Trump Wants a Poster War, and He Can Get One

This raises fundamental questions. “If they are going to designate traffickers as narco-terrorists, 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, drug smuggling. weapons and other structures, many of which are incorporated in the United States, to speak of narcotringerism is to speak of something vague and imprecise.

According to Zavala, the narrative allows figures like President Trump to use the concept of narcoterrorism as a tool of intimidation, threat and extortion towards the Mexican government. “Instead of describing realities, narcoterrorism is based on spectral notions, on political ghosts that are used to force Mexico to align with Washington’s interests,” he says.

An executive order to intervene militarily in Mexico

Intervening militarily in Mexican territory with selective raids aimed at damaging cartels is something that has been on the US radar screen for some time. But analysts argue it would be a shot in the arm for the Trump administration.

“By using the concept of narcoterrorism, the United States government makes it easier for itself to intervene militarily in Mexico. That is something very complicated, because intervening in that way would seriously damage the binational relationship, which is very delicate. It is almost inconceivable (the idea of ​​military aggression)”, explains Zavala. “I think that, in addition to the bravado, the Mexican government has generally fallen in line because in the end our security policy has always been subordinated and violated; even subalternized 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 Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio. She did not provide details of the conversation, but said it was “a very cordial conversation” and they discussed “immigration and security issues.” Rubio has said that he would prefer that any action, any decision made by Washington have the consent, the collaboration of the Mexican government.

“Posters do not exist”

Oswaldo Zavala (Ciudad Juárez, 1975) has specialized in 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 Imaginary USA: Mexico’s Drug War: State Power, Organized Crime, and the Political History of Drug Trafficking (1975–2012)explains to Wired that the war against drug trafficking is generally based on fantastic, contradictory and often absurd concepts, which gradually form an imaginary that presents drug trafficking in an alarmist way.

“The United States government has managed with great skill to create a long list of criminal concepts, monsters and actors that not only dominate public debate in the United States, but also in Mexico. Therefore, when Americans want it “One organization or another becomes the center of discussion, the conversation revolves around fentanyl and, above all, the Sinaloa cartel,” explains Zavala.

Zavala argues that the narratives used by the United States government are ways of simplifying a complex problem, bringing common sense to the debate that would otherwise be much more complicated. “If we take into account that a large part of drug consumption occurs in the United States, that there are organizations within that country that facilitate trafficking, money laundering and, in many cases, are or more dangerous than Mexicans, the discussion It becomes much more complex for the Mexican panorama and even militarily in Mexico,” he says.

“As citizens we must be very careful with the narratives that are generated from Washington,” he warns. “It is essential to learn to analyze them critically and distance ourselves from what they tell us. This process is not easy or quick, since, unfortunately, not only does the Mexican government repeat these narratives, but the media also replicates them, and sometimes institutions and other actors push them. rabid about fentanyl, about the ‘Chapitos’ and about the alleged criminal empires of the cartels. It’s very difficult to escape from all this.”

A war that has left more than 100,000 people missing

More than 100,000 people have been missing in Mexico since 1964, when counting began. The National Registry of Missing and Unaccounted for Persons has for months exceeded this figure, which is evidence of the serious situation in the country. Most of these people had been registered as missing since 2006, when the administration of Felipe Calderón began, who took the army to the streets to combat the violence of organized crime.

“Many of the most serious effects of the anti-drug policy that we have been suffering in Mexico for decades. More than half a million murders since militarization began with President Calderón, more than 100,000 forced disappearances. We know that all that violence is discharged, above all, against poor, racialized, brown youth who live in the most disadvantaged areas of the country,” says Zavala, who is surprised when people are alarmed by what he says. Trump. “As if we were not experiencing, for years, a wave of really serious violence in the country.”

According to the researcher, military violence is often expressed as a form of social control, as a management of violence. “You are not going to see militarization in areas like La Condesa or the Roma, but on the margins of Mexico City, in the most impoverished areas. The violence is happening on the peripheries, in the poorest neighborhoods, where there are not even adequate monitoring of the media or human rights institutions,” says Zavala.

What should surprise us, Zavala says, are the very high rates of violence we are experiencing, as a context of what is already happening, not something that is yet to come. “I think we still do not fully understand that this violence has a clear class dimension. It is not generalized violence, but systematized and directed against the most vulnerable sectors of society,” he says.

The solution: demilitarize the country

The decision made by Calderón 16 years ago to entrust the Army with responsibility for public security in several areas of the country has shown us its fatal consequences. Both Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised, during their respective electoral campaigns, to return peace, security and courtesy. However, once in power, both presented proposals to consolidate, through legislation and even constitutional reforms, the militarized public security model. The situation does not seem to change with the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum.

In this way, the recent presidents of Mexico have maintained a “peace and security” policy based on a militarized strategy, justifying it in the supposed operational inability of police corporations to confront organized crime.

“I agree with the opinion that drugs should be decriminalized, addictions treated, all that. But in my opinion, most of the violence in Mexico is not necessarily linked to drug trafficking, but to the experience of militarization itself. And I think there is solid empirical data to support this idea. We know that there is a ‘before’ and a ‘after’ militarization in Mexico,” explains Zavala. “Before the deployment of the army, our homicide rates were decreasing throughout the country, and there is a direct correlation between the military occupation, the presence of the armed forces and the increase in homicides and forced disappearances”.