Mexico’s president says he will not battle drug cartels on US orders, calls it a ‘Mexico First’ coverage

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president stated Friday he gained’t battle Mexican drug cartels on U.S. orders, within the clearest clarification but of his refusal to confront the gangs.

Through the years, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has laid out numerous justifications for his “hugs, not bullets” coverage of avoiding clashes with the cartels. Previously he has stated “you can’t battle violence with violence,” and on different events he has argued the federal government has to handle “the causes” of drug cartel violence, ascribing them to poverty or an absence of alternatives.

However on Friday, whereas discussing his refusal to go after the cartels, he made it clear he seen it as a part of what he known as a “Mexico First” coverage.

“We’re not going to behave as policemen for any overseas authorities,” López Obrador stated at his each day information briefing. “Mexico First. Our residence comes first.”

López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. He supplied to assist restrict the movement of medication into the US, however solely, he stated, on humanitarian grounds.

“In fact we’re going to cooperate in combating medicine, above all as a result of it has turn out to be a really delicate, very unhappy humanitarian concern, as a result of a variety of younger individuals are dying in the US due to fentanyl,” the president stated. Over 70,000 People die yearly due to artificial opioids like fentanyl, that are primarily made in Mexico from precursor chemical substances smuggled in from China.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

It’s a view — like a lot of López Obrador’s insurance policies — that harkens again to the Nineteen Seventies, a interval when many officers believed that Mexican cartels promoting medicine to gringos was a U.S. concern, not a Mexican one.

“For many years, previous administrations in Mexico have thought the conflict in opposition to drug cartels was mainly a U.S. downside,” stated safety analyst David Saucedo, noting that Mexican home drug consumption, whereas rising — particularly methamphetamines — continues to be at comparatively low ranges.

“Then again, the drug cartels present jobs in areas the place the Mexican authorities cannot present financial improvement, they encourage social mobility, and generate income by means of drug gross sales to stability commerce and funding deficits.”

López Obrador has argued earlier than in opposition to “demonizing” the drug cartels, and has encouraged leaders of the Catholic church to try to negotiate peace pacts between warring gangs.

Explaining why he has ordered the military to not assault cartel gunmen, López Obrador stated in 2022 “we additionally deal with the lives of the gang members, they’re human beings.”

He has additionally generally appeared to not take the violence concern significantly. In June 2023, he stated of 1 drug gang that had kidnapped 14 cops: “I will inform on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they need to get spanking.

Requested about these feedback on the time, residents of 1 city within the western Mexico state of Michoacan who’ve lived below drug cartel management for years reacted with disgust and disbelief.

“He’s making enjoyable of us,” stated one restaurant proprietor, who requested to stay nameless as a result of he — like nearly everybody else on the town — has lengthy been compelled to pay safety cash to the native cartel.

López Obrador has additionally made some extent of visiting the township of Badiraguato in Sinaloa state, the house of drug lords like Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, a minimum of a half dozen occasions, and pledging to take action once more earlier than he leaves workplace in September.

It is also a stance associated to prickly nationalism and independence. Requested in November why he has visited the sparsely populated rural township so many occasions, López Obrador quoted a line from an outdated ingesting music, “as a result of I need to.”

The president has imposed strict limits on U.S. brokers working in Mexico, and restricted how a lot contact Mexican legislation enforcement can have with them.

“The president stated out loud what we had suspected for a very long time, that his administration just isn’t actually combating the drug cartels,” stated Saucedo, the safety analyst. “He has solely determined to manage the battle, organising what might must be a campaign in opposition to the cartels sooner or later that he will not must battle.”

Whereas Mexico has detained a number of high-profile gang members, the federal government’s coverage not matches what Mexican drug cartels have turn out to be: extortion machines that make a lot of their cash, not from trafficking medicine, however extorting safety funds from businessmen, farmers, store house owners and avenue distributors, killing anybody who does not pay.

They take over official companies, kill rival street-level drug sellers, and homicide bus and taxi drivers who refuse to behave as lookouts for them.

The cartels control increasingly large swathes of territory both in northern Mexico — their conventional base — and in southern states like Guerrero, Michoacan, Chiapas and Veracruz.

It’s unclear if peaceable coexistence was ever potential with Mexican drug gangs. Whereas some areas have produced marijuana or opium poppies for a minimum of 50 years, the unlawful commerce all the time introduced violence.

López Obrador claims the “Mexico First” coverage is required to scale back home violence. Final 12 months, he claimed Mexico noticed a drop of 17% in homicides below his administration. However in truth homicides had already fallen about 7% from their mid-2018 peak when López Obrador took workplace in December of that 12 months. The president is basically taking credit score for a drop that began below his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Essentially the most dependable annual rely exhibits that homicides in Mexico declined by 9.7% in 2022 in comparison with 2021, the primary important drop through the present administration. Mexico’s Nationwide Statistics Institute stated there have been 32,223 killings in 2022.

The nation’s murder price per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from about 28 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. By comparability, the U.S. murder price in 2021 was about 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.