Mexico has entrenched itself in the face of Donald Trump’s recurrent attempts to intervene in its neighbor’s territory under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has resorted to patience to repeatedly reject, in a firm but moderate tone, the American president’s continued offers to have the US military carry out military operations beyond its borders to appease drug cartels. “It’s not that we don’t want support, but not with foreign troops,” the president insisted again on Tuesday, recalling that the last time the United States entered Mexico with an incursion “they took half the territory.” The president hardens her refusal, while continuing to balance diplomacy in the face of Trump’s attacks, calling into question the Mexican government’s security strategy, in what comes ever closer to an affront to its sovereignty.
Since Trump made his first message during his second presidential campaign about sending troops to Mexico, the country has been preparing to fight any hint of interference in its security policy. Even since he announced that he will seek re-election in 2024, the Republican has not stopped repeating that, if necessary, he would be willing to send his army across the border to fight drug lords. Sheinbaum has repressed the American president’s threats every time. However, Trump’s tone has been raised as he steps up his aggressive foreign policy with extrajudicial attacks on suspected drug traffickers and shows strength in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean. These operations put him face to face with the government of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and opened a new breach with Maduro in Venezuela. Now Mexico must face the old interventionist ghost of the United States.
To contain his counterpart’s bravado, the president continued to repeat his solution like a mantra: sovereignty, cooperation and collaboration. Sheinbaum has accepted the exchange of intelligence information between the two countries to manage joint operations against drug cartels, but he is not willing to give up control of the maneuvers on Mexican soil. “(Trump) suggested it several times, he said: ‘We offer them a US military intervention in Mexico, everything they need to fight the criminal groups’. But I told him on all occasions that we can collaborate, that they can help us with the information they have, but that we operate on our territory”, is the summary of all the times in which the president responded to the tycoon’s insinuations, which began last February when he declared the cartels as terrorist organizations. “We will never submit. Mexico is a free, sovereign and independent country and we do not accept interference,” he said at the time.
However, Trump has not stopped offering, becoming a challenge to Sheinbaum’s moderation in the face of opposition pressure for the United States to take charge of the security crisis facing the country and the tiredness of a society victim of violence. Earlier this year, Mexico’s concessions — sending 10,000 soldiers to the border to enforce immigration enforcement and deporting Caro Quintero — managed not only to quell the tariff war but also momentarily quiet talk of military intervention.
The calm lasted until May, when The Wall Street Journal published that during a phone call between the two presidents on April 16, Trump pressured Sheinbaum to accept his military aid and make a major shift in his security policy. “No, President Trump,” concluded the president, who once again proposed the alternative of collaborative work. “You on your territory, we on ours. We can share information, but we will never accept the presence of the United States military on our territory,” he stated firmly. Trump assured that the Mexican president’s refusal of his help is due to the fact that she is paralyzed by the “fear” she has of the drug traffickers who govern her country. “If Mexico wanted help against the cartels, it would be an honor for us to go and do it. I told him it would be an honor for me to go and do it,” the Republican boasted. But Sheinbaum didn’t get involved. “It’s not worth it,” he responded, adding that he doesn’t want to engage in a media exchange with the president of the United States. “Why create a disagreement?” he wondered.
Marco Rubio’s visit to Mexico in September, which coincided with the start of operations to sink the suspected drug ships, consolidated the bridge of collaboration that Sheinbaum was banking on to combat drug trafficking. “There is no government that cooperates with us more than the government of Mexico, the government of the president of Mexico,” the Secretary of State said and cited as an example the bringing of 55 high-level Mexican drug traffickers to U.S. justice. Since then, Rubio has tried to soften Trump’s insults every time he stirred up a hornet’s nest of interventions, as happened last Tuesday. When the president declared his willingness to replicate attacks on boats suspected of carrying drugs in land raids against Mexican cartels, the secretary was quick to tone down. “We can help them with equipment, with training, with sharing intelligence and with all the things we could do if they ask for it,” Rubio stressed, noting that Mexico would first have to formally request such help. That kind of support is what Sheinbaum said she is willing to accept.
In her latest rejection of Trump’s offer, the president showed her weariness and brought to light the historical rebuke of how Mexico had to give up 55% of its territory 175 years ago due to US intervention. While Trump continues to insist he would be proud to order his military into Mexico, as the DEA has proposed, as revealed Washington PostSheinbaum has entrenched himself in the belief that this possibility does not exist. Analysts support this and assure that an intervention is still a very distant reality that does not favor the interests of the United States, which does not want to see troops deployed abroad, much less break relations with its southern neighbor.
