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The Guardian: I read it, so you don’t have to. Not that you need to, of course. Everything you’d expect the Grauniad to say, is exactly what they do say. And you just know that, no matter, what, they’ll always find an angle to blame the Bad Orange Man.
Even when violent, criminal drug gangs go on the rampage: you guessed it, Trump’s fault.
With schools still closed, flights cancelled and the charred carcasses of buses smouldering on streets across the country, Mexico was still reeling from the cartel backlash prompted by the killing of cartel kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as “El Mencho”.
Defense minister, Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, was moved almost to tears on Monday as he offered his condolences to the families of soldiers felled in the operation to kill the country’s most-wanted drug lord. Mexican military personnel, he said, “fulfilled their mission”.
Cue the TDS.
But Donald Trump had a very different message to offer. As Mexican officials confirmed that 25 members of the national guard were killed in the operation, Trump posted on social media that: “Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs!”
Given the mayhem unleashed by the cartels in recently, this seems pretty evident. If the Mexican government walks back now, it sends a clear message of just who’s really running the country.
The killing of El Mencho has highlighted the intense pressure exerted by Trump on the Mexican government, the key role of the US in supporting the country’s security operations, and the continued struggle Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, will face in her efforts to appease her US counterpart.
Oseguera, the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (JNGC), has been indicted several times in the US since 2017.
But since the start of his second administration, Trump has ramped up the pressure, offering a reward of up to $15m for information that might lead to Oseguera’s capture in December of 2024. Then last year, the White House designated the JNGC as a foreign terrorist organization.
In other words, the Mexican government was dragging its heels on tackling a group that has killed, directly and indirectly, at least a quarter of million American citizens over just the last five years. What country would be expected to tolerate this?
Clearly, the safety of American citizens meant that Mexico had to be pushed into acting.
Meanwhile, Trump has spent months insisting that the Mexican government must do more to take on drug trafficking groups, including offering to send US troops across the border, something which Sheinbaum has repeatedly rebuffed.
Only because it would be a too-embarrassing admission that the Mexican government wasn’t really running the country.
Not to mention that Mexico is set to host several World Cup matches in Guadalajara, the JNGC’s major stronghold.
“That was also a factor that triggered the Mexican government’s strategy to arrest the top leader of the Jalisco cartel and to show the World Cup organizers that the Mexican government has the capacity to confront these organizations and to control and guarantee security in a city like Guadalajara,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a former Mexican security official and expert on the country’s cartels.
What no doubt really grinds the Grauniad’s gears is that the Trump administration was key to the success of the operation.
Both Mexican and US officials have emphasized the importance of US intelligence in taking down the drug lord.
“That intelligence was fundamental,” said Guerrero, adding that the operation would have required close monitoring of the cartel boss. “That tracking and the timing of the operation were almost certainly the work of US intelligence … it played a crucial role.”
Reuters reported on Monday that a newly created US-military-led taskforce specializing in intelligence collection on drug cartels was involved in the raid that led to Oseguera’s killing.
“It’s evident that the joint taskforce that was set up … several months ago is starting to deliver the goods in terms of intelligence sharing,” said [Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington].
Even more galling for the Guardian-reading left, it’s yet another foreign policy win for Trump. So naturally they couldn’t end without a parting shot at the Bad Orange Man.
Tony Payan, a US-Mexico studies expert at Rice University, said […] the pressure won’t ease for very long.
Trump’s “thirst has been quenched, but I think the pressure will continue”, he said. “This wasn’t the end by any means. It was just the beginning.”
And their problem with taking down murderous drug cartels is…?
