The attack on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend have sent shockwaves across Latin America, where many countries fear a return to a period of overt United States interventionism.
Those fears are particularly prominent in Mexico, the US’s neighbour and longtime ally.
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The country was one of several — along with Cuba and Colombia — that US President Donald Trump singled out in remarks after Saturday’s attack on Venezuela, which killed dozens of people and was widely condemned as a violation of international law.
Trump suggested that the US could carry out military strikes on Mexican territory in the name of combating drug traffickers.
“Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning, after the Venezuela strikes.
“She [President Claudia Sheinbaum] is very frightened of the cartels,” he added. “They’re running Mexico.”
‘We are free and sovereign’
Sheinbaum has responded to Trump’s threats with a firm insistence on Mexican sovereignty.
“We categorically reject intervention in the internal matters of other countries,” Sheinbaum said in comments to the media on Monday.
“It is necessary to reaffirm that, in Mexico, the people rule and that we are a free and sovereign country,” she added. “Cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no.”
Even in good times, Mexican leaders have walked a line between seeking productive relations with their powerful northern neighbour and defending their interests from possible US encroachment.
That balancing act has become more difficult as the Trump administration employs rhetoric and policies that have drawn parallels to earlier eras of imperial intervention.
“Historically, there’s a record of US intervention that is part of the story of Mexican nationalism,” Pablo Piccato, a professor of Mexican history at Columbia University, told Al Jazeera.
Many of those instances loom large in the country’s national memory. The US launched a war against Mexico in 1846 that saw US troops occupy Mexico City and annex enormous swaths of territory, including modern-day California, Nevada, and New Mexico.
Later, during the Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1920, US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson worked with conservative forces in Mexico to overthrow the country’s pro-reform president.
US forces also bombed the port city of Veracruz in 1914 and sent forces into northern Mexico to hunt down revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.
“These are seen as important moments in Mexican history,” said Piccato.
“There is a quote attributed to Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, ‘Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.’”
In recent statements, Trump has linked the US’s history in the region to his present-day agenda. While announcing Saturday’s strike, he cited the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th-century policy that the US has used to assert primacy over the Western Hemisphere.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine’,” Trump said.
On Monday, the US State Department also shared an image of Trump on social media with the caption: “This is OUR hemisphere.”
‘Balancing on a thin wire’
Sheinbaum’s insistence on Mexican sovereignty has not prevented her from offering concessions to Trump on key priorities, such as migration, security and commerce.
When faced with Trump’s threats of 25 percent tariffs last February, Sheinbaum agreed to deploy 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to her country’s border with the US, to help limit irregular immigration and drug-trafficking.
Mexico has also maintained close security ties with the US and cooperated in its operations against criminal groups, including through the extradition of some drug traffickers.
In February, for instance, Sheinbaum’s government extradited 29 criminal suspects that the US accused of drug trafficking and other charges. In August, it sent another 26 suspects to the US, earning a statement of gratitude from the Trump administration.
Washington has historically pressured Mexico to take a hardline stance towards combating drugs, leading to policies that some Mexicans blame for increasing violence and insecurity in their country.
Still, while Sheinbaum has received praise for managing relations with Trump, she has consistently said that unilateral US military action on Mexican territory would be a red line.
Experts say Sheinbaum’s willingness to cooperate should be an incentive for the US government not to launch attacks on Mexican soil.
“Sheinbaum has gone out of her way to cooperate with the US,” said Stephanie Brewer, the director of the Mexico programme at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research group. “There would be no rational reason to break this bilateral relationship by crossing the one red line Mexico has set out.”
But the strikes on Venezuela have also underscored the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive posture towards Latin America.
“I don’t think US strikes on Mexican territory are any more or less likely than they were before the attacks in Venezuela,” said Brewer. “But they do make it abundantly clear that the Trump administration’s threats need to be taken seriously, and that the US is willing to violate international law in its use of military force.”
“Sheinbaum is doing a balancing act on an increasingly thin wire,” she added.
