If this were a relationship between friends, it would be categorized as toxic.
Donald Trump’s administration has decided to opt for threats, punishments, and accusations instead of negotiations. It seeks submission instead of a relationship between equals. And it won’t work. As in many Hollywood movies, there will be no happy ending here.
Mexico, a land of boxers, has had to abandon its world-famous boxing style, going forward, throwing punches. It has had to opt for a stylistic fight, studying its opponent, responding cautiously to their demands but ready to respond to their attacks.
Trump, an avowed misogynist, faces a woman, the first in Mexican history, trained in student struggle circles and in the streets, defending social causes. Sheinbaum has one thing clear: she will not bow down to the American president. On Wednesday, resorting to his strategy of scolding and hitting back, Trump announced the implementation of tariffs on Mexico and defended his decision: “You haven’t done enough in the fight against the cartels and fentanyl production. You can’t erase the image of an omnipresent, authoritarian father scolding his daughter for not doing her homework. ‘No, no, no, daughter. This time you won’t go out to play or buy you candy.'”
Sheinbaum took the full weight of the conflict on her shoulders. She becomes the recipient of the narrative attacks, assimilates them, and responds. Very few, if any, from her inner circle comes to her aid.
The Mexican president responded to Trump: “We’ve done more than enough; perhaps he has the wrong information… By the way, how many criminals who traffic the arms that flood Mexico are in jail?” she asks. And he’s right: in this unequal war, Trump is using immigration, drug trafficking, and the war on the cartels without getting his hands dirty. If it’s immigration, he broadly labels everyone as criminals. If he’s referring to fentanyl, he sidesteps his country’s health policy, which has a gigantic problem with drug and alcohol use, and, in the cartel war, he entices them to convince them, through negotiations, to declare whatever they please.
Sheinbaum has announced that she will send a short video for the use of US congressmen, including Trump himself, “everyone,” about the progress in security and drug trafficking during these months of his administration. But she has already warned that it will be of no use if the other side doesn’t do its part on consumption, “which years ago was marijuana, then cocaine, then crystal meth, and now fentanyl,” or on the arms trafficking that reaches Mexico. “How many people are detained there for fentanyl or arms trafficking? Few, here every day,” the president stated. “And it’s not just up to now, we will continue to do so, even as a matter of humanity,” she added, according to reports from El País.
Sheinbaum knows that there is nothing she can do to maintain a healthy relationship with the Trump administration. Whatever it lasts, it will be a toxic relationship that serves as a pretext for implementing a colonial policy around the world that has nothing to do with fentanyl, immigration, or Mexico.
