Mexico seethes over cartels, ‘gringos’ and migrants

Mexico has been rocked by massive popular protests as the Hispanic world’s largest nation seethes with a fizzing cocktail of grievances ranging from the fate of 130,000 people who have ‘disappeared’ in the country’s drug wars, to discontent over the ‘gentrification’ of Mexico City in a bid to attract tourists.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets of the country’s major cities on Saturday, many carrying portraits of loved ones who have vanished since 2007 when the then President Felipe Calderon launched a “war on drugs” to combat the narcotics cartels who increasingly dominated the nation of 130 million people.

Since then, vast numbers of people have “disappeared”; most are thought to have been murdered and buried in mass graves for resisting the cartels, while others are said to have been forcibly recruited by the gangs and moved away from their families. Some are believed to have died at the hands of Mexico’s police and security forces. The death and missing toll far surpasses the number of victims of other Latin American slaughters like the 40,000 who died in Guatemala’s civil war of the 1960s to the 1990s, or the 30,000 who disappeared in the “dirty war” waged by Argentina’s military junta against the Left in the 1970s.

But the “disappeared” of the drugs wars is not the only crisis confronting Mexico. Earlier in the week demonstrations erupted in some of the ritzier quarters of Mexico City – the world’s most populous metropolis – as residents protested against the gentrification of the city to try and lure foreign tourists.

Bars and coffee shops catering to foreign visitors were invaded by the protesters, some yelling “Gringos out!” The protests were a sign of popular discontent among poorer Mexicans that their needs are being neglected by the government and city authorities in favor of the interests of tourists.

A third source of popular anger is the problem of migration. Mexico is the final frontier for millions of migrants hoping to cross the border in search of a new life in the U.S. As such, the northern provinces are flooded with migrants on the move, both from Mexico itself and other Latin American states such as Venezuela and Colombia.

Millions crossed the border under the Biden administration, but since Donald Trump became President this year he has taken steps to close the border as well as detaining illicit and undocumented migrants living in the U.S. illegally – deporting many back to Mexico where their presence adds to the country’s social woes.

It all adds up to a huge headache for the leftist government of President Claudia Sheinbaum – elected just over a year ago as Mexico’s first ever woman and first ever Jewish President.
So far, Sheinbaum has won praise for the adroit way she has handled the temperamental Trump. In months of delicate negotiations she won the nickname “the Trump whisperer” for her skill in blunting Trump’s threats to impose swinging tariffs on his southern neighbor, but there are signs that their mutual grudging respect may be about to end.

Trump has deployed 10,000 troops along the Mexican border to enforce his anti-migrants line; and he has declared Mexican drugs cartels to be terrorist organizations. In addition the President has withdrawn the visitor visas for several Mexican politicians and renewed his tariff threats. Porfirio Diaz, the dictator who ruled Mexico with a rod of iron in the late 19th century once famously sighed: “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States”. Mexico may soon come to learn the truth of that saying all over again.