The end of “hugs, no bullets”?: Sheinbaum's change to Mexico's anti -drug policy (and Trump's crucial role)

- Author, Daniel Pardo
- Author's title, BBC World correspondent in Mexico
3 hours

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, insists almost daily that there is no break with the government of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But the data that she discloses every week reveals that the “hugs, no bullets” policy seems to be coming to an end.

After more than a decade of failures and violence in the war on drugs declared by President Felipe Calderón in 2006, AMLO came to power, in 2018 with the idea that, instead of fighting organized crime, it was more appropriate to address the causes of violence, such as poverty and lack of opportunities, and promote dialogue between established power groups.

Sheinbaum says that this line is in force, but then he makes known results that speak of something else: tons of seized drugs, captures, bombed laboratories. Two, three, four times what was reported in the previous six -year term.

“We are seized in Mexico, preventing it from going from the other side,” said the president at a recent press conference. “It means that something we are doing well, right?” He wondered.

For any Mexican president, anti -drug policy represents a huge challenge because, no matter how sovereign they declare themselves, part of it is formulated by the United States, the powerful northern neighbor who buys 80% of Mexican exports and who, with only that data among several more, can condition the margin of Mexico maneuver.

If A AMLO could try – and many would say that he failed – a change of strategy towards crime, today Sheinbaum seems to have no choice but to return to the hard hand of yesteryear.

And the results, the president presumes, are in sight.

Sheinbaum launches campaign on fentanyl — Photo foot, Although Mexico does not seem to suffer a crisis for fentanyl consumption, Sheinbaum launched a prevention campaign. Actually, the Government does not disseminate national consumption data since 2016.

Results in the midst of negotiation

Much of the turn in anti -drug policy has to do with the arrival in the Secretariat of Security of Omar García Harfuch, the expolition that during the Mayor's Office of Sheinbaum in Mexico City managed to reduce homicides in the capital and improve the feeling of insecurity.

Last week Harfuch announced the consolidated results of his portfolio: since October 1, he reported, have arrested 24,652 people for high -impact crimes, dismantled 1,150 laboratories of illicit drugs and seized 178 tons of narcotics, among that more than 3 million fentanyl pills, the opioid that has caused the death of tens of thousands of people in states Joined.

The anti -drug policy, then, is the matter of the security person in charge, which in turn announced the confiscation of 12,736 firearms and has militarized the northern border in search of avoiding the illegal passage of migrants, which has had its greatest reduction in decades.

Omar García Harfuch presents results. — Photo foot, The expolition Omar García Harfuch is the star of anti -drug policy and against crime in Mexico. His approach is purely military.

But if a part of this is due to Harfuch's presence, much is also attributed to the pressure exerted by Donald Trump, who uses the threats of import tariffs or deportation of Mexican migrants or taxes to the remittances they send to achieve what obsesses him: stop migration and fentanyl traffic.

This pressure returned to news on Thursday, when the US Department of the US Treasury sanctioned three Mexican financial entities for supposedly facilitating posters the purchase of fentanyl precursors in China and the laundering of illegal money.

Sheinbaum rejected the sanctions, requested evidence of the illicit and reiterated: “We coordinate, we collaborate, but we do not subordinate. Mexico is a great country and the relationship with the US is equal, not subordination. We are not a piñata of anyone.”

The same Thursday, however, the National Banking and Securities Commission announced the intervention of two banks sanctioned with the objective of renewing their management, investigating what happened and protecting the public's assets.

Military burns drugs. — Photo foot, The Mexican Prosecutor's Office has struck the destruction of confiscated narcotics.

Changes with limited power

Sheinbaum, who has enormous popularity and whose party controls the legislative and judicial branches, tries to align their interests with Trump's; attacking money laundering, for example, or chasing the drug traffickers.

“It is a real crusade, but part of a fragile condition,” says David Saucedo, consultant and security expert – because the security budget was not increased, because there is a part of the military distrust of Harfuch, because the posters are stronger today than ever and because the institutions are full of corruption. “

Saucedo adds: “While there is a demand for drugs in the United States it is very difficult for the fight against crime in Mexico to have effects, because you can double the seizures, triple them, but it will continue to be a marginal percentage, less than 10%, of the total that the traffickers export.”

In February, when the negotiation was just beginning, Trump praised Sheinbaum for “achieving” that Mexico is not a country of consumption with prevention campaigns. And he announced that it would be copied: “We are going to spend billions of dollars to explain how bad drugs are.”

But neither Trump has launched prevention campaigns nor Sheinbaum has been able to implement what really would be its anti -drug policy. One, for example, such as the one that elaborated in the capital mayor, based on the decriminalization of addictions and the decrease in consumption through pedagogy.

“What was done in the city was very interesting, he had a health approach and responded to his scientific profile,” says Zara Snapp, activist and expert in drug policy. “But now Sheinbaum have two impediments: AMLO's inheritance, of a prohibitionist policy towards consumption, and Trump, who asks to return to militarization.”

The expert adds: “They can announce more and more seizures, but we know that this has a very marginal impact on illegal consumption and leads us to the diagnosis, scientifically wrong, that you can eradicate consumption with punitive actions.”

There are signs that Mexico is ending its “hugs, not bullets” policy, but as a replacement, more than an innovative strategy focused on health, Trump seems to have forced a return to the “war on drugs.”

Although Sheinbaum, almost daily, says that war “will not come back.”