Cadets Always Have a Sad Heart
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
A new logic is taking hold in the complex relationship between Mexico and the United States, one that seems to be confirmed by the handover of drug lords to Washington. Far from being an act of mere cooperation, this dynamic confirms that President Sheinbaum's administration is complying with US demands to avoid a greater threat. Donald Trump, with his rhetoric and actions, not only seeks to solve the immediate problem of drug trafficking, but, in a masterstroke, attempts to dismantle the future scenario that George Friedman proposes for the year 2080, in which the demographic and political power of the Mexican-American community in the United States defeats the US federal government.
Emilio Lezama's (El Universal) analysis of Trump's possible military intervention, which focuses on dismantling the drug trafficking structure, is the prelude to Trump's deeper strategy. However, Friedman's vision goes beyond military conflict. Friedman suggests that the United States' defeat will not come on the battlefield, but rather from its own inability to integrate the growing population of Mexican origin, which will consolidate and align itself with Mexican interests, rendering future military intervention unworkable. For Trump, this demographic and social threat is the real enemy. Therefore, his interventionist strategy in Mexico seeks to separate the actors. His goal is to segment the Mexican population into two groups: criminals, whom he is fighting, and "good" citizens. By directing military operations and unilateral interventions outside of US states with large Mexican-American populations, Trump avoids the polarization of a demographic base that could turn against him, as happened in Los Angeles, California. His message is clear: the fight is against drug trafficking and corruption in Mexico, not against Hispanics who live and work legally in the United States.
On this playing field, the Mexican Army and Navy have adopted a stance of pragmatic cooperation, an act reminiscent of the diplomacy of the Carrancistas in 1914-1916 and the Sonora Group in 1920-1929. In those years, figures such as Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles understood that US recognition and support were vital to consolidating their power and stabilizing the country. The current cooperation, although painful for national sovereignty, is a similar calculation. The Morena government knows it lacks an institutionalized party, an effective social movement, or the military power to confront a direct intervention by the Yankee Empire, and any resistance would lead to an asymmetric conflict with high costs for the civilian population.
In this context, the corruption of the Mexican political class, including members of Morena, serves as an additional justification for US interventionism. While Morena politicians don't behave like the allies of Porfirio Díaz or Victoriano Huerta, who fled the country to Alfonso XIII after being defeated in a civil war, their pragmatism resembles them and could open the door to a new modus vivendi. The opposition, far from being a counterweight, could take advantage of this fragile situation to infiltrate the government in the near future, creating a de facto system in which power is shared or negotiated under Washington's conditions.
This situation leaves Mexico in a dilemma where peace is bought at the cost of sovereignty and autonomy. In this scenario, President Sheinbaum and the armed forces are playing a game in which the only possible victory is to avoid all-out war.
Is the Mexican monsoon the tears of cadets Manuel Azueta, Juan de la Barrera, Juan Escutia, Francisco Márquez, Agustín Melgar, Fernando Montes de Oca, and Vicente Suárez? Mexican youth should not seek solace in the ghosts of a broken sovereignty, but in the recognition of a geopolitical reality. The time of sacrifices on the altar of the nation is over (Regina). The blood spilled at Chapultepec and Veracruz is not the end point, but the beginning of a history that now demands to be rewritten. There is no honor in defending the ruins of a lying and traitorous political class, Santanistas who sell the homeland in installments while paying homage to the ghost of an empty nationalism, as Sergio Aguayo says in the Pantheon of Myths and Alejandro Filio poetically expresses in that verse of disillusionment: The patio, the great ceremony, the homeland the tricolor light, then the betrayal of he who steals, dishonors and sells us our rights and our voice. The pain of deception must make the adolescent republic mature; Mexicans must stop seeing the United States as an invader and begin to understand it as a destiny: 50 million Mexicans can't be wrong!
