Mexican fury over American plans to designate drug cartels as "terrorist organisations"

[Marco Ugarte/AP]

Written by: Aidan Jonah

American plans to designate Latin American drug cartels as “terrorist organisations” has sparked a furious response from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

According to Al Jazeera, AMLO rejected “interventionism” on Wednesday, confirming that Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard would lead talks with Washington after the US Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

After the murder of nine dual-nationality citizens in Mexico earlier this month, American President Donald Trump tweeted an offer to help Mexico "wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth."

Trump ramped up the controversy by claiming that cartels "will be designated", adding he had been working for 90 days on the process, in an interview with embattled former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

The Mexican response;

Reacting to the comments from Trump, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in a tweet that Mexico would never tolerate any move that would violate its national sovereignty.

Once a particular group is designated as a terrorist organisation, it is illegal under US law for people in the United States to knowingly offer support.

Its members are also denied entry to the country, while financial institutions that become aware they have funds connected to the group must block the money and alert the Treasury Department.

Mexico's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it would quickly seek a high-level meeting with US State Department officials to address the legal designation, as well as the flow of arms and money from the US to organised crime in Mexico.

A more sinister backstory;

According to Benjamin Norton, a Grayzone journalist, the Zetas drug gang which was involved in the recent deaths was trained at Ft. Bragg, a US military base. This has sparked fears that the US is following in its’ recent history of training terrorists in foreign countries.

Norton tweeted that “just like how the US trained ISIS commanders like Omar al-Shishani, and gave birth to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, then helped AQ in Libya and Syria, the US has also trained some of the cartel leaders terrorizing Mexico.”

Ever since Lopez Obrador won the presidency in 2018, Trump’s tone on Mexico-US issues has soured. Historically, the US did not raise any desires to interfere in Mexico’s battles with drug cartels. However, during the O’Reilly interview, Trump said AMLO had declined his previous offers to "let us go in and clean it out."

The Bolivia Connection;

On Nov. 10, Mexico was the only country to offer political asylum to Evo Morales during the right-wing coup against his democratically elected government. This angered the US government, who had pushed for Morales’ resignation through the Organisation of American States.

The US provides 60 per cent of the organisation’s funding, which triggered the protests against Morales by calling the first round of Bolivian elections fraudulent, without any evidence to back up their claims. Morales was forced to flee the country after right-wing paramilitary groups supporting the coup attempted to enter his residence. In a tweet, he denounced an “illegal police warrant” for his arrest and claimed that the paramilitary group was following the illegal arrest warrant.

On Nov. 12, AMLO arrived in Mexico, having accepted the offer of political asylum. Remarkably, only two weeks later, Trump revealed that he had been “working for 90 days” on the terrorist declarations. Given the imperialist history of the US government and the inferences of interference in domestic Mexican affairs, there is a strong likelihood that the recent declarations is a form of retaliation towards Mexico for refusing to follow US foreign policy.