Breathe
By Adela Navarro
The first time he was elected to head the Presidency of the United States (2016-2020), Donald Trump had Enrique Peña Nieto as his Mexican counterpart. Two issues were relevant at the time: the renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, and the construction of an anti-immigrant wall in North American territory.
From the first, experts from the three countries and representatives of the productive sectors were in charge of drafting what is now known as T-Mec. On the Mexican side, the then Secretary of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo; on the U.S. side, Robert Lighthizer, trade representative of the neighboring nation. On the Canadian side, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland.
Between the three of them, they negotiated, agreed, looked after their respective interests, and that new edition of the Treaty did not become a major issue; it flowed with experience and knowledge of the cause.
The second issue, the anti-immigrant wall, was the realization of Donald Trump's campaign promise to close the border with Mexico to prevent the passage of undocumented foreign citizens, as well as the transit of murderers, criminals, drug traffickers and their usual drugs and humans. The issue became even more heated when, still in the campaign trail and already advancing in a proselytizing speech to seek his reelection in 2020, Trump included Mexico in his strategy and argued, given the scarcity of economic support for his wall from his administration, that our country would pay for the construction of the border barrier.
Those media dialogues between the President of the United States and the President of Mexico were notorious. Trump harangued his followers and citizens saying that he would build the wall and Mexico would pay for it, and Enrique Peña Nieto publicly declared that no, Mexico would not absorb the cost of the wall.
The last PRI leader in the Mexican Republic generated a lot of empathy in the defense of Mexican sovereignty and in the clear and forceful confrontation he had with his US counterpart, but the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto ended and Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration began; he was the second Mexican President with whom the American Donald Trump would have a dialogue. From the signing of the Treaty that had been negotiated during Peña Nieto's six-year term and the Trumpian wall campaign, with the Morenista the public hostilities of the North American diminished. Not precisely because López Obrador prevailed over Trump, but on the contrary.
Wrapped up in his campaign for reelection in 2020, the issue of migration was and continues to be a priority for Donald Trump, but from the construction of the wall paid for by the Mexican government and Mexicans, he went hand in hand with López Obrador and his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, to the negotiation so that Mexico, and not the US, would be the country that would put a stop to migration.
The Mexican government agreed to militarize Mexico's southern border with elements of the recently created National Guard to prevent caravans of migrants from Central America and Latin America from entering the country and using it as a territorial bridge to reach their final destination, the United States, through Mexican borders.
The government of López Obrador served as a human wall to the Trump administration to stop migration, it was no longer necessary to continue with the discourse of building a concrete wall when they had military and national guards at the service of the U.S. authorities.
Consequently, with the Mexican government's surrender to the US government on the issue of Donald Trump's campaign, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard reached another agreement: to make Mexico the third safe country for the deportation of repatriated people from the US who were not of Mexican origin. Those Central American, African, European and Asian migrants who had managed to reach the Mexican border with the U.S. were to wait on Mexican soil for the U.S. government's response on their asylum, refugee or immigration request. Likewise, those who had managed to enter the U.S. were returned not to their countries of origin once they had been rejected or put on hold, but to Mexico.
AMLO was more beneficial to Trump's anti-immigrant plans than Enrique Peña Nieto had been, and then Donald Trump lost the reelection and Democrat Joe Biden arrived, who did not have immigration demands for the Mexican government, but of another kind and of greater danger and scope: the containment of drug cartels, the apprehension of their leaders, the prosecution of drug trafficking, particularly of fentanyl.
The recent history is already known: the protectionism of criminal drug traffickers during the six-year term of López Obrador. Thus, Ovidio Guzmán was arrested and released, although in a second edition of the capture, he was finally extradited, and the President took it upon himself time and again to declare that Mexico was not what the United States pointed out: a producer and transporter of fentanyl.
The latest episode of disagreement on the issue of drug trafficking, contrary to Mexican docility on the issue of migrants, is the capture of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García, "kidnapped" by a son of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera and handed over to U.S. authorities.
That feat, achieving the capture of the longest-lived and unpunished drug lord in Mexico, who for almost 50 years led criminality in this country and in the neighboring country, and who grew the power of the Sinaloa Cartel, was celebrated as a victory by the US government, Not so by the Mexican government, where in fact the now President, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, continues to demand explanations and details of the capture from the US administration, given that Mexico is prosecuting for treason, the son of Joaquín Guzmán who handed over El Mayo.
Under these conditions, on Tuesday, November 5, Donald Trump won the Presidency of the United States, and on January 20, 2025 he will become the 47th President of the American Union. His discourse, as in 2016 and 2020, is foreign migrants and Mexican criminals. From there he has promised his fellow countrymen not only the continuation of his unfinished concrete wall, but massive deportations never seen before, border closures and persecution of Mexican drug traffickers in their own territory.
Once again he has harangued the Mexican government that, if it does not support him in his intentions, he will raise import tariffs to 20, 25 percent of what has been established, and in 2026 a revision of the T-Mec will be reached, which could be a bargaining chip for the North American against the Mexican in the National Palace.
In the first months of 2025 we will see what political and administrative wood Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is made of, whether she is of a resistant strain like the one that guided Enrique Peña Nieto's public defense, or of a malleable rod, like the one that allowed in López Obrador's administration the National Guard and the Army to act as a human wall against migration and turned Mexico into a safe third country.
The near future remains to be seen.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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