Some in Mexico welcome U.S. force

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly insisted that she will not allow the U.S. military to fight drug cartels inside her nation’s borders.

- BY KATE LINTHICUM AND JARED OLSON

Photographs by GERARDO VIEYRA NurPhoto RELATIVES of people who have disappeared and victims of violence held a protest in March in Mexico City.

“It’s not going to happen,” Sheinbaum said last month after President Trump yet again threatened such an operation. “We don’t want intervention by any foreign government.”

But while Sheinbaum passionately defends her nation’s sovereignty, recent polls and interviews from across Mexico show that a significant number of people here in fact welcome more American involvement in their country’s battle against organized crime — including having U.S. boots on the ground.

Slightly more than half of Mexicans surveyed by polling firm Mitofsky said they believe “U.S. authorities should enter Mexican territory to fight organized crime and arrest its leaders.” A third of respondents to a poll by El Financerio newspaper said they support the deployment of the U.S. military to Mexico to combat cartels.

“It’s very embarrassing to say that Mexico can’t do it alone,” said José Santillan, a 38-year-old graphic designer in Mexico City. “But the situation with the drug cartels has clearly spiraled out of control. A powerful army is needed to confront them. And the United States has one.”

The U.S. has already unleashed its military on suspected drug traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean, killing at least 83 people. For months Trump and his team have been floating the prospect of U.S. strikes on suspected criminals and drug laboratories in Mexico.

“We know the addresses of every drug lord,” Trump said in November. He wouldn’t say whether he would conduct strikes unilaterally, without Sheinbaum’s permission.

Those threats incense many in Mexico, where resentment lingers over past American invasions, including during the 1846 war, which ended with Mexico ceding more than half of its territory, including California, to the United States.