Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Thursday the conclusion of an agreement with the United States regarding the alleged drug trafficking boats that Donald Trump’s government has been attacking since last September. The Mexican Navy will be tasked with intercepting these ships in international waters near the coast of Mexico to avoid further bombing, according to joint working protocols that the two countries have reached. The objective is to prevent there being other bombings, as the president explained, like the one that occurred two weeks ago 400 nautical miles from Acapulco, in which Mexico attempted to save the only survivor, without success so far.
The Secretary of the Mexican Navy, Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, has proposed to the United States an alternative coordination in international waters to respect maritime treaties relating to the treatment of vessels suspected of drug trafficking. “There are joint working protocols in the case of international waters to prevent the resort to bombing ships, to comply with all international treaties. So what the Secretary of the Navy has proposed is that these treaties be respected, in principle they said yes. This is the first agreement,” Sheinbaum indicated in his morning press conference. “If there is information coming from US agencies, or from the Southern Command itself, it will be the Mexican Navy that will intercept these ships that are allegedly carrying drugs. The protocol is maintained and there is permanent communication,” he added.
The president provided no further details on the first agreement the working group reached with the United States, the same one requested after the Mexican Navy launched a maritime search and rescue operation at the request of the US Coast Guard after the bombing near the coast of Acapulco. A few hours after the start of the operation, the Foreign Minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles communicated to the US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, the government’s rejection of Washington’s attacks. “We do not agree with these attacks and the way they are occurring,” Sheinbaum stressed in his October 28 press conference, in which he asked the Secretary of the Navy and the Department of Foreign Affairs to address the issue.
The agreement provides a firewall to prevent tensions that caused attacks in Pacific and Caribbean waters with countries such as Colombia and Venezuela from spreading to Mexico. The aggressive US offensive in the war against drugs and cartels has resulted in the military sinking 18 boats and killing 69 people, with no evidence from the Trump government so far that the boats were carrying narcotics. For this reason, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has ordered “all levels” of the Colombian public force to suspend “sending communications and other reports” with U.S. security agencies as the attacks continue. Nicolás Maduro, for his part, asked the Minister of Defense and General in Chief of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces to increase the level of military alert in Venezuela.
