After the U.S. Attorney General's Office on Thursday ordered the "total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations," while the southern border czar, Tom Homan, said that the army would not be used if Mexican cartels attack U.S. troops, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called for "starting with your country!"
During her morning press conference on Friday, the Mexican president reiterated that there will be coordination and collaboration with the United States, but not subordination.
“Start with your country! Of course we will coordinate, collaborate, but as I said on February 5, never subordination or interference, it is coordination,” Sheinbaum stressed from the National Palace.
The head of the Mexican Executive, pointed out that the United States has a lot to do regarding drugs in its territory and questioned the distribution and sale of drugs in the American Union.
“How does it get there? What happens beyond the border? Who operates the distribution of the drugs? Who sells the drugs in the cities of the United States that have caused so much tragedy? Where does the money from drug sales in the United States go? How is it that there are weapons in Mexico for the exclusive use of the United States Army? Who sold them? How did they get to our country? So, there is an important part that they have to do in their own country.”
"There are no cartels there or organized crime? So, we collaborate, we coordinate, we meet, we work together, but we will always defend sovereignty," he said.
And, he pointed out, the memorandum issued by the Attorney General's Office "is not very well understood. It is a general decree, with mentions, but what will it translate into? We have to wait to see what they propose."
“We coordinate, we collaborate, but also, as I said on February 5, as I have been saying for a long time: they should also act in their own country.”
On the other hand, President Sheinbaum said that, with respect to arms trafficking from the United States to Mexico, she mentioned it to Donald Trump in the last call they had, however, the president said he knew little about the subject.
“I mentioned it to him on the call, he really knew little about this topic, I said to him: let's see, just like that, how is it possible that a grenade launcher that is for the exclusive use of the United States Army is seized in Mexico from an organized crime group?”
He recalled that during the administrations of Felipe Calderón and Barack Obama, the “Fast and Furious” operation was carried out, which he described as “an atrocity” because supposedly chips were put into weapons, they were given to criminal groups to see the traceability of how they arrived from the United States to Mexico, and what these criminal cells did was eliminate the chips.
“It was obviously the worst thing they could do, but we do want that collaboration and they are also interested in it. So, there are distributors, there are arms fairs, but there are two types: one is the distributors, the fairs, the gun shops where you buy, let’s say, the ones that are for commercial use, and the others are the ones that are not sold at Walmart or at a fair, which also happen to appear here.”
Sheinbaum made it clear that this is not a dispute over what each person says about their problems, but rather about working together.
“They must be very interested. It is not a question of, you tell me fentanyl, I tell you weapons, it is not that, it is that we both agree that we have to combat violence, drug trafficking and arms trafficking.”
To achieve this, he added, collaboration and work are necessary, but each person must do so in their own territory, within a framework of sovereignty, respect and trust.
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