In the last few hours, the President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador He ruled out negotiating with drug traffickers so that they submit to justice, as the Colombian government intends to do.
López Obrador closed the door to that possibility one day after the Colombian ambassador in Mexico Álvaro Ninco Daza defended the policy of “full peace” of Gustavo Petro, who proposes to negotiate with all the illegal groups in the country.
Petro “is a great president, he is a partner, a friend. We have very good relations with them, but they are different circumstances, he knows (…). You cannot extrapolate experiences, ”said the Mexican president at his daily press conference.
Among these differences, AMLO -acronym for the leftist president- evoked the border of almost 3,200 km and the close relations between Mexico and the United States, main consumer of drugs on the planet.
On Thursday, after participating in a business event in the city of Morelia (central Michoacán state), the Colombian ambassador defended “total peace” as the only way for Colombia to overcome chronic violence.
“There is no other option because we have problems that put the existence of humanity at risk, such as the climate crisis, war, drug trafficking and crime (…). We need to deal with those agendas,” he told reporters.
The diplomat rejected that this is a way of capitulating to the illegal armed groups that operate in Colombia, which include from guerrillas to powerful drug traffickers linked to the Mexican cartels.
“Colombia comes from throwing in the towel and submitting to these groups through governments that helped the narco-State; Mexico too, and I’m not saying it, but a sentence from a court in New York. We are changing that,” she maintained.
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He was referring to the decision of an American jury that, on February 21, declared Genaro García Luna, Secretary of Security of Mexico, guilty of drug trafficking during the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
Criticism against López Obrador’s anti-drug policy has multiplied in recent weeks from the US Congress, where Republicans in particular denounce the president’s alleged inertia against the cartels.
Under the slogan “hugs, not bullets”, the president defends an approach that reduces poverty as a breeding ground for drug trafficking.
Mexico is involved in a spiral of violence that has left some 350,000 dead since Calderón declared war on the cartels with the participation of the military.