Lindsay Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, in January 2019. Burhan Ozbilici (AP)
The Republican Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham has presented this Wednesday an initiative to designate the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
The proposal is one more example of the insistence of the US Republican wing for Mexico to intercede more notoriously in its fight against armed groups.
In recent weeks, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has shown his rejection of this type of initiative out of fear that it could translate into greater US interventionism.
The
NARCOS
(Notorious, Aggressive and Ruthless Criminal Organizations and Syndicates) law would give prosecutorial agencies more power to freeze an organization's assets, deny entry to the country to its members and seek harsher punishments against those materially support the armed groups.
In the list shared by the party there are several names: the Sinaloa cartel, the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, the Northeast cartel, the Juárez cartel, the Tijuana cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva and La Familia cartel. Michoacana.
Proposals of these characteristics have been recurrent among Republicans.
In 2021, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott asked the Joe Biden Administration to include Mexican cartels on the list of international terrorist organizations.
She was not the only one.
The disappearance of four Americans —two of whom were murdered— in early March in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, brought the problem with the cartels in Mexico to the fore.
In the US, this event gave American conservatives wings once again to try to classify the Mexican cartels as terrorist groups.
The initiative to launch the US Army against the cartels inside the Mexican border has not left a good taste in the mouths of the López Obrador Administration.
The Mexican president has responded to these accusations, and has done so with two adjectives that added to the tension: "wimps and interventionists."
In one of his morning conferences, he tried to counter the criticism of US conservatives, assuring that Mexico "is much safer than the US."
A week ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Senate hearing that drug cartels control parts of Mexico.
In his speech, he also explained that citizens are the main victims of insecurity in that country.
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