Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Mexico
Sovereignty, Our Best Weapon
Against the Empire
Mexican Chamber of Deputees, February 1, 2025, takes stand against Trump's threats.
"We are nobody's colony, nobody's protectorate! The [United States] can threaten us with any outrage, but we will never allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our people and our homeland," assured President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
"Cooperation, yes; subordination, no. Collaboration, yes; submission, no," she stressed on the 108th anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution, in which, without mentioning President Donald Trump, she expressed: "no interference, no interventionism, no racism, no classism. We want to declare, and let it be heard loud and far: any intention to affect our right to be a free people, an independent country, a sovereign land, will be met with a brave people who know how to fight to defend their rights and their homeland." (La Jornada, February 6, 2025)
Today, Mexico faces the neo-colonialism of the U.S. Empire, and the plans it has developed for decades. Today, we have the advantage that the plans are announced by Trump openly and shamelessly, which alerts the people of Mexico to the danger.
Trump has not ruled out intervening militarily in Panama and Greenland, he declares that the U.S. must appropriate Gaza and expel all Palestinians. He has also removed his country from the United Nations Human Rights Council and ordered the continuation of the suspension of funds for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). (EFE, February 4, 2025)
He has suggested annexing Canada as the 51st state and in an interview with NBC on December 8, 2024, he proposed annexing Mexico as the 52nd state of the United States. He has stated the goal of declaring drug cartels terrorists and has attacked Mexico, stating that the country "is dangerous" and "is essentially run by the cartels," and wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America."
This comes after a long process of integration that began in 1994 with President Carlos Salinas, reaffirmed by President Vicente Fox in 2005 with the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and moved on to military integration starting in 2006 with the administrations of Felipe Calderón then Enrique Peña.
Today, the neo-colonial agenda of the U.S. is clear and Trump does not hide it. Faced with this situation it is necessary to reaffirm national sovereignty, which implies political and economic sovereignty. Without economic sovereignty there is no political sovereignty. And of course, military sovereignty, without which there is no independence whatsoever.
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the execution of Cuauhtémoc by the Spanish invaders on February 28, 1525. Following the example of the Tlahtoani (spokesperson), the slogan today is Resistance and Sovereignty! He fought against colonialism, we now fight against neo-colonialism.
Washington has worked for more than half a century to incorporate Mexico into the United States of American Corporations. Strategically, starting with the government of Miguel Alemán in 1946, it began to put us in debt. The debt is a noose around the neck of the people. In Mexico it grew from $1.6 billion in 1964 to $3.6 billion in 1970 under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz; from $3.6 billion to $19 billion in 1976 under Luis Echeverría, who subjected us to the International Monetary Fund; and from $19 billion to $85 billion in 1982 under José López Portillo. That is how we fell into the clutches of the international financial organizations and neo-liberalism was imposed 40 years ago. This led Salinas to begin in 1994, together with George H.W. Bush, then president of the United States, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, the economic integration of North America through the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Later, with Fox in 2005, the SPP was signed, which integrated us into the U.S. military's Northern Command. With Calderón, military integration was developed and this continued with Peña until today, when U.S. military personnel have arrived in Mexico during the first month of 2025. From January 27 to March 27 they will be settling into the states of Mexico and Chihuahua. Thus we went from economic integration to political integration and finally to military integration. This process has seriously damaged national sovereignty to the extent that there are those who say that we are a North American region and not a sovereign Mexico. Our country had always considered itself Latin American, but since 1994 we have been defined as part of North America. It is necessary and urgent to reverse this process.
The economic integration caused by NAFTA destroyed the national economy with the pretext of "free competition." But you cannot compete with a power that has an economy that is 14 times stronger -– the GDP of the United States in 1994 was $7.3 trillion while Mexico's was $0.55 trillion. Currently Mexico's GDP is around $1.8 trillion and the United States' is $27.36 trillion. NAFTA had the objective of subordinating the Mexican economy to the needs of our northern neighbour, promoting the supposed advantage we would obtain by suspending tariffs between our countries. Even Salinas boasted that we were already part of the first world.
Donald Trump has assured that his country subsidizes Mexico by $300 billion a year and Canada with another $200 billion. So, after reaffirming his stance of imposing 25 per cent tariffs on each of them, he suggested their annexation as the 51st and 52nd states. "Why are we subsidizing them? If we are going to subsidize them, let them become a state," he said on December 8, 2024 in a TV interview. (La Jornada, December 9, 2024)
It is not Mexico which benefits from exports, but the big corporations, many of them North American. Among the main exporters from Mexico to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis and the Ford Motor Company.
The fact is that Donald Trump, with the stroke of a pen, has announced his intention to disregard the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA; known as T-MEC in Mexico). As Kenneth Smith, Mexico's former chief negotiator for NAFTA, says, the imposition of tariffs on products exported by Mexico and Canada would imply a clear violation of the T-MEC (El Financiero, February 1, 2025). So today, the experts in violating every treaty they sign -- just as in treaty after treaty, they dispossessed the Indigenous Peoples of their land in North America -- once again show their true nature and the falsity of their treaties and alliances. With sorrow we remember how Calderón and Peña described Mexico's relationship with the U.S. as one of "strategic allies," which are not friends as they have only shared interests. It is necessary to look at how the U.S. treats its "allies" Canada, Mexico and the Europeans.
After the signing of NAFTA in 1994, Mexico's industrial and food sovereignty were destroyed, unemployment increased and, according to statistics, migration to the United States, as well as criminality and drug trafficking, skyrocketed. The U.S. provoked the same phenomenon that today it claims to be fighting against and for which it blames Mexico, when the whole process and its consequences are directed from this northern country and for the benefit of its leaders.
The United States provoked mass migration with a clear objective. It was to provide itself with labour without rights in conditions of modern slavery. It was to exploit these workers without limit. This it also uses as a weapon to lower wages and keep U.S. workers in check, in order to be more competitive with China and other countries. To lower production costs, the U.S. economy needs migrants, preferably undocumented ones.
Clinton and Obama each carried out record numbers of deportations. With Trump these will continue, but the main objective is to criminalize and terrorize undocumented workers, to subdue them. The policies consciously imposed by Washington, through the financial agencies it controls, are what provoke the migratory waves.
Donald Trump noisily raises the issue of imposing tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, as a weapon to distract from his aims, which are not only commercial, but political, social and military. Washington's policy is to threaten other countries with tariffs so as to impose its agenda and gain advantage in its struggle for world hegemony.
As for the criminal groups operating in Mexico, "Seventy-five percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from the U.S.," said President Sheinbaum. She added that Mexico "does not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country where lives are lost because of the violence resulting from satisfying the demand for drugs in the neighbouring country." (Contralínea TV, January 9, 2025)
Washington accuses the Mexican government of being linked to the cartels to hide the fact that the U.S. is the one which arms them, buys drugs and distributes them throughout its territory, and launders the money. It sustains the Mexican cartels and keeps them in conflict with one another to control them and generate the violence in Mexico for which it blames the government and thus keeps the Mexican population in check. While the cartels have had allies in the Mexican governments as happened with Fox, Calderón and his Secretary of Public Security and convicted drug trafficker Generao Garcia Luna, from 2000 to 2012, this has been with the knowledge of the U.S. government, which directs the criminal networks.
But with his threat, Trump has already succeeded in deploying 10,000 of Mexico's National Guard to the northern border, across 18 municipalities, to reinforce the troops on the border and "stop the flow of fentanyl, other drugs and illegal immigration." Thus the problems are presented as if they were caused by Mexico. Meanwhile, the imposition of 25 per cent tariffs has only been postponed for a month, which Trump continues to wield as a constant threat.
In fact, the head of the Pentagon did not rule out military intervention in Mexico to combat drug cartels: "We will not hold anything back," said U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who warned on January 31, that the government of Donald Trump has not ruled out launching military attacks against Mexican cartels in Mexican territory. "All options will be on the table," he warned on Fox News. On February 3, he headed to Texas where 4,000 U.S. troops are already deployed on the border with Mexico. It is known that Trump declared Mexico's drug gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, a pretext to intervene militarily in our country. The U.S. is trying to intimidate Mexicans with its threats of invasion.
On the other hand, the fentanyl business is also the responsibility of the northern neighbour: $9 out of every $19 of the market value of fentanyl is generated, distributed and earned in the U.S. under the surveillance, direction and supervision of the federal authorities. Fentanyl is produced in California, Oregon and Washington. (Galindo, La Jornada, February 4, 2025)
In Donald Trump's talk with President Sheinbaum, she spoke of controlling the trafficking of arms from the U.S. into Mexico, however, this point was ignored in the U.S. president's official statement. An agreement was reached for the creation of a bilateral commission to negotiate matters of security and trade, and through this body the U.S. wants to intervene directly in Mexico. In fact, after the conversation held between the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente on February 6, the President of Mexico had to express her rejection of a greater presence of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Mexican territory. (EFE, February 6, 2025)
It is clear that the way out of this situation is to break all ties of dependence and that Mexico should centre its development on the national economy, and strengthening industrial and agricultural production, as well as services. Its economy should not depend on U.S. exports and imports, which today account for 80 per cent of its total trade. It should strengthen economic sovereignty, by cooperation with many countries, including China, but without dependence on any of them. It is essential that our country diversify its international trade to the maximum. At the same time, all the most necessary products should be produced within the country, strengthening state enterprises and Mexican producers, also small and medium-sized ones, cooperatives, the local economy and our own scientific and technological development.
It is time to achieve full sovereignty and independence and strengthen ourselves against any threat from Washington or anyone else.
Our sovereign country must develop internally and have friendly and equitable relations with other peoples, not subjugation.
Five hundred years after the execution of Cuauhtémoc and after centuries of Indigenous, black and popular resistance, it is time to unite, organize and make our land free from neo-colonialism. If we managed to defeat the Spanish Empire in the 19th century, in the 21st century it is time to confront and defeat the Yankee Empire. We are strengthened by the spirit of our great hero to resist and prevail. Our struggle is part of the struggle of all the peoples of the world who aspire to live in harmony with one another and with Mother Nature.
President Sheinbaum greeted by the people of Michoacán, February 8, 2025.
Rally in Mexico City January 12, 2025, marking 100 days of Claudia Sheinbaum's presidency.
Pablo Moctezuma Barragán is Secretary General of the organization Mexteki and national spokesperson for the Congress for Sovereignty.
(Translated from original Spanish by TML. Photos: @pepebenevidesmx, Morena.)
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