Today, Wednesday, October 29, Mexico reiterated its rejection of lethal attacks launched by USA against boats of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which have left at least 57 dead, but President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was willing to improve joint binational operations to intercept suspicious boats and arrest their members.
“If in international waters the United States sees that there is a boat that is allegedly carrying drugs, they come to an agreement and the Secretary of the Navy or the institutions of the United States government intervene and arrest the alleged criminals,” Sheinbaum explained. “What we want is for this protocol to be improved” so that Mexican sovereignty is not violated and Mexican citizens are not affected, he added.
The United States has reported 13 attacks since early September, the last three this week in the eastern Pacific -according to Mexico, about 830 kilometers southwest of Acapulco- against four vessels suspected of transporting drugs, resulting in 14 deaths.
A survivor was reported and the Mexican Navy came to his rescue in compliance with international maritime protocols, but that person had not yet been located as of Wednesday morning, the President said.
Yesterday, Tuesday, the Secretary of the Navy, Raymundo Morales, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, held a meeting with the American ambassador Ronald Johnson, in which they presented the President’s proposal and, according to Sheinbaum, it was well accepted.
However, in the afternoon, the US Department of Transportation announced the cancellation of passenger and cargo flights of several Mexican airlines from the Felipe Ángeles airport to the United States, for what it considers unfair treatment towards US companies that were forced to transfer operations to that airport, much more isolated and far from the capital.
The President did not link both events, but The negotiations between the two countries have many open fronts and the issues of security and the fight against cartels – one of the priorities of Donald Trump’s administration – have motivated many of the trade threats so far.
Sheinbaum asked Foreign Minister De la Fuente to request a meeting with his American counterpart, Marco Rubio, to review the cancellation of air routes, a decision that is in line with announcements made by Washington for months, but which, in Mexico’s opinion, has no basis because the transfer of flights from the old airport to Felipe Ángeles was made for security reasons.
All these movements take place while maintaining a complicated trade negotiation in order to prevent new tariffs, minimize those already imposed and in view of the review of the North American free trade agreement, the T-MECwhich will begin in 2026.
The imposition of new special taxes that was scheduled for November 1 was temporarily paralyzed while the Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, holds talks with his American counterparts to advance more solid agreements within the framework of the APEC summit – the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum – being held this week in South Korea.
But some vetoes remain, such as the closure of the border to meat exports due to the screwworm plague. In this sense, the Secretary of Agriculture said on Wednesday that a new strategy will be tested: together with the United States, create “modular, small, mobile plants” to produce more genetically modified flies, which are the ones used to stop this pest.
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Also read: Mexico and the US agree on the “next steps” of their trade negotiations
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