One thing Trump tried to do after getting inaugurated was considering Mexican cartels terrorist organizations, and for that he was attacked by Sheinbaum for violating Mexico’s sovereignty. But, at least as far as I’ve read on the topic (whcih is not a lot to be fair), nobody actually explains why that’s the case. I mean at a glance you’d think the Mexican government would benefit from such an action, or at least I did. It’s pretty obvious to me I’m missing a piece of the puzzle, so does anyone here have it?

Edit: Thanks for the answers. Now it makes sense.

  • Ofiuco@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    5·
    6 hours ago

    Mexican here, I just want to add something:

    I think most people would say that the Mexican cartels are primarily criminals though. While they do kill people in ways that are intended to send a message, the message is generally “don’t mess with our profits” rather than some political ideal.

    This is rather naive, as they aren’t just killing for profit or to protect their turf (the government usually goes with that narrative to not get involved, “just say the person had something illegal going and forget about it”), they actually control complete towns and obviously have people as slaves, they kill governors/politicians who might win elections or movements that go against their group and help gerrymandering during elections, among many other things.
    They have a huge stake in politics to prevent things from getting better (specially during the past and current administration).

    So… I’d say that from the moment they started to force the goverment at different levels, we could label them as terrorists.
    In another time I might have hope of something finally being done after labeling them as such, but with president musk and the first lady trump… I can only expect the worse outcome.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      4 hours ago

      Yes, my point is that they don’t have a political ideology.

      Like, the IRA was bombing things because the goal was Irish independence. They wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland.

      Al Qaeda was bombing things to get the US out of the middle east. They wanted no US troops on Arab soil.

      Boko Haram wanted an area to be fully under Muslim law, with no western books or education.

      That’s the normal definition of terrorism, a group that’s terrorizing the population in pursuit of a political aim of some kind. It isn’t normally considered terrorism if there’s no ideology involved, and it’s just in defence of a criminal enterprise.

      In the case of the narcos, I don’t know of any political aim. I don’t think they have any particular ideology, other than “we want to keep making money selling drugs to Americans”. To a certain extent, I can see how they could be considered terrorists because they’re terrorizing the population, the courts and the government to get their way. But, in the past there has normally been a line drawn between a terrorist organization and a criminal organization.