Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City in March. Sheinbaum has resisted extraditing politicians and public officials to the U.S.Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum fielded a softball question last week from an influencer attending one of her regular morning news conferences: Should Mexico revoke the visas of U.S. and Canadian citizens gentrifying the country − “how can we control this new colonization?”
Ms. Sheinbaum gently dodged the query. “We’re not against the U.S. people,” she said. But she later told the country: “We have limits to our collaboration and co-ordination − limits that relate precisely to the defence of our sovereignty.”
Sovereignty has dominated much of Ms. Sheinbaum’s discourse over her 20 months in office, especially as U.S. President Donald Trump demands concessions on everything from halting migration to handing over drug cartel bosses, stamping out fentanyl smuggling and slowing Chinese investment in Mexico.
The current sovereignty talk, however, centres on extraditing eight politicians and public officials with alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, including Governor Rubén Rocha Moya of Sinaloa state and a senator of Ms. Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party. (Two officials, including the former state security secretary, have surrendered to U.S. authorities.)
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Ms. Sheinbaum has allowed U.S. surveillance flights over Mexico, scrapped the “hugs, not bullets” security policy of her predecessor and mentor, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and already handed over 92 accused drug cartel bosses − bypassing the extradition process to do so. But handing over a governor and senator appears to be a step too far.
“She needs to be seen as someone not betraying the Morena movement and not obeying Trump,” said Luis Antonio Espino, a Mexican political analyst based in Toronto. “But she needs to placate Trump at the same time.”
Ms. Sheinbaum has resisted extraditing the politicians and public officials, citing a lack of due process and pointing to 269 extradition requests by Mexico that the United States has failed to act upon.
“We’re asking for reciprocity. Why haven’t they handed anyone over if there are relevant cases?” she said last week.
Morena lawmakers, meanwhile, recently introduced a bill to allow the annulment of elections that may have been compromised by foreign interference – a measure Ms. Sheinbaum endorsed. “In Mexico, Mexicans decide,” she said Friday.
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The prosecutor’s office has said it will investigate the U.S. accusations. On Saturday, it ordered Mr. Rocha Moya to appear at its offices in Mexico City.
Mr. Rocha Moya took a leave of absence after being indicted by the Southern District of New York but has denied wrongdoing, calling the charges an attempt to weaken the ruling party. Morena partisans, meanwhile, have rallied around the flag.
“Rallying around the flag feels like rallying around impunity” for many Mexicans, said Brenda Estefan, a geopolitics professor at the IPADE business school in Mexico City. Ms. Sheinbaum has “increasingly narrow leeway” in dealing with Mr. Trump, she added.
The U.S. pressure comes at a tense time in bilateral relations, including talks ahead of a scheduled review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. As a sign of the mood in Washington, the U.S. State Department has announced an investigation into the work of Mexico’s 53 consulates in the United States.
In Mexico, Morena politicians continue questioning the presence of two CIA officials who died in a car crash in northern Chihuahua state after accompanying local security forces in the dismantling of a methamphetamine lab. The U.S. agents were not certified to work in the country, according to the federal government.
Morena organized a May 16 march in Chihuahua in defence of Mexican sovereignty, alleging that Governor Maru Campos of the National Action Party used the CIA to undermine the Sheinbaum administration.
But a poll published May 18 by El Financiero found 37 per cent of respondents in favour of U.S. forces fighting criminal groups in Mexico, up from 19 per cent support in February.
“People in places where criminal violence has been going on for so long have been so deeply affected. They’re going to accept anything that can help us overcome this crisis,” said Javier Garza, a political commentator in the northern city of Torreón.
“And if that includes a foreign government coming in and providing support − collaborating, intervening or participating − they won’t see it as a bad thing.”