Why Sheinbaum will let Trump drone the cartels

Mexico, the infinite homeland we love, our sweet and sacred land, today lies prostrate before an enemy that respects neither life nor law: the drug cartels. In this scenario of decay, Donald Trump has put forth a proposal that shakes the hypocritical leftists and their false nationalism: using drones to selectively attack these criminal groups.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has tried to wrap herself in an outdated leftist discourse of supposed defense of sovereignty, which sounds more like an empty echo, responding "no" to that option.

But the truth, as raw as ever, forces us to face it: Sheinbaum must accept this strategic support, not out of submission, but out of necessity, pragmatism, and because the current Mexico demands urgent solutions from an authority we no longer find within our borders.

First, we must ask ourselves bluntly: Does Sheinbaum want to end the cartels? In the doubtful case that she does, the lady can't crush them by herself.

It is not a lack of character, but there is a network of complicities that runs through the heart of Morena and its allies. Governors, mayors, and high-ranking officials have taken advantage of drug trafficking as a lucrative business, with a diabolical pact that sustains their coffers and their power.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), between 2018 and 2024, under AMLO's mandate, the cartels expanded their control to about a third of Mexican territory, with a 24% increase in armed confrontations between criminal groups and state forces in 2023 compared to 2022.

What can a president do when her own party is infiltrated by interests that thrive in the shadows? The 4T promised transformation, but instead of purifying the system, it has flooded it with sewage. The cartels not only traffic drugs: they traffic weapons, migrants, children, prostitute women, kidnap, kill, demand protection money, extort... and traffic influences, and those influences reach the pinnacles of Mexican power.

Second, Trump is not going to wait for a formal "yes". If he decides to act, the drones will simply be launched, period. Do you remember what happened on January 2, 2020 at Baghdad airport? Trump approved a drone attack against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani accused of causing hundreds of American deaths. He died there.

And this year, just a few days ago, on Saturday, March 15, Trump ordered a large-scale bombing against Houthi terrorists in Yemen (financed by Iran), eliminating 53 of them.

The United States doesn't consult when it feels its security threatened, and the Mexican cartels—already declared as "terrorists" and de facto aligned with the Red Dragon and its hegemonic Chinese communist interests—with their flow of fentanyl—and the 250,000 annual deaths they have caused—and their cross-border violence, are a clear danger to them.

If Sheinbaum insists on her refusal, she will remain a decorative figure, a lady who shouts "sovereignty" while explosions resonate in Sinaloa or Michoacán. Worse still: her rejection will make her look like a leader who did not know how to negotiate, who preferred the red ideological stance that also ends up leaving everything the same, the country in the hands of crime, instead of initiating concrete actions. In this game, either you sit at the table with Trump and help define a methodology, or you get run over and become a footnote in the history that covered up, due to incapacity or cowardice, the narcos.

Third, the Mexican Armed Forces are not going to declare war on the United States for defending a sovereignty that the cartels have already torn apart. Who believes that the Army or the Navy would launch against American drones in the name of a national pride that is lost in towns taken by narcos?

That sovereignty that Sheinbaum believes she is defending is just empty talk, it is a chimera; we lost it when the narco became the true feudal lord of vast regions. Rejecting Trump's valuable help is not protecting Mexico; it is condemning it to remain a hostage of criminals who know no law other than that of lead.

Fourth, Sheinbaum has a unique opportunity here to draw her line and distance herself from AMLO and his protégé "Andy" López Beltrán. Accepting Trump's support would allow her to free herself from the dark commitments that Morena's mafias, devoted to "hugs" to the narco, would have inherited.

During AMLO's six-year term, the strategy of non-enforcement of the law allowed the cartels to grow in power and sophistication, while drug trafficking remittances—estimated at more than 4 billion dollars annually by some analysts—mixed with the country's finances. Sheinbaum can use this help as a breaking point, showing that her project is not tied to the complicities of the past and that she is willing to act where others only offered speeches.

Do you remember the movie Lord of the Flies? Go watch it. Well, that's exactly what we are for now. Mexico is like the tropical island where a chaos of children without guidance unfolds, where gangsters impose their will in the absence of a moral, legal, and disciplined authority.

In the face of this disaster, Trump appears as that external force that, with all its flaws, brings with it the discipline and solutions that we have been unable to apply. No one talks about "surrender," but about recognizing that we need an ally with the ability to strike where the left only hesitates. To binational problems, binational solutions.

Sheinbaum must see it as an opportunity to clean house, not as an affront. Because, in the end, if we do not act—or let act—we will remain sunk in a swamp where morality, values, and hope are just memories of a Mexico that no longer exists.

Accepting the support of the United States Army, to work in collaboration with our Armed Forces with drones and all, is not surrendering; it is admitting that alone we have not been able to and that order, even if it comes from outside, is better than the crime that devours us.

Sheinbaum has the opportunity to lead this battle from the Mexican trench, negotiating with Trump a plan that returns some dignity to us. If she doesn't, history will judge her not as the guardian of sovereignty, but as the one who let the country bleed out for not facing reality.