Trump now threatens "ground" attacks against Mexican cartels

WashingtonAfter the military intervention in VenezuelaDonald Trump is now pointing the finger directly at Mexico. The US president has asserted that Washington is about to launch "ground" attacks against drug cartels, which, in his view, "run Mexico." "We'll start attacking the cartels on the ground," Trump stated in an interview with Fox News. "The cartels are running Mexico. It's very, very sad to see and realize what has happened in this country. But the cartels are running it and they're killing between 250,000 and 300,000 people in our country every year," the Republican said. In response to these statements, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she will work to "strengthen communication" with her US counterpart, and recalled that just a few days ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself "spoke of the good coordination on security matters" between the two countries. In fact, the Mexican state has its own strategy for combating drug trafficking and several agreements with Washington on this matter.

Trump is thus using the same narrative he used to attack Caracas and kidnap the now deposed president Nicolás Maduro last Saturday. The president said that Maduro was the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, but now it turns out that the indictment written by the Department of Justice It implicitly acknowledges that this organization does not exist, but is merely a term.

Trump's words seem to make one of Mexico's worst nightmares more likely. For months, the country has feared a ground operation by the U.S. military, which has been deployed to the border this year following a declaration of emergency by the Republican.

Cooperation with Venezuela

Regarding Venezuela, Trump asserted this Friday that he had ordered the cancellation of "a planned second wave of attacks against Venezuela" after verifying that the government of Delcy Rodríguez is cooperating with Washington. "The US and Venezuela are working well together, especially regarding the much larger, better, and more modern reconstruction of their oil and gas infrastructure," he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. "Thanks to this cooperation, I have canceled the planned second wave of attacks, which now appears to be unnecessary," he said. However, he emphasized that "all ships will remain" for security reasons. The US leader celebrated the new Chavista government's announcement of the release of a large number of political prisoners, a gesture he deemed "very important and smart." The release process included two prominent figures in the country's opposition: Enrique Márquez and Biagio Pilieri, according to the local NGO Foro Penal, which shared several videos circulating on social media. Márquez ran in the July 2024 presidential elections as the leader of an anti-Chavista left-wing party. He was arrested in January of last year after participating in demonstrations that challenged the victory attributed to Nicolás Maduro, who never published the official election results.

Biagio Pilieri was arrested on August 28, 2024, after participating in a demonstration to denounce electoral fraud. Coordinator of the opposition party Convergence and former deputy, he was accused of leaking the electoral records compiled by the majority opposition in an attempt to prove the victory of candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

The releases of Márquez and Pilieri are the first confirmed, along with those of five Spanish citizens, in this case announced from Madrid. The president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, reported that "a large number" of prisoners would be released, but it is still unknown how many have been freed.

Meeting with Machado

In the aforementioned interview on Fox News, Donald Trump also said that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado will be in Washington next week and that he would like to greet her. Machado recently suggested the idea of giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump after he dismissed her as a candidate to lead the ousted Venezuelan regime. When interviewer Sean Hannity asked the president if he would accept the prize, Trump replied that "it would be a great honor" and described Machado as "a good person."