The assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend have despatched shockwaves throughout Latin America, the place many international locations worry a return to a interval of overt United States interventionism.
These fears are significantly distinguished in Mexico, the US’s neighbour and longtime ally.
Beneficial Tales
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The nation was certainly one of a number of — together with Cuba and Colombia — that US President Donald Trump singled out in remarks after Saturday’s assault on Venezuela, which killed dozens of individuals and was broadly condemned as a violation of international law.
Trump steered that the US may perform navy strikes on Mexican territory within the identify of combating drug traffickers.
“One thing’s going to need to be achieved with Mexico,” Trump mentioned in an interview with Fox Information on Saturday morning, after the Venezuela strikes.
“She [President Claudia Sheinbaum] could be very terrified of the cartels,” he added. “They’re operating Mexico.”
‘We’re free and sovereign’
Sheinbaum has responded to Trump’s threats with a agency insistence on Mexican sovereignty.
“We categorically reject intervention within the inner issues of different international locations,” Sheinbaum mentioned in feedback to the media on Monday.
“It’s essential to reaffirm that, in Mexico, the individuals rule and that we’re a free and sovereign nation,” she added. “Cooperation, sure; subordination and intervention, no.”
Even in good occasions, Mexican leaders have walked a line between looking for productive relations with their highly effective northern neighbour and defending their pursuits from potential US encroachment.
That balancing act has turn into harder because the Trump administration employs rhetoric and insurance policies which have drawn parallels to earlier eras of imperial intervention.
“Traditionally, there’s a file of US intervention that’s a part of the story of Mexican nationalism,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican historical past at Columbia College, advised Al Jazeera.
A lot of these cases loom giant within the nation’s nationwide reminiscence. The US launched a struggle towards Mexico in 1846 that noticed US troops occupy Mexico Metropolis and annex huge swaths of territory, together with modern-day California, Nevada, and New Mexico.
Later, throughout the Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1920, US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson labored with conservative forces in Mexico to overthrow the nation’s pro-reform president.
US forces additionally bombed the port metropolis of Veracruz in 1914 and despatched forces into northern Mexico to seek out revolutionary chief Pancho Villa.
“These are seen as necessary moments in Mexican historical past,” mentioned Piccato.
“There’s a quote attributed to Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, ‘Poor Mexico. So removed from God, so near the USA.’”
In latest statements, Trump has linked the US’s historical past within the area to his present-day agenda. Whereas saying Saturday’s strike, he cited the Monroe Doctrine, a Nineteenth-century coverage that the US has used to say primacy over the Western Hemisphere.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a giant deal, however we’ve outdated it by rather a lot, by an actual lot. They now name it the ‘Donroe Doctrine’,” Trump mentioned.
On Monday, the US State Division additionally shared a picture of Trump on social media with the caption: “That is OUR hemisphere.”
‘Balancing on a skinny wire’
Sheinbaum’s insistence on Mexican sovereignty has not prevented her from providing concessions to Trump on key priorities, akin to migration, safety and commerce.
When confronted with Trump’s threats of 25 % tariffs final February, Sheinbaum agreed to deploy 10,000 Mexican Nationwide Guard troops to her nation’s border with the US, to assist restrict irregular immigration and drug-trafficking.
Mexico has additionally maintained shut safety ties with the US and cooperated in its operations towards prison teams, together with by means of the extradition of some drug traffickers.
In February, for example, Sheinbaum’s authorities extradited 29 prison suspects that the US accused of drug trafficking and different prices. In August, it despatched one other 26 suspects to the US, incomes an announcement of gratitude from the Trump administration.
Washington has traditionally pressured Mexico to take a hardline stance in the direction of combating medicine, resulting in insurance policies that some Mexicans blame for rising violence and insecurity of their nation.
Nonetheless, whereas Sheinbaum has obtained reward for managing relations with Trump, she has persistently mentioned that unilateral US navy motion on Mexican territory could be a pink line.
Specialists say Sheinbaum’s willingness to cooperate ought to be an incentive for the US authorities to not launch assaults on Mexican soil.
“Sheinbaum has gone out of her approach to cooperate with the US,” mentioned Stephanie Brewer, the director of the Mexico programme on the Washington Workplace on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based analysis group. “There could be no rational cause to interrupt this bilateral relationship by crossing the one pink line Mexico has set out.”
However the strikes on Venezuela have additionally underscored the Trump administration’s more and more aggressive posture in the direction of Latin America.
“I don’t assume US strikes on Mexican territory are any kind of doubtless than they have been earlier than the assaults in Venezuela,” mentioned Brewer. “However they do make it abundantly clear that the Trump administration’s threats must be taken severely, and that the US is keen to violate worldwide legislation in its use of navy pressure.”
“Sheinbaum is doing a balancing act on an more and more skinny wire,” she added.
