Cartels, terrorists?
Colef professor José Andrés Sumano suggests that if the United States sees efforts against fentanyl trafficking as insufficient, the measures may escalate: declare organizations as terrorists.
“If Trump sees that he is not achieving, through economic pressure, through other types of measures, to stop fentanyl trafficking and that Mexico is doing something against drug trafficking, he could escalate the situation to declaring the Mexican cartels as terrorist groups with all the negative implications that this could have financially, but also in matters of sovereignty and security,” says the also member of the National System of Researchers, Level 1.
Declaring drug cartels terrorists is not a new proposal. In 2019, when Trump was president of the United States, he raised it after several members of the LeBaron family were murdered in Bavispe, Sonora. In 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order to thus designate the cartels.
“Cartels are terrorists and it is time we treat them that way. “In fact, more Americans died from fentanyl poisoning in the last year than all the terrorist attacks worldwide in the last 100 years,” the governor stated.
In 2024, the proposal has arisen again. According to the magazine Rolling Stone, Republicans close to the president-elect propose that to stop Mexican cartels they would carry out drone attacks against the cartels’ infrastructure or laboratories where they manufacture drugs, send military trainers and “advisors” to Mexico, as well as deploy extermination teams on Mexican lands.
The still representative of the United States government, Ken Salazar, criticized that in terms of security, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has rejected the cooperation of the United States, as well as economic resources of 32 million dollars.
“Unfortunately, that coordination has failed in the last year, largely because the previous president did not want to receive support from the United States. “He closed the door to investments of over $32 million, because he did not want that investment to reach Mexico to help with the security of the Mexican people,” he said on November 13.
However, Pamela Starr of the University of Southern California believes that when it comes to security, Trump threatens, but it is difficult for him to dare to take steps such as classifying cartels as terrorists, since this would imply a violation of Mexican sovereignty and with it, a resistance on the part of Mexico to collaborate.
“I doubt they are going to do it simply because someone in the State Department knows that it will cause Mexico not to help the United States. If the military, the DEA and other North American actors operate in Mexican territory or bomb Mexican territory from the United States, Mexico is simply not going to cooperate with the United States,” he says.
