By HUGO ALBUQUERQUE*
Donald Trump intends to increase the exploitation of illegal immigrant workers – many of them Mexican – rather than actually expelling them from the country.
Mexican President López Obrador, of the progressive National Regeneration Movement (Morena), consecrated a new method of mass communication during his term (2018-2024): morning, a press conference in which he dedicated himself to addressing the country's problems face to face. This was maintained by his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who now found herself forced to reply an sensationalist report do New York Times.
In this case, the American newspaper, known for opposing Donald Trump, decided to do a report in which its journalists witnessed the clandestine production of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, in a kitchen in a Mexican city. The spectacular report ignored the fact that the production of the drug requires professional laboratories, since the manipulation of the active ingredient of the substance is lethal.
The whole story, beyond the probable fake news of a renowned periodical in which “professional journalism” was produced, shows a realignment of the American liberal camp, which favors Trumpism – whose new incarnation has abused the rhetoric of bravado against neighbors, especially Mexico, which is attributed responsibility for both illegal immigration and the epidemic of fentanyl addiction in the United States.
Claudia Sheinbaum strikes back
A scientist by training, Claudia Sheinbaum is the daughter of the European immigrant and enlightened middle class who saw Mexico as a safe haven during the 20th century. In addition to building the Morena party with López Obrador, she became his successor and maintains the same methods of communicating with the masses as her predecessor, although imprinting her own style.
This form of direct communication, combined with the party's social and popular policies, was key to building a stable hegemony, unprecedented in the country since the fragmentation of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the 1980s, when its leadership moved to the right. The journey to the founding of Morena was a long march, full of accidents and important lessons.
Along the way, there was also the founding of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1989, today bowed to liberalism, until the current moment was reached, with its left wing transformed into a movement and then a party in 2011. The president's direct communication with the masses – and now, from President – was a central point in solidifying the party, which since 2018 has been the largest political force in Mexico.
Returning to the matter at hand, Claudia Sheinbaum chose to directly address a narrative – in a supposedly serious medium – that corroborates the attacks of the American far right on her country, and she shows that she is willing to engage in an antagonism that López Obrador decided to avoid, even during Donald Trump's first term. Today, the situation between the two countries is escalating vertiginously, in a true geopolitical earthquake.
While he attacks Canada, which will hold early elections that are expected to elect the radical right, the Mexican case is different: Donald Trump is attacking, but with caution, since the left-wing leadership is extremely popular, unlike the liberal Justin Trudeau, Canada's long-serving prime minister and his enemy, who has become a lame duck. And both countries are targets of Donald Trump's more general policies, but also important scapegoats.
The fentanyl epidemic
A synthetic opioid dozens of times more potent than morphine, fentanyl has become a real plague in the United States in recent years. The combination of the lack of a public health system and the growth of social inequality and poverty pushes the masses towards self-medication or outright drug addiction. This has become, at this very moment, one of the biggest problems in America.
It is deeply ironic that in times of American rivalry with China, which was freed from an opioid plague induced by the English between the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States is facing a problem of this nature. The causes, obviously, are different, despite the narrative constructed by the Democrats themselves that China has something to do with it – in another elucidation about the causes of this same evil.
Of course, the Chinese story of a plague of opium addiction created both as a spurious trade and as a weapon of war is true of Anglo-Saxons in general, since they generally measure things by themselves. More general evidence is lacking, although fentanyl, now a weapon of rival China, is rapidly becoming a threat brought by Mexico, a sort of pariah state and the source of all evils.
Leaving a record number of homeless people, many former veterans with serious after-effects and soldiers without adequate medical treatment, in addition to the complications caused by the lack of public health, Joe Biden was the president under whom the fentanyl plague exploded as the leading cause of death among young people in his country – and this, without a doubt, was one of the main (or at least one of the most visible) causes for Donald Trump's curious return to the White House.
How much easier it is to blame an external enemy, and thus get off the hook by still using this as a subterfuge for other purposes: in this sense, Donald Trump, flexing the “fentanyl that comes from China” for “Mexican fentanyl”, arrives at a superstition that turns back to plans, but finds the New York Times, his rival who recently said that he would be “unable to lead".
What do Americans want?
Since the former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994, replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (UMSCA) in 2020, not only has Mexico and Canada's commercial dependence on the United States grown, but the quality of life in these countries has also fallen considerably – Mexico, until Morena's return, hit the canvas.
In terms of trade, however, the United States has become at a deficit with Mexico because NAFTA has meant that American capital has been moved to produce at lower costs – mainly due to precarious wages – on the other side of the border. It is no wonder that Donald Trump has made NAFTA a prime target of his demagogic rhetoric about restoring jobs – while alluding to the issue of immigrants.
Beyond the rhetoric, what the numbers show is that Donald Trump intended to increase the exploitation of illegal immigrant workers – many of them Mexican – instead of actually expelling them from the country. On the other hand, the change in trade frameworks between the United States and Mexico did not change the dynamics of deficit growth on the American side, which has an interesting element: the trade war with China.
If on the one hand Donald Trump sought to create difficulties for imports from Mexico, to stimulate production in the United States – although this is less relevant than it seems –, on the other hand the trade war against China provoked um tree of the Asian country's exports to Mexico, with the American economy itself stimulating the Latin country as a means of circumventing Washington's sanctions policy.
Does this suggest that fentanyl could be a problem caused by China and Mexico, in this context, against the United States? Nothing allows us to say that, especially because Trump's own rhetoric always switches between one country and the other, and does not credit either country with causing the epidemic, which only seems to indicate that he is a scapegoat for the trade war, which is not true in the terms in which it is carried out.
By the way, portraying American trade deficits as a “problem” is based on the premise that the United States can supply a large part of the external supply at adequate prices – and thus meet its own gigantic demand. Possibly, not even Donald Trump fully believes this, but rather that localized tariffs seem to have strategic reasons and, furthermore, help to leverage sectors of the American economy in the capital markets.
The “fentanyl ghost” appears as a double lie, in itself and in the purpose of what it intends as an instrument, since the trade war is as much about the stock market and the shares of American corporations as it is about “import substitution.” But it is a banner to inflame its base, build a culture of exploitation through fear, even greater against Mexican workers, and maintain strategic dominance over its neighbor.
The novelty of the story is the New York Times coincide with Donald Trump on something, which shows a curious signal. Claudia Sheinbaum does well to confront the movement, since her country's trade dependence appears as dependence on inflation control on the other side. Book of Exodus teaches us that the pharaoh depends more on the slaves than the other way around. Dismantling this illusion of power is central to Mexico – and to the world.
* Hugo Albuquerque he is a lawyer and editor of Autonomia Literária.
Originally published on the website World Opera.
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