Mexico and the United States are Getting Red Hot Chili Peppered
The Mexicans are very, very angry and the Senate of that country has made it crystal clear; they will not cooperate with the American agencies in terms of illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Although Washington will surely not take long to respond, Mexicans with their attitude show why chili is part of their daily meals and they love it.
The Senate’s response came after the president of the United States, Donald Trump, decided to deploy troops of the National Guard in the common border. One of the presidential candidates, Ricardo Anaya, commented that antiterrorist cooperation should be limited until the National Guard is withdrawn. The Mexican Senate also urged that on the solid basis of diplomatic relations between the two nations, to summon the United States Congress to persuade President Donald Trump to channel relations between both nations.
It is not the first time that the United States has displayed arrogance by sending soldiers to the Mexican border. Previous administrations such as George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s had also sent National Guard troops to the border for indistinct reasons. This type of military deployment is seen by many Mexican candidates as a form of intimidation and racism on the part of their northern neighbor.
The presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, exhorted to send protesters dressed in white to the border. In the meanwhile, the Mexican presidential candidates increase their rejection towards the United States and several of them have shown their nationalist character regarding the decision of Donald Trump. For the time being, the Aztec nation said that it will send to the common board members of the guard who "will not carry weapons, nor will carry out immigration or customs control functions."
After the claims and the harsh criticisms made by the Mexican candidates, President Enrique Peña Nieto sent a message to his US counterpart, considered for several politicians and part of the Mexican population as a soft speech. Peña Nieto described Washington’s new strategy of sending troops to the border as threatening and disrespectful. Also, in a message through social networks, he said that the United States was maintaining an aggressive rhetoric towards Mexico.
With the signing of an executive order authorizing such purposes, several members of the US cabinet expounded on the matter. Kirstjen Michele Nielsen, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, said they would send thousands of soldiers to the border to strengthen the national security of the United States and tranquility. On the other hand, Jana White, Pentagon Chief Spokesperson told the press in a public message that US will use all kinds of military technology, as well as air and land defense, to patrol and keep the border safe.
In addition, Donald Trump said that his government has received the money to reinforce a wall that was not secure enough and now they will have to guarantee the construction of the new one through the militarization of it. “The situation on the border has already reached a crisis point: the illegality that persists in our southern border is fundamentally incompatible with the security and sovereignty of the American people”, said Trump in the presidential memorandum he signed.
For many Mexican experts, the US president has created a fictitious enemy that is the migrants, and some consider it underlies his xenophobic and racist positions as well as his hatred for Mexicans. Besides the Trump’s well-known speech in which he said Mexico sent rapists and traffickers to the United States, there is his excessive interest in the construction of a border wall and the suspension of DACA, a program thousands of Mexicans belong to. Paradoxically, while billions of dollars will be spent on the border with Mexico, a nation like Puerto Rico has not yet received the economic aid necessary to return electricity to all its citizens.
The action ordered by Trump comes after the migrant caravan made by people without borders, called Viacrucis Migrante 2018, called for 1,500 people.
The dispute between Mexico and the United States traces back to the times when Americans usurped Mexican lands. After incorporating Texas into the Union, the Americans sent patrols to the border as a form of coercion and intimidation using as one of the pretexts the search for fugitive slaves.
Even so, some American historians comment the conflict by the transit of people of a place to another one is not new. According to James David Nichols, there was a time in which Texan slave owners looked for slaves in Mexico because the government of the Aztec country refused to deliver them. This provoked several violent skirmishes for decades. Until 1900, vigilantes were stationed on horseback from El Paso, Texas, to California, to prevent the illegal entry of immigrants.