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the campaign to elect the next president of the United States, and it is clear that the bad guy in this movie will be Mexico. On this occasion, it is not simply about racist statements like those of Donald Trump in 2015 at the beginning of his campaign, Mexico sends its bad mentheir rapists and their murderers and, therefore, a wall would have to be built to stop them.
Now the campaign is more dire; the problem is no longer bad individuals, but a country. On a daily basis, the right wing and its spokespersons in the media, especially Fox News, a company run by Rupert Murdoch, which recently admitted having spread false information, demand that the Joe Biden government classify the cartels operating in Mexico as terrorist groups. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, also owned by Murdoch, former Trump attorney Bill Bar compares the cartels operating in Mexico to the ISIS group and proposes that US special forces operate in Mexico. Republican senators like Lindsey Graham allege that Mexican cartels traffic fentanyl for the sole purpose of killing Americans. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, argues that the death of Americans is part of a conscious strategy to reduce the white population in the US, the so-called replacement theory, and thus allow people of color to be the majority.
Beyond drug trafficking, it is alleged that the cartels have infiltrated US security agencies, control entry points into the country and, therefore, represent a threat to national security. Against these challenges, sectors of the right propose to use the funds authorized for the war in Ukraine and allocate them to finance a new war against the cartels in Mexico.
At no time is the US considered to be the main consumer of illegal drugs in the world, or the main supplier of weapons to criminal groups. Nor is it considered that the call war on drugs which has been in the US for more than 50 years, is a failed strategy, whose initial purpose was to criminalize the protests against the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movements in the 70s. war It is a proposal that opts for a military solution without considering the origin of the addition in the US. The current fentanyl crisis was once a marijuana or cocaine or methamphetamine crisis.
The intention is clear. Declaring criminal groups in Mexico terrorists implies that the US could attack the cartels in Mexican territory. In theory, US forces could launch missiles at the cartels’ operating centers or introduce special forces to capture their leaders. In their books Mike Pompeo (presidential candidate), former CIA director and former Secretary of State, and Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense, reveal that Trump proposed that he wanted to launch missiles against alleged cartel laboratories in Mexico.
It would be easy to propose that conservative groups represent a minority in the US.
But the reality is that right-wing arguments find fertile ground in the US. Historically, Mexico has been the other against whom the US has defined its national identity. The concept of manifest destiny, used in the 19th century and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon identity that it produces, is created in contrast to a Mexican identity that considers racially inferior
. The expansionism of the United States in the 19th century was endowed with a strong racist sentiment, above all, anti-Mexican. In the 20th century, Mexico continued to be represented as an enemy of Anglo-Saxon culture. This reached the point that, in 1978, William Colby, then director of the CIA, in full cold War, proposed that Mexico and its population constituted the main enemy of the United States and not the USSR. According to Colby, if Mexican immigration was not stopped, the United States would lose its identity. Colby insisted that in the face of the growing wave of migrants, Border Patrol agents would not have enough bullets to stop them
. In his essay Hispanic Challenge, the liberal scholar Samuel Huntington of Harvard proposed the same thing. According to Huntington, Latino culture, particularly Mexican culture, represents a fundamental challenge for the preservation of an Anglo-Saxon culture. Positions like those of Colby and Huntington still influence political debates in the United States.
The attacks against Mexico are not only the product of a deranged extreme right. Historical experience contradicts this proposal. On multiple occasions liberals have embraced repressive policies to refute the accusations of conservatives. Barack Obama adopted a restrictive immigration policy, deporting more than 2.5 million people, more than Republican rulers. The Biden government, which as a candidate criticized Trump, today applies the same exclusionary policies against immigrants; it does not allow them to request asylum in the US, intends to send them to Mexico and has divided families who request asylum. Before the Senate, Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, criticized Mexico for not doing more to stop the fentanyl trade and attack the cartels. Both conservatives and liberals see Mexico as a target for their attacks.
These attacks occur when the US appears to need Mexico as part of its imperial economy. The call nearshoring reveals that Mexico is a key part of the strategy of a new cold War where the US relocates its industrial production from Asia to Mexico. The other aspect of this debate is the pressure that the US exerts on Mexico to maintain control of its internal security. The alternative, according to conservatives and some liberals, would be US intervention. Even though there are months to go before the presidential election in the US concludes, the script is written; It is clear that Mexico will be the bad guy in the movie. Most likely, that film will have many sequels.
*Pomona College Historians
