aimed at harming the cartels producing fentanyl, a drug that killed in 2023. to some 70,000 Americans and that largely enters through the border between both countries. “That would set the relationship between both countries back three decades,” considers the former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, who served at the beginning of Trump’s first term. “I am sure that he will do something on the matter in the first days, after taking office, but I am not so sure that it will be this specifically,” Gutiérrez clarifies.
Academic Carlos Pérez-Ricart affirms that this level of tension between both countries is unprecedented in the last century. “We are in terra incognita, a moment in which the largest trading partner has decided to have some type of intervention in Mexico. The question they ask [en el entorno de Trump] It is not whether they are going to invade Mexico, but how they will do it, how gently or harshly,” he explains. “The advertisement [del presidente electo] “It is going to legalize those intentions, it will be given the legal framework to endorse a series of security measures in our territory not necessarily agreed upon with Mexico,” he adds. Author of the study One Hundred Years of Spies and Drugs: The Story of U.S. Counternarcotics Agents in Mexico The researcher states that this would “definitely” open the possibility of an “invasion.” “I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one day with a US missile hitting a methamphetamine laboratory in Badiraguato [Sinaloa]”, he points out, “it can happen.” Although he points out: “There is nothing to suggest that a more aggressive, direct and invasive policy will bring a decrease in fentanyl trafficking to the United States.”
Frictions in the bilateral relationship
The relationship of bilateral cooperation in security matters, well greased in the almost two decades that the war against drugs has lasted, became complicated during the six-year term of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a charismatic leader with a speech tinged with Mexican nationalism. The former president criticized the unilateralism with which the United States fought in specific actions against drug trafficking. One of the events that most strained the diplomatic relationship was the capture in 2020 of General Salvador Cienfuegos, former Secretary of Defense, whom the northern neighbor accused of collaborating with the H-2 Cartel, a split from the criminal network of the Beltran Leyva. López Obrador protested the fact that US agencies had not told his government that an investigation into a prominent former official was underway.
The Mexican president then criticized the presence of US anti-drug agents and, in response, sent a reform to Congress that increased controls over their intelligence work. Washington criticized the measure for considering that it meant taking a step back in cooperation and that it only benefited criminal organizations. The decision to regulate the work of foreign agents has support among Mexicans. Last week, an Enkoll survey for Morning Express concluded that the majority of the population rejects that the United States transgresses the country’s sovereignty in any way. The survey also reflected that citizens hold the United States jointly responsible for the problem of violence due to the uncontrolled transfer of weapons to Mexico that end up in the hands of the cartels.
The capture last July of Ismael May Zambada in a secret operation in which the historic capo was kidnapped and taken to Texas aboard a plane added more gunpowder to diplomatic tensions. López Obrador and Sheinbaum have maintained that this maneuver – also unilateral – is the origin of the total war unleashed in Sinaloa between Los Chapitos and Los Mayos. The information surrounding the capture that has come to light points to a betrayal by Joaquín’s children El Chapo Guzmán is already in negotiations with Washington, all of this behind the back of the Mexican Government.
Fentanyl pills
The Sheinbaum Administration has given top priority to stabilizing the situation in Sinaloa, with Omar García Harfuch, the Secretary of Security and one of the president’s strong men, leading the strategy. Sheinbaum has responded to Trump’s threats through political discourse and with the effectiveness of facts. In addition to defending that Mexico will not enter into a relationship of subordination with the United States, authorities have confiscated this month in Sinaloa the largest shipment of fentanyl in history. That concern contrasts with the way López Obrador addressed the fentanyl problem. The former president claimed that this drug was not produced in Mexico, and suggested that it actually entered from China through United States customs.
Pérez-Ricart highlights that the confiscated stash of fentanyl, 1,500 kilos of opiate pills, is the equivalent of what CBP, the US agency that controls customs, seizes in an entire year at all access points to that country. “The president is showing signs that she is going to take it seriously,” he says. The academic specifies that, according to data from the US Government itself, 80% of the people detained for introducing fentanyl across the border are Americans. “This is a problem that does not arise in Mexico. The source, demand and vectors are not Mexican. “It’s them,” he notes. Sociologist Eunice Rendón assures, for her part, that both this historic seizure of fentanyl and the recent blow to Chinese informal trade “are messages for Trump.” “What we seek to show is that Mexico can handle these tasks and that there is a change in the security strategy with respect to López Obrador,” he says.
This is not the first time that the idea of designating cartels as terrorist organizations has circulated decision-making centers in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State – and Barack Obama was in his first presidency – the politician declared in 2010 in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in the capital that the Obama Administration was considering a kind of Plan Colombia for Mexico and Central America. “The situation [en México] It looks increasingly like Colombia 20 years ago, when drug traffickers controlled certain parts of the country. These drug cartels are showing increasing rates of insurgency,” he explained.
Plan Colombia, launched by Bill Clinton, reinforced Colombian security forces with military personnel, equipment and training from the United States. It involved an investment of 7.3 billion dollars, which, although it put the Colombian guerrillas on the ropes, also brought with it serious violations of human rights and fell far short of solving the problem of drug trafficking.
