Riva Palacio reveals pressure from the US on AMLO to tighten airspace regulation

2024-05-06 11:30:00

CDMX.- The government of Joe Biden exerts “strong pressure” on the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico to update the laws on the use of airspace and include the regulation of drones, reveals Raymundo Riva Palacio.

According to the journalist, the United States’ concerns revolve around the fact that it has detected Chinese drones flying over Mexican airspace due to the lack of regulations that prevent it.

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The analyst explains in his column “Strictly Personal” today that the growing use of Chinese drones by Mexican cartels is one of the situations that worries the US, but also the espionage of China, a country with which it maintains a trade war. .

“The government of the president Joe Biden began to exert strong pressure on Mexico to update the regulations on its airspace, with the argument of stopping spy flights that cross Mexican territory and seek to collect information about the United States,” he says about the drones detected with espionage equipment.

The journalist remembers that since the last six-year term, the US has asked Mexico to cancel the Chinese giant’s 5G network, considering it as an espionage tool. However, his requests have been ignored.

“The requests from the United States have already been made to senior Mexican officials, but so far no response is known. Nor is it known what the position of López Obrador is, who has resisted previous US demands, as in the case of the 5G network, favoring the expansion of Chinese technologies that are considered in Washington as espionage systems,” he says in the article. .

THE CJNG DRONE ARSENAL

Regarding the use of technology by cartels in Mexico, the United States is concerned about the growing firepower of criminal groups with the help of drones, as has been the case of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which It has a “drone arsenal in Apatzingán, Michoacán.”

“These drones, adapted with devices to drop bombs, were unknown in Mexico until just over three years ago, when the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) began using them with great effectiveness. It made it easier for them to attack from the air and kill their enemies, security forces and the civilian population, minimizing their costs,” recalls the editorialist.

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But the CJNG is not the only one that uses technology for war purposes, so does La Familia Michoacana, which in March 2023 attacked a primary school in Guerrero with bombs dropped from drones.

Although Mexico has refused to modify the Mexican Airspace Protection Law to regulate the use of drones, it has asked the Chinese government to cooperate with information about drones and it has agreed.

“The drones manufactured by their companies have a fingerprint, a universal application code, so in China they know perfectly well where each one of them is. Xi Jinping’s government agreed to (Mexico’s) request and is providing information on the location of the drones,” says Riva Palacio.