Mexican Sovereignty in the Era of the Donroe Doctrine
US governments have long relied on Mexico as a southern gendarme, even as it proudly declares its sovereignty. Faced with Trumpian imperialism, the challenge for Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is to make that independence more real.
Past Mexican governments often proclaimed their sovereignty while kowtowing to Washington. Yet today the disastrous effects of Donald Trump’s wars are pushing Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexican government to seek allies further south. (Andrew Caballero-Raynolds and Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images)
When it comes to US-Mexico relations, 2026 thus far reads like a Taylor Sheridan script. Last April, the CIA’s clandestine operations inside Mexico became public when two agents died in a car crash in the northern state of Chihuahua after raiding and dismantling a mountain drug lab. Reporters soon revealed that four CIA agents had participated in the operation, albeit wearing Chihuahua state police uniforms, and that this was their third counter-narcotics raid since January.
In May, CNN and the New York Times broke a stunning and seemingly related story. Reporters claimed that the CIA had been running a “secret war on cartels” since last year, assassinating lower- and mid-ranking members to dismantle entire criminal networks. This secret war went beyond the kingpin strategy that prioritized the arrest or killing of “cartel” leaders to “a playbook not much different than counterterrorism missions to destroy groups in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.” Except that this was taking place clandestinely and illegally inside Mexico.
The Mexican government responded to both reports by loudly proclaiming its national sovereignty. President Claudia Sheinbaum initially denied that Mexico’s federal government knew about the Chihuahua CIA operations, placing the blame on a state governor (a member of a right-wing opposition party) gone rogue. Yet contradictions have emerged in this account. High-level conversations about these operations between the US and Mexican governments allegedly took place. And the April raid involved Mexican military personnel in a support capacity.
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