As Mexicans continue to debate whether or not U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is really planning a military invasion of Mexico, a new snap poll by the Mexican newspaper Reforma revealed this week that a surprising 46% of respondents had a favorable view of Mexico collaborating with the U.S. to fight Mexico’s drug cartels.
It’s worth noting, however, that an additional 50% told Reforma that they opposed such an idea. But the results of Reforma’s poll have made headlines in Mexico and suggest that a significant number of Mexicans are dissatisfied enough with their own country’s performance in combatting cartel violence that they would consider outside help.
When asked “What’s the best way the U.S. can help Mexico fight insecurity?” nearly two-thirds opted for “a collaborative scheme relying on joint operations,” while 24% chose “undercover operations by U.S. security agencies.”
To a third question — “How do you rate Mexico’s efforts to combat insecurity in your city?” — 47% responded “very bad,” 37% said “very good” and 12% conceded that the government’s security policy was “just OK.”
The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported Monday that many Mexicans lament U.S. intervention in security matters and blame the U.S. for advocating using Mexico’s military to fight drug cartels, a strategy that has produced shocking violence levels in Mexico.
However, the Times also said that many Mexicans have lost confidence in Mexican law enforcement and its suspected links to organized crime. Therefore, the paper said, Mexicans might welcome U.S. troops.
While President Claudia Sheinbaum insists that Trump’s comments weren’t an implied threat (“He never mentioned anything about an invasion. Not once,” she said on Monday, according to the newspaper La Jornada), her government is not taking Trump’s comments lightly.
“Designating cartels as terrorist organizations would be a strategic error with unpredictable consequences for both countries,” a senior official at the Mexican Embassy in the U.S. told the newspaper El País on Monday.
Former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, also weighed in, saying any U.S. military action in Mexico “would set the relationship between the two countries back three decades.”
Some opposition politicians in Mexico, however, are of a different mind.
In early October, lawmakers from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) proposed Mexico designate cartels as terrorist organizations.
Critics slammed the PAN at the time for “providing the United States with permission” to invade Mexico, though Pablo Girault Ruiz — a director of the NGO Mexico United Against Crime — soft-pedaled that notion.
“They aren’t going to ask permission,” Girault told the newspaper El Economista Monday. “If they decide cartels are terrorists and authority is granted to pursue them anywhere in the world, there’s not much we can do.”
“I would not be surprised to wake up one day to an American missile hitting a meth lab in Badiraguato (Sinaloa). It could happen,” academic and political columnist Carlos Pérez-Ricart told El Pais.
At her Monday press conference, Sheinbaum compared the PAN to the 19th-century Mexican conservatives who welcomed a Hapsburg monarch to rule Mexico — Maximilian I, installed by France in 1864 with conservatives’ help — and celebrated a French invasion.
“It’s the same today,” she said, labeling it an embarrassment. “How can someone celebrate another country invading Mexico?”
With reports from Los Angeles Times, El Economista, Radio Fórmula, El País and Rolling Stone
