Remarks made by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently about the U.S. military intervention against Mexican drug cartels raised eyebrows for some in the United States.
“We have to confront the hard reality that the current Mexican government puts the prosperity of the cartels over that of their people and their relationship with the U.S.,” Texas Public Policy Foundation CEO Greg Sindelar said in a tweet on Friday, April 28. “Our leaders need to read reality truthfully and act accordingly.”
At a recent event in Veracruz, the Mexican president made remarks implying that he would not stand for U.S. military intervention in Mexico in regard to the drug cartels. The Spectator World reported Obrador said he would use the Mexican military to defend the country and disagreed with labeling them as terrorist organizations.
Also in the article, Sindelar said that the Mexican political society speaks with traditional anti-Americanism, which isn’t reflected amongst the rest of Mexican society. Although Obrador considers designating the cartels as terrorist organizations to be an insult to Mexican sovereignty, Sindelar said the cartels reportedly control between 30-40% of Mexican territory. Sindelar also said that the Mexican government actively works with the cartels.
U.S. President Joe Biden recently invoked an executive order that gives the nation the authority to order the ready reserve of the armed forces to active duty to address international drug trafficking. That order, Executive Order 14059, was signed in 2021 but invoked at the end of April.
The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989 defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,” according to the U.S. Department of State.
Mexican cartels killed at least 130 candidates and politicians in the lead-up to Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections, where Obrador gained the presidency, the Council on Foreign Relations reported. The article cited 33,341 drug-related homicides that year.
