Texto: Josefina Salomón
“Our relationship has been a very good one and we are working hard, together, on the border.”
This is how Donald Trump defined, on this Truth Social account, his relationship with Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum —using a tone distinctly different from the one he adopted when referring to Justin Trudeau, a relationship marked by tense exchanges amid a rapidly changing trade war, where the rules seem to shift almost weekly.
Another significant difference between the two relationships is that Sheinbaum complied with all of Trump’s requests, reshaping not only Mexico’s ties with the region’s most powerful country but also her own security strategy.
The deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops to the border between the two countries in early February in an attempt to stem the flow of fentanyl was just the starter. The main course was the “transfer” – which Mexico’s attorney general said were not extraditions – of 29 high-profile criminals wanted by the United States for criminal offences ranging from drug trafficking to murder. The historic operation involving 3,500 police and military personnel from both countries was the seal on a new chapter in bilateral relations.
Sheinbaum, who has an 85% approval rating, says this is a relationship “between equals”, points to the drop in fentanyl seizures and calls on Trump to take action to stem the flow of arms into Mexico from the US. But the fine print of the president’s security approach is breeding critics, as questions mount about the long-term effects of a strategy that has proven unsuccessful in the past.
The names on the list of 29 Mexican criminals sent to the United States represent some of the largest criminal organisations in the world, including six that Trump recently designated as terrorist groups.
The Zetas, famous for their use of extreme violence; the Sinaloa Cartel, now divided and in control of fentanyl labs; the Jalisco Cartel New Generation, involved in the trafficking of fentanyl and migrants; the Familia Michoacana and the Gulf Cartel.
The United States wanted to send a message of power. It also wanted Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara cartel, who in 1985 kidnapped, tortured and murdered Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, an agent of the DEA office in Mexico.
The leaders of these organisations were also facing trials in Mexico, where they had long been sowing terror in the communities where they settled, controlling all aspects of the daily lives of thousands of people through extortion, torture and murder. The Zetas, for example, were behind dozens of massacres, including that of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas in 2011 and of more than 300 inhabitants of the municipality of Allende, in the state of Coahuila in 2010.
Although some of the organisation’s leaders were imprisoned, their trials were at a standstill and there are indications that they continued to coordinate criminal operations from prison.
Beyond the public impact of the arrests, the long-term effect of the operation will be limited, says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert in organised crime, professor at George Mason University and author of the book Los Zetas Inc.
“Mexico has extradited many people under pressure from the United States in the context of the ‘kingpin’ strategy (which prioritises the elimination of the heads of criminal organisations). But that strategy hasn’t worked because when you remove the head of an organisation, it fragments and the power struggle generates a lot of violence,” she explains.
The power struggle for territorial control is what has generated a blood bath in the state of Sinaloa as a result of the fight between the heirs of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the co-founders of the famous cartel (both now facing charges in the United States).
“We are facing a new version of the ‘war on drugs’, with a focus on arrests, seizures and extraditions, under an agenda set by the United States. But the ‘war on drugs’ has historically achieved nothing: neither reducing violence nor protecting victims. In a militarised government, with the National Guard under the Ministry of Defence, talking about victims is impossible, they have been forgotten,” says Correa-Cabrera.
Carlos Zazueta, a human rights lawyer and expert on disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Mexico, says the process that ended with the crime bosses being sent to the US is illegal because it goes against the Constitution. He says it makes the government look weak and misses the opportunity to show that Mexico is able to deliver justice.
“Most of them have been in prison for a long time and the Prosecutor’s Office should have had the capacity to try them. You can’t fix the deficiencies of investigations in Mexico by sending people to another country. That doesn’t bring justice to anyone nor helps build peace in the country. What it does is multiply and complicate the cycles of violence. The lines of those at the head of the business may be more blurred, but the multi-million-dollar business is still there,” he explains.
Correa-Cabrera agrees: “Extraditions alone will not solve either organised crime or the violence it causes, especially if the United States does not want to address the consequences of its drug use problem as a public health issue. Demand creates supply. As long as those incentives continue to exist, nothing will change.”
