Mexico
No to Military Integration with the United States
Mexico is bound by its Constitution to oppose interventions. Today we are witnessing the U.S. attacking Iran, assassinating its leader Ayatollah Khamenei and members of his family, supporting the Zionist genocide in Palestine and Lebanon, attacking Venezuela, kidnapping President Maduro and Deputy Cilia, bombing ships in the Caribbean, and imposing an energy blockade on Cuba, implementing a genocidal policy. It brutally represses migrants within its own borders and those who support them, employing the utmost cruelty and even murder. Our country is obliged to clearly distance itself from these crimes committed by our northern neighbour.
Article 89, Section X of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States mandates the observance of "the self-determination of peoples; non-intervention; the peaceful settlement of disputes; the prohibition of the threat or use of force in international relations; the legal equality of states; international cooperation for development; the respect, protection, and promotion of human rights; and the struggle for international peace and security."
Mexico is a country that has been characterized by its solidarity with other peoples and has condemned fascists: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Historically, Mexico has raised its voice in defence of the peoples; that has been our tradition, including in 1961, when our country refused to sever ties with Cuba, as the U.S. had ordered.
During World War II, when we were allies of the United States, the U.S. military attempted to enter Mexican territory in 1941 and 1942 under the pretext of security and aid. In response, General Lázaro Cárdenas, who was then Secretary of National Defence, physically blocked U.S. troops from entering our country. They wanted to enter Bahía Magdalena and Santa Rosalía in Baja California, so he mobilized the population and courageously prevented it. Furthermore, he rejected U.S. technical aid for the construction of airfields, arguing that Mexico could do it on its own. He was well aware of the danger of allowing U.S. armed forces into our territory.
But decades later, a reversal came with neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, implemented by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who began the "integration" into North America. First came economic integration through the Free Trade Agreement; then political integration, by introducing "alternation" and the typical U.S. two-party model, where Democrats and Republicans take turns in power.
Subsequently, the PRI-PAN coalition began Mexico's military integration with the United States. On March 23, 2003, in Waco, Texas, the leaders of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada -- Fox, Bush and Martin -- signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). They merged the security forces of the three countries and began subjecting our armed forces to the provisions of the U.S. Northern Command, which seeks to place the armed forces from Alaska to southern Chiapas -- including Puerto Rico and the Bahamas -- under the Pentagon's control, according to its founding document.
This integration/subordination deepened under Felipe Calderón, who for the first time included Mexico in military exercises in Mayport, Florida, in 2009. The U.S. empire began its UNITAS military exercises on August 28, 1960, aimed at containing the Cuban Revolution and popular discontent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since then, the U.S. Navy has conducted military exercises in Latin America with the support of countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and others, which had long periods of dictatorship. Mexico never participated in these exercises until Obama asked Calderón to have the Mexican Navy take part in them. The illegitimate president agreed, violating the Mexican Constitution, which stipulates that the Mexican armed forces cannot participate in manoeuvres led by foreign military forces.
Furthermore, they established the Binational Office at 256 Reforma Avenue, where all U.S. military intelligence agencies -- the DIA, NSA, NRO, CIA, DEA, ATF, ICE and others -- began operating openly, with their armed agents moving about on our territory. Additionally, they authorized the overflight of drones in our skies.
During Enrique Peña Nieto's six-year term, military cooperation intensified through training, joint exercises, and U.S. military flights over Mexican territory, in addition to advisory and training activities. There was a U.S. military presence in the State of Mexico, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, and Jalisco. Approximately 1,200 U.S. military flights were recorded in Mexico during that period, under the pretext of intelligence and training activities.
Mexico continued to participate in UNITAS manoeuvres throughout Peña Nieto's six-year term and joined the exercises organized and funded by the U.S. Southern Command, known as "Tradewinds," focused on "Caribbean security." These exercises are funded through the U.S. Southern Command. And what is their objective? General Laura Richardson, Commander of U.S. Southern Command, stated in speeches and interviews that Latin America and the Caribbean are strategically important to the U.S. because of their natural resources: oil, gas, gold, critical minerals, 31 per cent of the world's freshwater, 30 per cent of agricultural land, and more than 50 per cent of the world's soybeans. Furthermore, 60 per cent of the world's lithium is located in the Bolivia-Argentina-Chile triangle. Thus, Richardson describes the region as strategic and essential to the national security and economy of the U.S.
Furthermore, the commander described Russia, China and Iran as a direct threat to the democracies of the region. In an interview with the Atlantic Council, she stated that they pose strategic threats to Latin America and the Caribbean, that they are adversaries, that they threaten stability in Latin America, and that they have the support of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, whose military alliances have exacerbated instability. Unfortunately, years later, the Mexican government authorized [participation in] the U.S. Southern Command's "Tradewinds 2022" military exercises not just abroad, but on Mexican territory!
In October 2021, Richardson highlighted the "protective" role her country will play in the region. This is because they are "good neighbours" and [we] must "look out for one another." This "obliges" the U.S. to take charge of the fight against its adversaries. They use the pretext of providing assistance to be able to intervene and control. Since then, we have been wondering: what is Mexico doing in exercises with the Southern Command?
Incidentally, on March 24, 2022, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, Glen VanHerck, stated during a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee that he was concerned about the threat posed by the destabilizing activities of China and Russia in Mexico, which put "U.S. national security at risk."
Peña Nieto also integrated us into exercises with U.S. Northern Command and the U.S. Coast Guard, in the NAMSI GOMEX exercises, to "protect the law of the sea." The agreement was signed by Vicente Fox within the framework of the SPP, but it was in 2017 that exercises were held in Tampico, in 2018 in Manzanillo, in 2020 in Puerto Chiapas and in 2022 in Cozumel. Shamefully, on April 21, 2024, military exercises were held in Texas to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the heroic defence of the port of Veracruz against the Yankee invader! What are they going to teach us about the law of the sea, when they blockade Cuba, riddle the crews of ships in the Caribbean with bullets, and hijack and steal oil tankers in international waters?
Before the end of his administration, in November 2018, Peña Nieto included Mexico in the Bilateral Military Cooperation Roundtable (BMCR) between Mexico and the United States in Colorado Springs -- the headquarters of U.S. Northern Command -- to align the Secretariats of National Defence and the Navy with U.S. Northern Command, under the pretext of combatting drug trafficking.
The so-called war on drugs throughout the region is an excuse for the U.S. to intervene in nations when it is the one responsible for drug trafficking: they purchase the drugs and distribute them across a territory five times larger than Mexico. Despite the fact that the U.S. has 19 intelligence agencies, the business continues, and there their banks launder more than $700 billion in drug money. They established the first cocaine laboratories in South America and crack laboratories in the United States.
The business continues with the complicity of the DEA, the CIA, the Pentagon and the FBI. The U.S. military fuelled the heroin market from Vietnam when they invaded it and the opium market from Afghanistan. The United States manufactures weapons and sells them to drug cartels. Over the course of 50 years of the so-called war on drugs, the drug trade has continued to grow, as it is one of the pillars of our neighbour's economy. Thus, the war on drugs is merely a pretext for intervention and control, as well as being a lucrative business.
North American military integration, driven by governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Action Party (PAN), which led us to participate abroad in military exercises with the United States, continued to advance, but now on Mexican soil. From May 7 to 21, 2022, the Tradewinds military exercises took place in Quintana Roo, led by U.S. Southern Command and the Mexican Navy. In 2024, the Mexican government authorized the entry of U.S. military personnel with weapons to train Mexican troops in Temamatla and San Miguel de los Jagüeyes, in Santa Gertrudis and Chihuahua, and later in Valle de Bravo.
In recent years, there have been training, exchanges, coordination, intelligence and logistics cooperation, and exercises in Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa and Veracruz. Now, in 2026, the plan is for Mexican military personnel to participate in three exercises in the U.S. -- in Mississippi, Virginia and New York -- in addition to the exercises led by U.S. Southern Command in Panama and Antigua and Barbuda.
The agreements are presented to us as a way to strengthen bilateral relations to consolidate friendship and cooperation between Mexico and the United States. Friendship? When they repress Mexicans on their own soil, labelling them as criminals and rapists. They also talk about human rights training -- they, who separate families and deny all human rights to millions of migrants. Security? When it is they who threaten to invade us.
They talk about training in combat tactics, rescue operations, shooting exercises, and free-fall infiltration drills, as well as air-to-ground bombing. Do they want to train us to bomb countries like Iran, kidnap presidents, assassinate leaders, bomb hospitals, homes and schools, or electrical facilities?
They also talk about intelligence sharing. For what purpose? So that the U.S. Army and Navy can know our territory, our military, its facilities, its capabilities and weaknesses, inside and out, in addition to having privileged information they will use against us.
And they talk about training in topics like "providing humanitarian assistance"-- when they block Cuba from receiving oil? And regarding gender rights, when the main victims of their wars and repressive policies in the U.S. are girls and women, what are those who bombed a girls' elementary school in Miyab, Iran, going to teach us about gender rights? What rights are they talking about when the U.S. president himself, Donald Trump, declares that he does not recognize international law?
We must open our eyes, remember history, and let this tragic present serve as a warning to us. Let us not get entangled in the war plans of the U.S., which constantly threatens to invade us. Mexico must defend, now more than ever, its sovereignty and its commitment to peace.
Are we going to open
our doors to and collaborate with those
who have invaded us 11 times? They took more than half of our
territory
and have been insisting on the option of invading us for the
past five
years. A country that from 1982 to 2019 has promoted 350 coups
d'état, 150 of which were
successful. A country that orchestrated the coup and
assassination of
President Francisco I. Madero, and later the assassination of
President
Venustiano Carranza, orchestrated by the oil companies. A
country that
for 200 years, since Joel Roberts Poinsett, its first
ambassador,
arrived in Mexico,
has pursued a policy of interference, fomenting internal
divisions that
have had tragic consequences for the Mexican nation.
The U.S. objective over the past five decades has been to integrate -- or annex -- Canada and Mexico as part of its national security and as its own territorial base to serve as a platform in its struggle to maintain the hegemony of its empire. The long-term -- undeclared -- objective is to establish military bases and platforms for its missile program on our territory, to enlist our youth for the wars it is preparing across the globe, and, of course, to exploit our diverse resources, particularly our energy resources. The United States wants to subordinate us to its plans. This is cause for concern, especially in light of recent U.S. actions, which are bringing the world closer to a nuclear conflict.
The Mexican Constitution establishes that national sovereignty resides essentially and originally with the people. The armed forces are at the service of the Mexican nation, not of foreign interests. The Organic Law of the Mexican Army and Air Force mandates that their primary mission is to defend the integrity, independence, and sovereignty of the nation. According to Article 76, Section III, there can be no subordination to a foreign command without violating sovereignty.
We must not subordinate ourselves to the military actions of the United States or its war machine. The Constitution prohibits it. The people of Mexico want peace.
The time has come to reverse the neo-liberal and neo-colonial policies imposed on us by the PRI-PAN coalition, which must be eradicated in order to develop a new policy for the defence of national, economic, political and military sovereignty. We must break all treaties that prevent our full independence and place us in grave danger.
No, no, we do not want to be a U.S. colony! Yes, yes, yes, we do want to be a free and sovereign nation!
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 5 - May 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/MS56056.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca