It is not just that these are stormy times, but that we are in the eye of the storm. If anything was missing from the panorama of the relationship between Mexico and the United States, what happened last Thursday – whether it is taken as a gift, a closure or as something bad – is the announcement of a new time. We should go back to the murder of Kiki Camarena, in 1985, to understand what interference by the United States government means in order to bring to justice those who were part of its most wanted list.
Ismael El Mayo Zambada is much more than the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. He is a man of moderate manners, discreet and who, although the United States government is demanding 14 billion dollars from him, is someone with a different behavior than that which can normally be identified with someone who is part of the uproar and the handling with little common sense of the wealth obtained by the drug empire.
The Sinaloa Cartel, along with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, is the most important cartel in Mexico and in a large part of the American continent. Having had characters like its other co-founder, El Chapo Guzmán, who complete not only the legend but the milestones of the fight against drug trafficking throughout the world, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the organized crime groups that has caused the most headaches – if not the most – for both the Mexican and the United States governments. That is why El Chapo is in a maximum security federal prison in Colorado and without the right to visits or calls from friends, family or even his lawyers.
El Mayo Zambada was like a catalyst within the limits of the cartel. His capture – which was said to be an ambush – leaves many enigmas in the air and if anyone had been able to dodge and stay out of any situation that put him within the reach of the clutches of his captors, it had been El Mayo. If the United States kidnapped him against his will without telling the Mexican government, it was a bad move. If, as is also rumored, El Mayo Zambada voluntarily surrendered to the United States government without having a guarantee of his defense and of what will undoubtedly end up affecting the political, social and economic conditions of Mexico, it was worse.
In any case, this is a fact of such relevance that it will end up affecting not only the bilateral relationship, but also the internal peace of the country. What does it mean that, as has happened on other occasions –although never of this magnitude–, the communication between the governments of the United States and Mexico can allow a situation like this?
Whether it is due to the possible kidnapping of Mexican citizens or because an agreement has been reached and it is not a kidnapping but simply a surrender so that, after a negotiation, a clearer picture can be obtained from a legal point of view. The Mexican government should take very good note of what is happening, especially because from now on – and remembering other experiences such as the arrest of the former Secretary of National Defense of Enrique Peña Nieto, Salvador Cienfuegos, during the administration of Donald Trump – this situation may end up being like a sword of Damocles that conditions, on the one hand, the actions of the new president of Mexico. And, on the other hand, that serves to sow concern about what may happen to those responsible for the current situation.
Moving on to another topic, Joe Biden’s farewell speech from the Oval Office last Wednesday at 8 p.m., US East Coast time, was a representation of what he is, but, above all, what it represents is an era that has definitely been surpassed in the American nation. We find ourselves in the midst of a situation in which polarization, confrontation, discord and the internal crisis of the United States are the elements that mark not only this campaign but the behavior and political action of a society that has not yet found its direction or identity.
At this point, I am surprised that Donald Trump’s campaign strategists have not yet realized that with Joe Biden’s departure, the campaign model they had has ended. The arrival of Kamala Harris changes the situation so much that from here anything can happen. In her first days of a kind of pre-campaign – since, although it seems that it is only a matter of time, it must be remembered that she has not yet been formally elected as the candidate for the Presidency by the Democratic Party – the current vice president of the United States has shown how many people are willing to donate money so that Trump does not reach the White House. But beyond her surprising fundraising capacity, what is striking is that it is money that taxpayers were willing to give to the cause, but they did not do so while Joe Biden was the candidate.
Kamala Harris could become the answer to all those people who did not feel represented by either Trump or Biden. However, at this point it is very difficult to predict what the effect of Harris’s emergence in the presidential race will be. It will be interesting to see what impact her arrival has, for example, on the female electorate or on those groups that look favorably on what the first woman in the history of the United States to achieve the vice presidency represents. It is too early to know what effect it will have on youth, for example. We also do not know what part of the white population – whether or not they belong to the Rust Belt, to which the Republican candidate for vice president, JD Vance, also belongs – can feel represented by the offer that Kamala Harris represents.
Today, in most of the world – mainly in the Western world – people have the freedom to be what they want to be. The conquest of freedoms and rights has been one of the great achievements of this generation. After movements and phenomena as impactful as Me Too, feminism and the struggle of women to be respected, valued and protected is an element that is marking and will mark an important part of the development of societies. The Kamala Harris option could be the answer to the desire to impose that path in the United States, in addition to achieving something unprecedented and historic, which would be to become the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.
If Harris were to become the one to govern what remains of the American empire, it should be remembered that she is a very different ethnic representative than, for example, Barack Obama. Kamala Harris’s father is Jamaican, while her mother is of Indian nationality. The current American vice president does not identify with the life or the wounds so deeply marked in the soul and history of African Americans. Nor does she identify with Asians, since she represents and is part of the result of the ethnic mix that allows her to have, if not the best of all worlds, then circumstances in which, at least in principle, she did not inherit the burdens of hatred or social hindrance that other representatives of ethnic minorities have.
We must not be fooled, as happened with Barack Hussein Obama, someone somewhere in the structure of his party or what remains – which is a lot – of the American deep state, will already be preparing who will be the main companions, in the event of a Democratic electoral victory. A victory that, if it were to happen, would be almost as surprising as Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
The world is in chaos. Let us not be confused, we are living in a situation that has no parallel. The main problem of the United States is that it is necessary to engage in politics and return to social prominence so that the longest-lived democracy in history does not forget who it is. Let it remember the legacy of the Founding Fathers. That it is a country that until now has always done what it wanted or what it set out to do based on unity. Since Abraham Lincoln and his famous speech about how it is not possible to succeed with a divided house, the biggest American problem has always been the breakdown of balance or civil wars.
Can Kamala Harris win the election and represent the end of this polarization? I hope so. The experiment of having a note of color in American presidential history did not serve to calm the waters. On the contrary, I am personally convinced that Trump would never have come to power if he had not been preceded by Barack Obama.
The day the Rust Belt rejected having a president like Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, it did so because after the exotic walk that meant having an African-American in the Oval Office, it was rejected – at least for what was left and for the importance of the electoral colleges of the states that gave Donald Trump power – that what we were seeing now was the beginning of the government of the families of power. Or, put another way, as Benjamin Franklin once said – and which Joe Biden recalled last week in his speech – the United States is a republic, as long as it can remain as such.
The circumstances are very different from any other. At no other time in the history of the United States has the internal confrontation been as intense as now. Therefore, the consequence of producing a situation of change in the electoral trend, in my opinion, must be understood from the basis of the government of chaos. It is possible that this chaos, as already happened in 2016, will cause Kamala Harris to become the next president of the United States.
We find ourselves in a situation in which President López Obrador will have to live with the stigma that they were taken away and it was an invasion. It is not the first time that this has happened, but on this occasion it happened in the middle of a moment in which the American electoral campaign and the changes produced are happening at such a speed that it is dizzying.
The capture of El Mayo Zambada and the son of El Chapo Guzmán significantly affects the electoral panorama in the United States, as well as having its repercussions in our country, even though the Mexican government has distanced itself from any type of participation in the capture. It should be noted that for El Mayo it is much easier to come to an agreement with Kamala Harris or with President Biden than with Donald Trump and his people. In any case, they are already in Texas and what happens from here on out has to be told either from the absolute violation of the relationship due to the kidnapping or from the collaboration and participation, becoming protected witnesses of both kidnapped people. We will see what happens from here on out.
Source: elfinanciero
