Last Thursday, members of the Mexican government’s security cabinet signed a new strategy to combat fentanyl with the United States and Canada, calling it the “National Commission to Combat Trafficking in Synthetic Drugs, and Firearms and Ammunition in Mexico”.
That same day in Mexico, the Mexican Armed Forces apprehended the drug traffickers in charge of a fentanyl laboratory, supposedly belonging to the Mexican Gulf Cartel.
At the meeting in Washington, Mexican officials promised to find and destroy even the machines with which the pills containing fentanyl are punched.
The question that arises four days later is, why if the Mexican officials left faith in that meeting that their government does not tremble to fight the manufacturers of the new synthetic drugs?, and that they see this crisis with the same optics of the Americans, then…
Why did Merrick Garland, the United States attorney general, hold his press conference the next day in Washington without inviting the Mexican attorney general?
Alejandro Gertz Manero had been with Garland in Washington just 24 hours earlier.
In international relations, you should never do good things that seem bad… or bad things that seem good. That’s why it’s valid to ask. Was this omission, a slight or a message?
Carelessness was not. Americans, in their culture, don’t miss something this big. If this is a sign that the Americans are not happy with their Mexican partners, why do something good that, in the eyes of many Mexicans, seemed like a sign of distrust?
Here I must assure you that in all of official Washington that was allowed to be consulted between Thursday and last Friday, we did not find anyone willing to complain about the lack of cooperation from the Mexican government.
We even had the impression that they were given a line. Nobody wants to criticize Mexico. However, the facts are speaking louder than at any time before between the two countries.
The government in Washington is telling the government in Mexico that the donkey is brown… and so that there is no doubt… it is showing it that it has brown hair on its hand.
Let me elaborate; Anne Milgram, the head of the DEA’s Drug Control Administration, announced on Friday that her agency has been operating within the Sinaloa cartel for a year and a half.
Since October 2021, the US government has had what the DEA describes as “unprecedented access to the highest levels of the cartel” founded by El Chapo.
That means several things; The DEA knows who makes up the high command of the Sinaloa Cartel and where they are. They also know who protects them in the Mexican government, who their protectors are in the United States, where and with whom they launder their money, what functions the Cartel Command has. What are its open flanks and its weak flanks.
Just think what this has meant to the cartel since this announcement. Since Friday morning, on the bill, no one knows who to trust anymore. They don’t know who the traitors are inside or outside, let alone who their true allies are. That wears anyone out, because none of them knows in which corner their life will change for the worse.
Today we already have information on the networks that sell and buy fentanyl for the Sinaloa Cartel. Until Ovidio Guzmán warns his buyers that poorly mixed chemicals turn the product into poison.
Why didn’t the Americans invite their Mexican counterparts to be present during this announcement on Friday, if they spent so many hours together on Thursday?
Remember that Mexico has closed all its cooperation with the DEA and other US government agencies, and that everything new that US officials shared on Friday was obtained without Mexican cooperation or participation.
In addition, so that there are no doubts, and unsubstantiated accusations, Anne Milgram stated without blinking:
The fentanyl that reaches the United States comes from the Sinaloa Cartel.
“Let me be very clear,” said Mrs. Milgram, “Los Chapitos are pioneers in the manufacture and trafficking of the deadliest drug the United States has ever faced.” “They are responsible for the massive entry of Fentanyl into the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a direct consequence of their actions.”
When you hear the above, and at the same time learn that the DEA has been infiltrated for a year and a half in the cartel, you immediately begin to see this whole matter from a new and broader perspective.
What we have known for a long time is that fentanyl can be made entirely with chemicals and that it is more powerful than heroin.
While some illicit fentanyl still makes its way to the US via the mail from China, last year’s crackdown by Beijing on chemical drugs accelerated the outsourcing of production to clandestine labs in Mexico. Chinese traffickers are still supplying shipments of ingredients today, along with the precursors used to cook methamphetamine.
When in Mexico it is said that there is no fentanyl manufactured in our country, in the United States people remember having seen on the news on American television people in a clandestine laboratory on the outskirts of Culiacán, Sinaloa, mixing fentanyl with a brown powder described like heroin.
People also remember clearly seeing on TV, cooks in the middle of a messy process, with huge safety lapses, that involved metal kitchen utensils and eye measurements on the mix of chemicals that ends up being Fentanyl.
Audiences in the United States have seen these same “cooks” drinking cans of Tecate Light beer throughout the process, while other armed men stood guard throughout the manufacturing of the drug.
Reports showed the finished product, refined into a powder, being packaged in bricks taped together, which were then hidden in cars leaving Culiacán for the US border.
So now it’s easier to understand that the new charges against Los Chapitos and their network stem from five indictments filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington, DC The New York charges describe the structure of the Chapitos organization, alleging that the older brother, Iván, “directs the security apparatus of Chapitos”.
“The two middle brothers, Alfredo and Joaquín, allegedly help run the cartel’s trafficking operations.
The accusation has as a special objective Ovidio, the youngest of the four brothers. Prosecutors say he “controlled the first fentanyl lab used by the Chapitos in or about 2014 and has overseen the enormous expansion of the global fentanyl trade ever since.”
Today Americans know how the Guzmán brothers have transported fentanyl, and who their partners are. On Friday, 32 DEA offices in 10 countries arrested various associates of the Sinaloa cartel.
The Mexican president is the first in a long time who has shown that he does not have accurate information about Americans and their culture. That puts him at a disadvantage, because he can’t anticipate what his partners will do with a shared problem as big as new synthetic drugs. The consequence is that the US is going to get what it wants, with or without the help of his friend.
With all of the above, the only question that remains is whether from now on, with the commitment signed in Washington on Thursday, the Mexican government will cooperate with the United States to capture and extradite the four sons of Chapo Guzmán so that they face justice. in the United States, starting with Ovidio, the most wanted.
Today this process has a much greater and more important strategic and political importance than the same process that led to the extradition of his father.
The latter will be much more important than all the bilateral meetings between the members of the two governments. It will be more important than any joint statement promising joint work between officials from the two countries.
This will show the United States if the Mexican president is truly an ally in the fight against fentanyl.
