Possible Escalation of Drug War in Mexico as Part of US War on Terror Jorge Carrasco Araizaga - Proceso
go to original November 17, 2016

A man holds Mexico's flag during a protest against violence in Mexico City. The writing on the flag reads in Spanish '100,000 lives: assassinated, disappeared and displaced. Have you not been touched in the last six years? What are you made of?' (Alexandre Meneghini/AP)

With novices in charge of the Secretariat of Foreign Relations [the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, is a lawyer, daughter-in-law of former President Carlos Salinas, and was previously Peña Nieto's Secretary of Tourism], without the Mexican head of national security [Secretary of Government Relations, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong] speaking with his United States counterpart, and with the military leaders worried more about getting legal protection for their operations against drug trafficking, the Mexican government held off on thinking about the ascent of Donald Trump until he is arriving the White House.

Despite all the risks and threats to the country put forth as the motivation for inviting Trump to his August 30th visit, clearly part of his US presidential campaign, Peña Nieto continued this nonsense. Due to the optimism with which the Mexican government reacted to the Republican’s triumph, it persists in this mistake: leaving the declared enemy of Mexico in control of the situation.

The national security cabinet is absent. The Secretary of Foreign Relations, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, barely even mumbles. The Secretary of Government Relations, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, who has the entire security machine at his fingertips, does not even have a representative in the US embassy. The military lacks Washington’s confidence due to a history of many chiefs and officials with ties to drug trafficking. And the Attorney General’s Office is lost between changes and replacements [new attorney general and pending transition to a Prosecutor General].

In these conditions, with what support will Peña Nieto face Trump’s anti-Mexican intentions? The very same day of the elections, the president called together his security cabinet. What for, if not so they could find out together what the result of the US presidential election would be. Was finding out the winner necessary to create different scenarios for the protection of the country?

With the Mexican government’s security policies so disjointed, Trump has the complete advantage. After stigmatizing Mexico, during his campaign, as a country that only sends illegal immigrants and drugs, the president-elect of the US made it clear in his first meeting with the Congressional majority on Thursday that his priority would be immigration and border security.

In other words, the wall serves not only to control immigrants, but also to keep terrorists from entering the US from across the Mexican border. This is the same obsession as former president George W. Bush had; however, the difference is that Trump has declared it openly against Mexico.

Beyond the border fence, which definitely began to be constructed under the government of Bill Clinton in 1994, the new president of the US will have to determine whether to maintain the Merida Initiative or allow what US security agents, and members and ex-members of the military have proposed within the past several years: treat Mexico as a narco-terrorist nation.

Translated by: Patricia Mitchell

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Related: A Persistent Indifference to the Global War on Drugs (Brown Political Review)

Related: DEA Urges Trump to Start with China, Not Mexico, in Drug War (Yibada)

Related: Mexico's View of Trump: He Can't be Normalized (Mexico Voices)

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico - on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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