Mexico has once again rejected US military intervention to fight organized crime and drug cartels. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he would “ok” to launch attacks on Mexican soil like those he has ordered in the Pacific and Caribbean. President Claudia Sheinbaum responded bluntly: “It won’t happen.” The president insisted that there is collaboration and coordination with the US government, but that Mexico does not accept foreign interventions. “The last time the United States intervened in Mexico, it took half the territory,” he recalled from his morning news conference at the National Palace on Tuesday.
Trump assured that he did not rule out any measures to stop the flow of drugs from Mexico to the north. “That’s fine with me. We have to do everything to stop drug trafficking,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it. But I would be proud to do it,” he said. In an Oval Office media interview, he said his southern neighbor “has serious problems,” after seeing images of Generation Z marching in Mexico City last Saturday. Additionally, he has boasted about the results of his extrajudicial attacks on suspected drug boats in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, in which 66 people have already died with no evidence they were carrying narcotics. “If we have to do there (in Mexico) what we did in the water… There are almost no drugs arriving by sea,” he boasted. Although he avoided responding to reporters who asked him if he had discussed the military incursion with the Mexican government, he did not hide his anger at the consequences in terms of security in the neighboring country. “They know that we lose hundreds of thousands of people every year to drugs… Not to mention the destruction of families. Many of them are from Mexico. So let me put it this way: I’m not happy with Mexico at all,” he concluded.
A few hours after Trump’s statements, the US embassy rushed to publish a statement from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in which he ruled out military intervention, as he had done a few days earlier. “We’re not going to take unilateral action or go in or send U.S. forces into Mexico, but we can help them with equipment, training, intelligence sharing and all kinds of things we could do if they ask, they have to ask,” Rubio noted in the release.
Sheinbaum reported that in all telephone conversations with the president of the United States she is open to the cooperation of information in her possession, but does not accept giving up the country’s sovereignty with foreign operations on its territory. “They understood, so much so, that the agreement we have with them is one of collaboration and coordination and the first points are very clear: respect for sovereignty, respect for our territoriality and that there is coordination and collaboration without subordination”, stated the president. “It’s not that they don’t want support, but not with foreign troops,” he added.
