“We are asking for respect.”
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) has warned Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau that he will not attend the upcoming North American Leaders Summit — the annual trilateral summit between the so-called “three amigos,” to be held in April in Quebec — if Mexico continues to be treated badly on a range of diplomatic and commercial fronts. His threat follows allegations by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, published in US and European media, that AMLO’s presidential campaigns of 2006 and 2018 had received funding from drug cartels.
“We are asking for respect, because we do not send Mexico’s intelligence agencies to investigate politicians in the United States, we do not do that,” said AMLO in his Wednesay morning press conference. “We do not send spies to China or Russia, we are not meddling in the United States, looking into which of the country’s arms manufacturers are financing which representatives and senators in that country.”
No Smoking Gun, Yet
So far, the allegations, drawn from DEA investigations in 2010 and 2018 that ended up going nowhere, allegedly in part due to political reasons, have lacked one key element: solid evidence. As I wrote a few weeks ago, that is not to say that AMLO himself or his government do not have close links with one or more of Mexico’s drug cartels. According to Anibal Hernandez, one of the journalists behind the “exposures,” insists they have incriminating evidence against AMLO; they are just waiting for the right moment to release it — presumably when it will do most damage to his party’s electoral campaign.
So far, however, there is no smoking gun; instead, all the articles appear to prove is that the DEA, which has been locked in a power struggle with AMLO government ever since he clipped the agency’s wings, including by stripping its agents of diplomatic immunity, in his 2020 security reforms, is determined to shape the outcome of Mexico’s election in such a way that either AMLO’s party, Morena, is defeated (highly unlikely given the paucity of credible opposition candidates and the stubbornly high levels of public support for AMLO) or, if elected, substantially weakened in the process.
There is almost certainly another motive at play, writes Carlos A. Pérez Ricart, a professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and author of the book, Cien Años de Espias y Drogas: La Historia de los Agentes Anti-Narcóticos de los Estados Unidos en Mexico (100 Years of Spies and Drugs: The History of US Anti-Narcotic Agents in Mexico) — institutional self-preservation:
In both the stories of ProPublica, InSight Crime and Deutsche Welle, as well as that of The New York Times, I discern an accusation by the DEA of high-ranking Washington politicians. The meaning is unequivocal and can be summarised as follows: for “political” or “diplomatic” reasons, DEA agents cannot carry out the work for which they are mandated. The texts suggest a justification for the agency’s failures and an attempt to push political responsibility [for those failures] upwards…
In both cases the narrative is the same: the blame lies with the upper echelons of the US government, never with the anti-narcotics agency. The above must be understood in a context that is not necessarily clear in Mexico: the DEA is suffering from the greatest crisis of legitimacy in its history as a consequence of corruption cases within the agency… as well as its inability to stop the synthetic opioid crisis. Now, cornered by reality, the agency is trying to spread the blame as widely as possible and protect itself from the coming electoral cyclone in the United States.
A Rare Interview
In a rare interview, granted to the Spain-based Russian journalist Inna Afinogenova (who was the head of content for RT Spain until RT was banned from European networks and platforms), AMLO laid much of the blame for the scandal on Western media. Here’s a brief excerpt (you can watch the full exchange on the topic here, with English subtitles included):
AMLO: The right-wing in Mexico, and in the world, relies a lot on the media. It is fundamental for them. And that must be resisted, because the maxim of Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, still holds. A lie that is repeated many times can become true, and that is what the owners of the means of, what I like to call manipulation rather than communication seek. That goes for the majority of media. There are some honourable exceptions in Mexico and abroad, because it is not just a matter of Mexico. Something just happened to us, for example.
IA: I was going to ask you about that, about the information that came out about the alleged narco financing in the 2006 campaign.
AMLO: Yes, a famous journalist came, awarded in the United States, from the NYT. Imagine, the NYT which remains a rag at the service of interest groups. And this man (Tim Golden), awarded twice with, what is the price called?
IA: Pullitzer. The most important one.
AMLO: The most important, yes. Well, the gentleman comes and makes a report which he headlines with question marks. “Did AMLO Receive Narco Support in 2006?” With question marks! Look how tricky, how cunning. What serious journalist can do that?
IA: Many do.
AMLO: No, but not a serious journalist. Well, it is part of the decadence of the noble profession of journalism
IA: Journalists who come out to say and endorse this information have prestige and are considered serious.
AMLO: Of course, they will have prestige if they serve the oligarchy a lot, the people who believe themselves to be the owner of the world. They are mere employees. That gentleman, with those awards, acted like a mercenary.
Now, AMLO is saying he will only attend the North American Leaders Summit if Mexico receives due respect from the US and Canada…
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Nick Corbishley 