Thinking Citizen Blog — Latin America (Part Three) Mexico — Deportations, Tariffs, Fentanyl, Cartels, China, Cuba, Venezuela
Thinking Citizen Blog — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Latin America (Part Three) Mexico — Deportations, Tariffs, Fentanyl, Cartels, China, Cuba, Venezuela
Last time, Argentina and its “anarcho-capitalist” president Xavier Gerardo Milei (1940 — ). The time before Brazil and its socialist president, Ignacio Lula da Silva (1945 — ). Today, Mexico and its first female and first Jewish president, President Claudia Sheinbaum, appointed successor of Andres Manuel Lopez de Obrador of the left-wing, populist Morena (short for Movimiento de Regeneraction Nacional) Party.
What do you know about Mexico that the rest of us should but probably don’t? What aspect of US-Mexican relations most interests you? What is the question most worth asking? What is the best article you have read on the subject?
Today, excerpts from an article in the New York Times.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“PRESIDENT CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM IS DETAINING MORE MIGRANTS, SEIZING MORE FENTANYL, AND POSITIONING HER COUNTRY AS A KEY ALLY AGAINST CHINA” (NYT)
1. “For the second time in less than a decade, Mexico is preparing to negotiate with President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is threatening the neighboringh country with sky-high tariffs, mass deportations, and military strikes on cartels.”
2. “The stakes are huge for Mexico’s 130 million people. Among major economies, Mexico is exceptionally dependent on the United States, sending about 80% of its exports to the American market.”
3. “Mexico’s top negotiators are adopting an assertive stance to negotiating with Trump this time around. Some of them can draw from experience dealing with the first Trump administration: Mexico’s populist president at the time, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, forged a warm relationship with Mr. Trump, and Mexico avoided steep tariffs while acceding to demands to curb migration.”
NB: “While Mexico’s government has been unable to meet with the incoming Trump administration, she has blended conciliatory words for Mr. Trump with rhetorical pushback and vows that Mexico could hit back with retaliatory tariffs of its own.”
“We coordinate, we collaborate, but we will never become subordinated.” (Sheinbaum) SINCE COVID, MEXICO HAS DISPLACED CHINA AS BOTH THE TOP EXPORTER TO THE US AND THE TOP IMPORTER FROM THE US
1. “Buy those deepened ties also leave Mexico with heightened vulnerabilities. One may be remittances. Mexicans working in the United States sent home $63 billion in 2023, twice as much when Mr. Trump took office eight years ago, and mass deportations could cause that figure to plummet.”
2. “Proposals to tax remittances, including a bill sponsored by Vice President-elect JD Vance are also gaining momentum.”
ILLEGAL CROSSINGS ALONG THE US-MEXICO BORDER ARE AT THEIR LOWEST LEVELS SINCE 2020
1. “Only about 46,000 people crossed the border illegally in November, the lowest number under President Biden.”
2. “The Biden administration’s restrictions on asylum for migrants contributed to this decline. But so did policies in Mexico, which has sought to dissuade migrants, largely from other Latin American countries, from reaching the US border.”
3. ”Mexico has broken up migrant caravans and expanded a shadowy busing program that has transported thousands of migrants from the country’s northern border to sites deep in the south.”
NB: “Just in the last quarter of 2024, Mexico intensified this crackdown by detaining about 475,000 migrants, the authorities said, more than double the number held in the first nine months of the year. Most of these migrants are quickly released, allowing them to stay in Mexico; only a small fraction are deported to their home countries.”
AND WHAT ABOUT FENTANYL DEATHS?
1. “After surging to horrifying levels, overdose deaths from illegal drugs are also falling. They were down about 14.5% in the 12 months that ended in June 2024 from the same period a year earlier.”
2. Experts say that expanded treatment, prevention, and education efforts in the United States played a role in the decline.”
3. “While more evidence is needed, US efforts to crack down on chemical precursors from China and the Mexican cartels using these chemicals to make fentanyl alsomay be restricting supplies.”
NB: “Ms. Sheinbaum has also begun targeting the fentanyl trade. Last month, Mexican security forces captured 20 million does of the drug in the country’s largest synthetic opioid seizure.”
MEXICO’S “NUCLEAR OPTION” IS CHINA
1. “If ties with Washington sour significantly, Mexico still has a kind of “nuclear option” involving strengthening its economic ties with China.” (Scott Morgenstern, professor of political science, University of Pittsburgh.”
2. “Mexico could turn to Washington’s biggest economic rival at a time when Beijing is seeking to assert more influence across Latin America.”
How Mexico Is Preparing for Tariffs Negotiations With Trump
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/eu-mexico-ink-new-trade-deal-as-trump-presidency-looms-5346537f
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trump-mexico-drug-cartel-fentanyl-us-military-fb9f193c
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_relations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93Venezuela_relations
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your