Andrés Manuel López Obrador

The fall of Ishmael The May Zambada, the kingpin of drug lords in Mexico, was celebrated in the United States as an unprecedented victory in the so-called war on drugs. The DEA, the FBI and the Department of Justice were proud after witnessing what they described as a “blow to the heart” of the Sinaloa Cartel. On the other side of the border, enthusiasm has been much less. Almost two weeks after the arrest, Mexico does not know how El Mayo and Joaquín Guzmán López, son of El Chapo, ended up on a plane and then captured in El Paso. Added to the doubts surrounding the case are other questions about the message Washington is sending with the arrest, the information the White House had before carrying it out and the suspicion of an extraterritorial operation. The mystery has had a full impact on the bilateral relationship, adding a new symptom of the distrust that prevails between the security agencies of both countries.

The capture of El Mayo, who had not set foot in jail in more than five decades of criminal activity, was a coup that the U.S. authorities scored separately and without the help of their Mexican partners. Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged that his government was not informed until minutes after the arrest took place on July 25 and has insisted that no Mexican agency participated in the operation.

Mexican authorities have requested a formal report from their US counterparts through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General’s Office, under the slogan that Washington must “make everything transparent” and clarify its actions on Mexican territory. The official version is that it was an agreed-upon delivery, at least in the case of Guzmán López. “The United States government itself has acknowledged that they carried out a negotiation,” López Obrador said on Tuesday. “That is what they informed us.”

“If it had been Trump, it would be more normal, but the Mexican government had maintained a policy of cooperation with Biden in the security chapter with dialogues at the highest level that suggested trust, exchange of information, joint work against fentanyl. All of that has been unilaterally broken,” says Pía Taracena, an international analyst at the Universidad Iberoamericana.

For the specialist, the arrest represents a change of tone and a sign that patience has run out in the fight against drug trafficking, a decisive issue in the campaign leading up to the elections next November. “The message is from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, one more aggressive and the other less so, but it is the one that did it. They have seen the vein of fentanyl and have scored a goal against Trump,” says the academic.

The electoral scenario in the United States is a player to be taken into account, but not only. Elections on the other side of the Rio Grande always leave their waves on the other shore. In addition to Trump’s classic bravado against migrants, walls and deportations, on this occasion a key factor has been added: fentanyl, which causes more than 80,000 deaths a year in the United States, a public health epidemic that all candidates want to stop. And the capture of El Mayo has hung that medal on the Democrats’ lapels, achieved quickly and cleanly, without the need to fire a single bullet. The consensus among analysts is that the coup, despite its symbolic weight and political gain, will have no effect on drug flows, although it does set a precedent on the limits that Washington is willing to cross and on its performance in the most delicate missions: without mutual trust there is no cooperation that is worth anything in terms of security.

Martha Bárcena, who was the Mexican ambassador to the United States in the current administration and is now retired, believes that the diplomatic friction that ended with the capture of El Mayo without informing Mexico began with the arrest of General Salvador Cienfuegos in the United States in October 2020. The controversy over the exoneration of Enrique Peña Nieto’s Secretary of Defense worsened with his exoneration and the promulgation of a law that imposed limits on the actions of foreign agents in 2021, which brought tensions with the DEA to a head. “That law only hindered cooperation and further broke trust between the two countries,” she says.

The open confrontation with the DEA deepened after López Obrador was at the center of a wave of leaks just a few months ago about alleged links between his inner circle and organized crime. His government has also clashed with the State Department, accusing it of having “double standards” and “issuing letters of good conduct to independent and sovereign countries and peoples.”

The outbursts had been considered messages for domestic consumption, which did not compromise cooperation in strategic areas. There was even the notion that the Biden Administration had been receptive to Mexican demands to be treated as equal partners, a spirit that has materialized, at least in discourse, in initiatives such as the Bicentennial Understanding. In Bárcena’s opinion, however, Mexico has not been prudent enough. “It has come too close to the red line or has already crossed it,” she says.

On this occasion, López Obrador has also adjusted his tone and opted for a much more restrained response. The Mexican authorities have attempted a balancing act after the arrest, in the understanding that it is not convenient to air disagreements with the United States given the political-electoral context of both countries and that the disclosure of some details of the arrest could translate into a violent reaction from the Sinaloa Cartel or other rival groups. Under this assumption, the lack of clarity in the official version of the arrest – and the delegation of responsibility for the story to Washington – has played in his favor, especially in the face of sectors of the population that do not look favorably on a violation of sovereignty or a show of force from the other side of the border. One of the interpretations is that, for the moment, it is more important to keep the party in peace.

Another interpretation of how the Mexican government has conducted itself is influenced by the information that El Mayo, a drug lord with extensive political influence and a vast network of contacts in the Mexican security forces, can share with the US authorities. The precedent of Genaro García Luna, Felipe Calderón’s anti-drug czar convicted of collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel, and that of Cienfuegos himself show that the US agencies also have in their sights the collusion between drug traffickers and Mexican politicians. “Of course, if they are going to report on their ties with Mexican authorities, it helps to know how much support they gave to the authorities, to report who protected them, all this will help a lot and also the agreements with the United States agencies,” said López Obrador.

The president has asked not to fall into speculation until the United States offers a more complete picture of what happened. Between versions of an agreed surrender or a betrayal, the silence of the Biden Administration still maintains the main unknowns. Despite the noise caused by the capture of Zambada, the climate of the bilateral relationship, especially in what concerns the most sensitive areas, will ultimately depend on the result of the presidential elections in the United States and the new Government of Claudia Sheinbaum, which will take office on October 1.

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