Sheinbaum’s Predicament: Part Four - Breaking Point

With news of CIA covert operations in Mexico and DEA evidence to the US Senate exacerbating US-Mexico tensions, it now looks as though the situation is at breaking point. 

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Transcript

Hi everyone. So, I wasn’t expecting to do a fourth episode in the series on Claudia Sheinbum’s predicament, but it really feels as though the winds are growing in strength as Sheinbaum continues her high-wire trapeze walk across the crevasse, with cartels, her party and the US government all increasingly agitated and barracking at the edges. 

Last week Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) director Terry Cole gave evidence to the US Senate, and said that there was “no doubt that the narco traffickers and high-ranking government officials in Mexico have been in bed for years. They are just as much responsible for the death and destruction of record amounts of Americans by cooperating, by conspiring, by helping, producing this poison to come across the border.” Boom. I mean, we knew it, we know it, but saying it publicly in this context is lighting a massive bin fire and takes no account for the complexities of the situation, a situation which is unresolvable given the current foundations of the economic, social, political landscape between the two countries. 

All this in a context in which we’re increasingly hearing reports of CIA agents operating with impunity (outside of bi-national agreements) in Mexico. In particular - which was clear as soon as the killing of El Mencho happened, and which we mentioned in these recordings - the CIA are clearly operating not simply in an information-gathering context, as is continually being insisted upon, but also in an expanded, clandestine, and highly active manner. It’s now increasingly clear that we are talking about targeted operations on Mexican soil. 

Of course, both the Mexican government and the CIA explicitly deny that the agency is conducting or organizing independent, lethal  ground operations, but - you know - it’s the CIA that admit nothing and exist in an extrajudicial landscape, and the Mexican government - and specifically Claudia Sheinbaum - simply can’t say that this is the case. She continues arguing that Mexico wants a good relationship with the United States government, and that its red lines are the defence of sovereignty and respect for the Mexican people and their dignity, neither of which are part of Washington’s strategy with Mexico, where presence and incursions are being undertaken in secret, and where there is palpably no respect for Mexico’s sovereignty or its people. And this is Sheinbaum’s problem - her predicament - because everyone know that this is the case, so when she says it, it’s clear that she is holding an untenable position which is evidently not based on any kind of real world context, She is also the only person holding those positions, trying to keep all parties happy.

The problem with the testimony of  DEA director Terry Cole is that it strips away the veneer in the USA, into a likely US stance of increased, overt pressure, which makes any kind of holding pattern in Mexico - politically in Sheinbaum’s party, or with the threatened cartels - impossible to maintain. Cole also went on to say - as did acting Attorney General Todd Blanche - that more charges would soon be filed against Mexican officials, and that the indictments of Sinaloa’s Governor Ruben Rocha Moya was just the beginning. 

None of this is standard, and none of this does anything towards actually addressing the problems. In fact, Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda probably summed it up best in saying that this was currently “the most tense, the most difficult situation since at least the 1980s. We’re in a moment the likes of which we have never seen, at least not in my memory,” he said. 

That’s Castañeda’s perspective. I would agree, and add that, to my mind, we’ve now reached breaking point.