In U.S.-Mexico relations, everything is happening everywhere at the same time. In the same week that Andy López Beltrán, son of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lashed out at the Trump administration for revoking his visa — and the ruling Morena party rushed to rally behind him and called for 200 meetings to defend national sovereignty — several U.S. officials have celebrated the strong coordination between the two countries on social media and revealed new security agreements. “Our defense cooperation continues to grow stronger,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson wrote on Sunday to announce Mexico’s access to the U.S. drone procurement market. Furthermore, despite the rift over the Andy López case, President Claudia Sheinbaum changed her mind this week and authorized Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch to travel to the DEA conference in Argentina.
Trump’s latest rebuke to Morena was revealed Thursday in a three-page letter written by Andy López Beltrán, the party’s former secretary of organization: the United States had revoked his entry permit. López Beltrán accused the Republican president of a “political” move performed “in a Hitlerian style.” He denied that U.S. authorities had any evidence against him “of any immoral or criminal act.” Sheinbaum herself has defended that position several times this week, saying “there is nothing against the former president’s son,” while his uncle, José Ramiro López Obrador, went further, asserting that what the Trump administration is after is Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “The one they really have it in for isn’t the young man, but the older one.” The party has closed ranks around the case, calling it outright political “interference.”
The United States, for its part, continues its usual one-step-forward, one-step-back dynamic. X accounts such as Johnson’s, or that of Christopher Landau, the former ambassador and current undersecretary of state under the Republican, show these constant shifts. Thus Landau — who calls himself “the visa remover” — posted a provocative message after López Beltrán’s announcement — “Are you enjoying the show? Refill your popcorn… you’ll love this next part” — and hours later invoked the monarch butterfly migration as an example of “the enduring and symbiotic relationship between the U.S. and Mexico”: “We mustn’t allow the occasional flareup of political drama to distract us from this fundamental point,” he added.
The same goes for the U.S. embassy’s account. On Saturday, the diplomatic mission first issued a “clear and consistent” message: “The United States will cancel any visa when there are reasons to do so, regardless of who the holder is, where they live, or what their political opinions may be. Visas are a privilege, not a right.” Shortly afterward, it chose as its photo of the week one of Johnson and García Harfuch: “Under the leadership of President Trump and President Sheinbaum, We’re delivering tangible results on priority issues.”
It is against this backdrop of shifting sands that Harfuch will attend the International Conference on Drug Control, a meeting organized by the DEA and Argentina’s Ministry of National Security that will bring together hundreds of high-ranking security officials from various countries. “At first we had said no, because you know the history of the DEA’s relationship with Mexico, especially in recent years,” Sheinbaum said on Friday: “But then everyone [in the Security Cabinet] was unanimous and voted that we should go so that the world knows what is being done in Mexico and that it is being done well.”
That security cooperation is the very same one the United States calls for on a daily basis and which has been put to the test ever since its Department of Justice accused Rubén Rocha Moya and nine other officials from Sinaloa of working for Los Chapitos. Washington requested the arrest and extradition of the Morena state governor. The Mexican government granted neither. That impossible demand marked the decline of a collaboration between the two countries that had led Sheinbaum to hand over dozens of drug lords to U.S. justice and to fortify the border. The indictment of Rocha Moya exposed Mexico’s last line of defense: the protection of its sovereignty. In this tug-of-war between two countries that share almost 2,000 miles of border, the governments are continuing to try to at least get their security relationship back on track.
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