This raises fundamental questions. “If they designate traffickers as narcoterrorists, will they also include Americans who are part of these networks? Because we are not only talking about the famous drug cartels, but also trafficking networks, money laundering, arms trafficking and others. There is enormous complexity in defining the starting and ending point of a cartel. There is a dispersion of actors, organizations and relationships involved in drug trafficking on both sides of the border. Therefore, talking about narcoterrorism is talking about something vague and imprecise. This term is not supported by concrete evidence, rather its use is eminently political,” says Zavala.
According to Zavala, this narrative allows figures like President Trump to use the concept of narcoterrorism as a tool to intimidate, threaten, and extort the Mexican government. “Rather than describing realities, narcoterrorism relies on spectral notions, on political phantoms that are used to force Mexico to align with Washington’s interests,” he says.
A decree to intervene militarily in Mexico
Intervening militarily in Mexican territory with selective incursions aimed at harming the cartels has been a U.S. concern for some time. But analysts say it would be a blow to the Trump administration.
“By using the concept of narcoterrorism, the American government authorizes itself to intervene militarily in Mexico. It is something very complicated, because intervening in this way would seriously harm the binational relationship, which is very delicate. It is almost inconceivable (the idea of military aggression),” explains Zavala. “I believe that in addition to this bravado, the Mexican government has generally fallen in line because, ultimately, our security policy has always been subordinated and violated, even subalterned by the United States.”
This Wednesday, the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, had a telephone conversation with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. She did not provide details of the conversation, but said it was a “very cordial conversation” and that they discussed “migration and security issues.” Rubio said he would prefer that any action, any decision taken by Washington have the consent and collaboration of the Mexican government.
“Cartels do not exist”
Oswaldo Zavala (Ciudad Juarez, 1975) specializes in the Mexican narrative and has an alternative vision of the narco phenomenon in Mexico. He believes the image of cartel power is exaggerated and state-sponsored. The author of The imagined drug wars between the United States and Mexico: state power, organized crime and the political history of drug trafficking narratives (1975-2012)explains to WIRED that the war against drug trafficking is generally built on fantastic, contradictory and often absurd concepts, which gradually form an imagination presenting drug trafficking in an alarmist manner.
“The U.S. government has managed very skillfully to create a long list of concepts, monsters and criminal actors that dominate not only public debate in the United States, but also in Mexico. So when Americans want , one organization or another becomes the focus of discussion. In the 1980s, for example, it was the Guadalajara Cartel, with figures like Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. central was El Chapo Guzman, and later, Amado Carrillo Today, the conversation revolves around fentanyl and, above all, the Sinaloa cartel,” explains Zavala.
Zavala argues that the speeches used by the U.S. government are ways of simplifying a complex problem, bringing common sense to the debate that would otherwise be much more complicated. “Considering that much of the drug use takes place in the United States, that there are organizations in this country that facilitate trafficking, launder money and, in many cases, are as or more dangerous than Mexican organizations, the debate This becomes much more complex for the Mexican panorama So what these stories do is simplify the situation, presenting Mexico as the main enemy of American security. , the American government can intervene not only in terms of media, but also political, diplomatic and political and even militarily in Mexico,” he said.
“As citizens, we must be very careful with the rhetoric generated by Washington,” he warns. “It is essential to learn to critically analyze them and distance ourselves from what we are told. This process is neither easy nor quick, because, unfortunately, not only does the Mexican government repeat these narratives , but the media also reproduce them, and sometimes institutions and other actors push them. And, to complicate things even more, a popular culture is created which nourishes these ideas: today there are already some. races on fentanyl, on the “Chapitos” and on the so-called criminal empires of the cartels. It is very difficult to escape all this. »
A war that left more than 100,000 people missing
More than 100,000 people have been missing in Mexico since 1964, when the count began. The National Registry of Missing and Missing Persons has exceeded this figure for months, reflecting the serious situation in which the country finds itself. Most of these people have been missing since 2006, the year the government of Felipe Calderón began, which brought the army to the streets to combat the violence of organized crime.
“Many of the most serious effects of the anti-drug policy we have suffered in Mexico for decades. More than half a million murders since the start of militarization under President Calderon, more than 100,000 forced disappearances. We know that all this violence is being unleashed “especially on poor, racialized, brown youth who live in the most deprived areas of the country,” says Zavala, who is surprised when people are alarmed by Trump’s remarks “As if we weren’t already experiencing, for years, a very serious wave of violence in the country.”
According to the researcher, military violence is often expressed as a form of social control, as a management of violence. “We will not see militarization in neighborhoods like Condesa or Roma, but on the margins of Mexico City, in the poorest areas. The violence occurs on the outskirts, in the poorest neighborhoods, where there is no not even adequate infrastructure for monitoring by the media or human rights institutions,” explains Zavala.
What should surprise us, Zavala says, are the very high rates of violence we are experiencing, in the context of what is already happening and not something that is yet to come. “I think we do not yet fully understand that this violence has a clear class dimension. It is not widespread violence, but systematized and directed against the most vulnerable sectors of society,” he says.
The solution: demilitarize the country
Calderón’s decision 16 years ago to entrust the army with responsibility for public security in several regions of the country has shown us its fatal consequences. Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged, during their respective electoral campaigns, to restore peace, security and civility. However, once in power, both presented proposals aimed at consolidating, through laws and even constitutional reforms, the militarized model of public security. The situation does not seem to change with Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration.
Recent Mexican presidents have thus maintained a policy of “peace and security” based on a militarized strategy, justifying it by the alleged operational incapacity of police forces to deal with organized crime.
“I agree with the idea that drugs need to be decriminalized, addictions treated, all that. But in my opinion, most of the violence in Mexico is not necessarily related to drug trafficking, but to the experience of militarization itself. And I think there is strong empirical data to support this idea. We know that there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ of militarization in Mexico,” explains Zavala. “Before the deployment of the army, our homicide rates were declining across the country, and there is a direct correlation between the military occupation, the presence of the armed forces and the increase in homicides and enforced disappearances. »