Tragedy struck the United States and Mexico last Sunday. As U.S. and Mexican officials were returning from an anti-drug operation in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, the car they were riding in skidded off the mountainous road and exploded in a ball of fire. The U.S. Embassy acknowledged that two of its employees were killed in the crash. The embassy employees were actually CIA officers.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that four CIA officers were actually involved in the operation, and that they had been conducting raids alongside Mexican forces against drug cartel production facilities. To be clear, the CIA presence on Mexican soil is nothing new. What is new is how far out into the field these operatives are now working. Reflecting the sensitivity of this issue, Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui first claimed that the CIA officers who died were assisting Mexican personnel in the destruction of drug labs. The narrative then changed: The Americans were merely in the same area, undergoing a separate training mission with Mexican colleagues.
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These competing explanations have created a scandal for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. She claims she was not informed about the CIA operation and that its existence in Mexico would be a violation of the Constitution. Sheinbaum sent a letter to Ronald Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, to explain what happened. She also pointed the finger at Chihuahua’s state government, one of a few Mexican states led by the political opposition, for keeping the federal authorities out of the loop.
From a U.S. policy perspective, this CIA activity is hardly surprising. Since last September, the U.S. military has destroyed 53 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean that were allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S., killing an estimated 181 people. The Trump administration views its counterdrug efforts as a top priority.
The U.S. war in the shadows reaches beyond Mexico.
In Ecuador, a popular tourist destination that has degenerated into one of the region’s most violent countries, the Trump administration has dispatched U.S. forces to assist the Ecuadorian army as it combats the Los Lobos and Los Choneros gangs, which have partnered with Colombian and Mexican cartel outfits to transfer cocaine northward. Both of those organizations have since been designated by Washington as foreign terrorist organizations. Despite Ecuadorian President Daniel Nobia claiming a big decrease in the country’s homicide rate, the Ecuadorians are not immune to making disturbing mistakes, even with U.S. intelligence aid. A site that the Nobia administration alleged was a criminal camp turned out to be a dairy farm that had nothing to do with the drug trade.
Still, similar U.S.-enabled operations in Mexico are a nonstarter for the Mexican government. It prides itself on defending its sovereignty and rejects U.S. ground troops as a matter of principle. Sheinbaum’s familiar refrain has been “yes to cooperation, no to subordination.” In other words, while Mexico would be more than happy to act on information the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, or the FBI provides, it will under no circumstances accept the Americans engaging in combat.
Sheinbaum’s administration has permitted the CIA to expand overflight surveillance in areas of Mexico, as in the state of Sinaloa, where the cartels act as the de facto authorities. To say that the intelligence partnership has been quite helpful would be an understatement. Mexican troops were able to find and kill Nemesio Ruben “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the head of the brutal and powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, this February, partly due to CIA intelligence.
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Yet, this effective U.S.-Mexico collaboration becomes harder for the Mexican government to sustain when CIA operations on Mexican soil become exposed — or even worse, when the Mexican authorities are flying blind and have no idea that the CIA was taking part in raids in the first place.
Although Sheinbaum wants to fight the cartels, she also leads a Morena party whose undertones are uber-nationalist and at times anti-American. Balancing those interests is already a tough act. It gets even tougher when scandals erupt.
