Mexico boycotts Summit and jeopardizes event success

The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is not participating in this edition of the Summit of the Americas. The absence of the main Central American country should be missed in important discussions, such as immigration and drug trafficking.

López Obrador decided to boycott the meeting when US President Joe Biden confirmed that he would not invite countries he considers dictatorships. And he listed Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua

The US government said it is confident that the presence of the Mexican Foreign Minister will be enough to debate the issue of immigration and reach an agreement at the end of the summit. And to show that relations with Mexico have not been shaken, he announced that President Obrador and his wife will go to the United States next month.

Mexico is now the migration route from Central and South America to the United States.

But a large contingent of Mexicans also try to cross the border every year in search of opportunity and security.

Another important challenge in Mexico is drug trafficking, which dominates several regions of the country. According to the latest crime map, drawn up by researchers at the Center for Economic Research and Education, there are at least 150 organized criminal gangs in the country. An exponential increase, because until 2006 they did not reach ten.

Almost all are financed by or linked to the country’s two big cartels: Sinaloa and Nova Geração Jalisco. The leader of the Sinaloa cartel, El Chapo Gusman, after cinematic escapes from Mexican jails, was sentenced to life in prison in the United States. But the cartel remains active and operates in 14 of Mexico’s 32 states. As drug traffickers’ operations expanded, violence spread across the country.

“Is it over there [a violência] it is associated both with the dispute of these organized crime groups and with issues of political violence. Although in recent years we have seen a decrease in homicides, we are talking about one of the most violent countries in the world and in Latin America”, says Professor of International Relations Marcela Franzoni, from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes.

According to data from the Ministry of the Interior of Mexico, until March 2 of this year, 112 people were murdered per day.

And journalists are also on the hit list. This year, until May, nine have already been murdered and the country is heading towards a record of homicides of press professionals.

Drug trafficking and immigration are the most pressing challenges for the most important country in Central America. The boycott of the Summit of the Americas appears to be a side effect that the US government failed to take into account when it decided to exclude Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

After all, reaching a consensus on best practices to combat these problems on the continent will be practically impossible without one of the main stakeholders in the matter, Mexico.