MEXICO CITY — In a blistering critique, the top U.S. diplomat in Mexico said the country is not safe and that its leaders should stop denying widespread violence, invest more in security and increase cooperation with the United States.
“To say there is no problem is to deny reality,” U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar told reporters this week. “And the reality is that there is a very big problem in Mexico.”
At her daily news conference Thursday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum shot back, saying her country was open to “coordination” with its northern neighbor, but not “subordination.”
She pointed out that the ambassador — a political appointee who will probably be replaced by the incoming Trump administration — has also praised Mexican cooperation. “First he says one thing, then he says something else,” she said.
Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1, has adopted a security strategy that closely hews to that of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who eschewed confrontation with criminal gangs in favor of providing greater economic opportunities to at-risk youth in the hope of steering them away from crime — a policy he called “hugs, not bullets.”
As president, he regularly accused his adversaries of exaggerating the scope of killings and other crimes. He relied on the military, rather than police, to fight organized crime groups, which are among Mexico’s largest employers.
Salazar was once close with López Obrador. But the relationship cooled in the latter’s final months in office as the ambassador assailed plans to overhaul the judiciary that critics saw as a ruling-party power play.
Salazar’s comments this week were his most critical assessment yet of Mexico’s approach to drug trafficking and other crime. He asserted that U.S.-Mexico security coordination “has failed in the last year, in great part because the previous president did not want to receive help from the United States.”
He also echoed critics in Mexico who have assailed Sheinbaum for failing to earmark more funds to professionalize Mexico’s criminal justice system — especially the police, who make so little money that officers often wind up on gang payrolls.
“You cannot pay a policeman practically nothing and expect him to do his job,” Salazar said.
Mexico sent a diplomatic note to Washington expressing displeasure with the admonitions from Salazar.
The dustup comes at a sensitive moment in Mexico, where there is deep concern about President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs, deploy U.S. troops to go after cartels, conduct mass deportations and further militarize the border.
Mexico has seen gang wars, massacres and assassinations continue since Sheinbaum took office.
There was no immediate response from López Obrador, a longtime mentor to Sheinbaum and founder of the party for which she is now the standard-bearer.
