The possibility of the United States carrying out drone strikes against Mexican cartels and an allegation that enforced disappearances are commonly perpetrated in Mexico were among the issues President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke about at her Tuesday morning press conference.
Here is a recap of the president’s April 8 mañanera.
Sheinbaum doesn’t believe US will carry out drone strikes against cartels in Mexico
“We’ve always said it, we don’t agree,” Sheinbaum said when asked about the possibility of the Trump administration carrying out drone strikes on cartels in Mexico, as it is reportedly considering.
“First because we don’t agree on any intervention or interference,” she said before reiterating that Mexico collaborates with the United States on security issues but won’t allow itself to be subordinated.
Sheinbaum subsequently asserted that drone strikes on cartels “wouldn’t resolve anything.”
What is needed is “attention to the causes” to combat crime and drug use, and “arrests” to combat drug traffickers, she said.
US considering using drone strikes against cartel members in Mexico
Sheinbaum said that she and other government officials don’t believe that the Trump administration will carry out drone strikes against cartels in Mexico “because there is a lot of dialogue on security issues and many other issues.”
“So no, no, not that. In Mexico no, not that,” she said.
Enforced disappearance ‘doesn’t exist in Mexico’
“In Mexico, there is no enforced disappearance [perpetrated] by the state. We’ve fought against that our whole lives. That doesn’t exist in Mexico.”
Sheinbaum made that assertion four days after the United Nations’ Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) said it would seek additional information from the Mexican government after receiving information it said “seems to indicate” that enforced disappearance is a “widespread and systematic practice” in Mexico.
According to the United Nations, “an enforced disappearance is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the state.”
Sheinbaum said that abductions in Mexico are carried out “mainly,” but not solely, by organized crime groups, recognizing that individuals acting alone also kidnap people.
“There is a phenomenon of disappearance linked to organized crime and we’re doing everything in our hands to … combat this crime,” she said before reiterating that the “state” under her leadership does not perpetrate enforced disappearances.
Sheinbaum said that her government sent a diplomatic note to the United Nations to express its “disagreement” with the CED’s commencement of a procedure under the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance that could lead to the issue of alleged enforced disappearances in Mexico being referred to the General Assembly of the UN.
“In any case we’re going to explain to them what the phenomenon in Mexico is because there is a lot of ignorance in this commission,” she said.
‘Los Chapitos’ believed to have carried out massacre in Culiacán
Security Minister Omar García Harfuch noted that nine people were killed and five others were wounded in an armed attack at a rehabilitation center for addicts in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in the early hours of Monday morning.
Citing preliminary investigations, García said that “everything indicates” that members of a cell of the Sinaloa Cartel faction “Los Chapitos” perpetrated the attack against members of the rival “Los Mayos” faction who were at the Shaddai rehab center in the Sinaloa capital.
“That’s the information we have at the moment,” he said.
A long-running dispute between “Los Chapitos” — led by sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — and “Los Mayos intensified last year after the arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, an alleged Sinaloa Cartel leader who was detained in New Mexico last July after he was allegedly flown to the United States against his will. Members of “Los Mayos” belong to the faction led (or formerly led) by Zambada.
The conflict between the rival factions has claimed hundreds of lives in recent months.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
