Leaders of Mexico’s politics including President Andres Manuel López Obrador are now undertaking the serious problem of assigning blame for the massive fentanyl problem currently going on. In their mind, there is no issue in their country, as nothing is made there in their reports.
On March 16th, President Obrador claimed, “Here, we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not have consumption of fentanyl.” The top Mexican diplomat in North American affairs Roberto Velasco Álvarez also said “So far, there is no record of production or synthesis of fentanyl in Mexico.” Yet, despite these statements, in mid-February, the Mexican government announced they had busted the largest synthetic fentanyl lab in the world.
On March 9th, the cartel attacked four Americans in Matamoros, Mexico, where two were killed and two more injured. Despite a public apology and a statement of leaving civilians alone from the cartel, the Mexican government has done little about the incident. In response, many Republican lawmakers in the US want to classify the cartels as the terrorist organization they are and hunt them down as such.
Supporting this idea, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram was sworn before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 15th. “What we know is that Mexico in the past worked relentlessly from 2012 to 2015 to disrupt one of the most violent criminal networks in Mexico, the Zetas, and they were effective at dismantling that cartel. We want Mexico to do the same thing here, to make their top operational priority also to defeat the two cartels that we believe are responsible for the fentanyl, as well as the methamphetamine that is responsible for the loss of American lives today.”
Until Mexico is ready to admit they have a problem, we will continue to have Americans dying at their hand. As the illegals continue to flood the border, the packages of fentanyl and other drugs continue to flow along with them. Given the change in the Mexican attitude when Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman aka El Chapo became a lifetime US prisoner for a second time, it seems as if he was either the keystone to keeping the peace, or he is telling them to release the hounds.
