Old Mexico

Claudia Sheinbaum just authorized targeting Mexico's most wanted criminal. I gather the intent was to arrest the man, not kill him, but unsurprisingly he went down fighting. 

We were just talking about Mexico the other day. A crucial detail about Mexican politics -- which is also starting to become true about Canadian politics -- is that a successful government must present itself as opposed to American domination. There are historic reasons for that, although not all on one side: while the Mexican War is still seen as a humiliation, the story of the OK Corral is built around a smuggling network of Americans moving things into Mexico that is almost parallel to the way Mexican cartels move things into America today. At that time, 1880 or so, the Mexicans were the ones trying to keep Americans out. This is followed by a revolutionary period, Black Jack Pershing versus Pancho Villa, and so on and so forth. No Mexican leader can succeed democratically without presenting themselves as being strong against American domination; no matter how much they want to cooperate, they absolutely require the pose to be effective and to gain re-election. 

Thus, we can see how she got here. Openly she and the Mexican legislature declared the American military unwelcome to operate inside their country. Quietly, she accepted CIA intelligence, cooperated with a U.S. military task force operating 15 miles from her border, and gave the green light for the arrest.

Analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor observed that Trump came "at a very interesting moment to push her in that direction." Sheinbaum may have wanted to take a harder line on the cartels all along. Trump's pressure, given her domestic political considerations, makes it harder to have pulled the trigger on even trying the arrest. 

Now she's got a problem she can't walk back. El Mencho's death triggered immediate waves of shootings, arson, and blockades across Mexico. Cartel leadership vacuums don't produce peace but succession wars. 

Military intelligence analysts will often offer a "Most Likely Enemy Course of Action" (MLECOA) and a "Most Dangerous Enemy Course of Action" (MDECOA). The other cartels can go two different ways. The MLECOA, which might be expected from a cartel, will be to act like sharks when one of their number becomes wounded: to turn on the wounded member and devour them now that they are weakened and bleeding. 

The other option is the MDECOA: recognize that a government that is now willing to cooperate with US intelligence and military is a lethal threat to all of them, and band together against the government. If they jump that way, things will get bloody. Not necessarily just in Old Mexico,* either: those cartels infuse our society as well, though they mostly keep their heads down because the have a lot to lose if they draw attention to themselves. Still, usually associate junior cartels are managing and extracting wealth from the local illegal immigrant labor populations (similar to the mafia in the old Italian immigrant communities). If they were told to go kinetic, we would find that they are almost everywhere here in the USA as well. 

* I use the formulation "Old Mexico" as a tribute to Marty Robbins, but ironically "New Mexico" is actually older than "Old Mexico." The name for the territory that includes our state dates to the Aztec Empire (Yancuic Mexico), reaffirmed by the Spanish Empire (Nuevo México) in 1598; it remained a province of New Spain after that. A state named "Mexico" wasn't established until the 19th century. Thus, long before there was an "Old Mexico," there was a "New Mexico."