Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. This week we’re going to talk about Mexico. Our neighbor to the south has been in the news a lot lately. Last month, the Mexican Congress passed a law that will overhaul the country’s election system in a move that critics have called anti-Democratic. And earlier this month, four Americans were kidnapped in the city near Mexico’s northern border, and two of them were killed.

To discuss all of that and more, I’m joined by an expert in Mexican politics, Shannon O’Neil. She’s the vice president, deputy director of studies, and senior fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her latest book is called, The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter. Shannon O’Neil, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Shannon O’Neil:

It’s my pleasure.

Preet Bharara:

So I’ve been wanting to speak to you for a while to talk about our neighbor to the south, and so I’m going to begin with a parochial question. Some weeks ago, four Americans were kidnapped, two were killed. My son decided … he’s a college student. Decided to go with friends to Mexico for spring break just a couple of weeks ago. Is Mexico safe for Americans?

Shannon O’Neil:

Well, the question here is where you’re going in Mexico. And so, yes, along the border we saw four American citizens kidnapped and two did not make it back. But Mexico is a huge country. And so that’s sort of a question of if you’re worried about crime in say, let’s say Chicago, could you go to Kansas City? And the question is yes, maybe. So I think part of it there is we see very different levels of security or insecurity depending on where you are in Mexico.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So I won’t say exactly where, but he went to a resort town. And I think resort towns are probably a little bit safer?

Shannon O’Neil:

They’re probably safer. One, because there’s just so many more people and foreigners there. And there has been a lot of effort to make those places safer because tourism is such a big and important part of Mexico’s economy. But one thing I will say we have seen over the last four years is an increasing number of places with much higher insecurity. So violence has spread to other parts of Mexico that were once considered safe. And really this is the expansion of organized crime networks around the country there.

Preet Bharara:

Do we know anything more about the kidnapping and what the motivations were and what went on there?

Shannon O’Neil:

So what I’ve heard so far is that it was a mistaken identity. That those that kidnapped them, the organized crime group that kidnapped them, thought they were working for an alternative, a rival kidnap group. But I think what’s more important here is just what this says about who controls particular parts of Mexico. In the town of Matamoros, right along the border is a place that has long been rife with crime and violence, but it’s one of those places where we have seen organized crime really expand their operations.

It’s … Yes, they move drugs. And that’s true, but they move all kinds of contraband. Illegal oils and fuels and other kinds of contraband. People, kidnapping as well as movement of migrants and the like. And then you’ve also seen an expansion in some places like Matamoros and others, an expansion of extortion. So really controlling the territory and old school mafia types of organizations that control area. And so that’s what these four citizens really walked into and unfortunately were preyed upon by.

Preet Bharara:

There’s this phrase, a term that people use sometimes when they refer to Mexico, and they say Mexico is a narco-state. A, what does that mean? And B, is that a fair assessment?

Shannon O’Neil:

So when people use that, they really focus in on the drug part. And the idea here that drug traffickers control the state, control the government. And I think that’s not quite right for two reasons. One is that it’s not just drugs. As I explained, there’s lots of types of crime here. These are diversified industries and businesses, albeit the illegal kind. But two is that they don’t control the federal government, and that’s the image of a narco-state, right? Afghanistan or others are often considered narco-states because they really control the federal levels of power and those levers.

That’s not really the case in Mexico. But we do see organized crime groups controlling some local cities, municipalities, even the state levels, infiltrating government as well as just controlling the streets of these different places. So there’s a huge worry there, and I don’t want to underplay that because I think there is a challenge. And we’re seeing increasing insecurity in Mexico and criminals coming into the political system. And just an example of that is the last midterm elections, a year plus ago, we saw the highest number of political assassinations Mexico’s had for a century. In a large part, that was a fight between organized crime groups trying to get their candidates to win those local elections. But do you see crime control the whole country? No, not yet.

Preet Bharara:

So you mentioned elections. One thing that’s been going on in Mexico in recent times is protests. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Mexico protesting a new election reform law, which was passed by the Mexican Congress. Why are they protesting and what’s the significance of that?

Shannon O’Neil:

So Mexico is a fairly new democracy. It really only came into its own in 2000. And over these last 20 plus years, it’s been building independent democratic institutions. And one of the strongest, and the one that’s seen as independent is the Electoral Institute. So the body that governs election. So this is the organization that was really on the table. The current government under the Lopez Obrador administration wants to dismantle it, or it wants to take away its independence, to politicize it in many ways. And it was Mexicans, these hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who came out on the streets to try to stop that legislative reform.

The government first went for a constitutional reform, they weren’t able to get it. And then they passed this legislative package that would really weaken it. Take away its budget, politicize who gets on the electoral commission rather than being electoral scholars and independent thinkers and the like. So that battle is still going on in Mexico right now. That law that was passed is now going up to the Supreme Court and they’ll decide whether it’s constitutional or not. But that is what brought people out. It’s really, in many ways, a defense of the institutions of democracy and what keeps them free and fair in Mexico.

Preet Bharara:

But I’m confused about that. Is it a popular measure or not? Was it passed in some way anti-democratically? Because if it passed, presumably if it was an unpopular measure, it would not have.

Shannon O’Neil:

So the president’s party controls a majority in the Congress, so they’re able to push particular initiatives through. They pushed an energy reform that has also been going through the constitutional process, and with the US has a dispute through the USMCA, which is the successor to NAFTA. So they’ve pushed through that kind of legislation. And then this legislation was legislation to change the Electoral Institute. And the president has a personal beef with the Electoral Institute because he believes he won the 2006 election, which he narrowly lost. And this body, the Electoral Institute upheld the victory of his opponent.

But he also has an ambition to keep his political party, Morena, in power at the presidential level, so his successor would be the next president. But also at the state and local level to really solidify and cement their dominance on the political field. And I believe he hopes that by weakening the Electoral Institute, he’ll be able to do some of the things that he’s been accused of, and actually that his party has been penalized over these last four years, illegal funding and campaign financing, campaigning. The president in Mexico is not allowed to campaign for his political party in midterms, but he did. Things like that.

So by weakening this institute, he hopes to expand his ability to win the next set of elections. And particularly they have presidential elections coming up in 2024, just like in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

When you say win, you don’t mean him personally, because he’s term limited.

Shannon O’Neil:

He personally is term limited, yes. But he hopes to make sure that his party comes out on top, whether it’s at the presidential level or at the state and local levels, and in a whole sweeping set of elections that will happen in 2024.

Preet Bharara:

So that President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has the best nickname on the international scene, AMLO, he’s very popular. He has a popularity rating that would be the envy of anyone who would be President of the United States, Trump, Biden, Obama. What’s the reason for his high popularity there, even though from the outside it seems like not everything is rosy?

Shannon O’Neil:

AMLO has an incredibly dedicated set of support. We know once in the United States, a former president said, I could kill somebody on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for me. AMLO has that in spades in Mexico. And part of it is that he has been able to position himself as the anti-elite. As representing the marginalized voter, as representing the Mexicans who haven’t gotten ahead. And this is a very unequal country in many ways, with high levels of poverty and inequality and the like. So he has found a way to reach out to them.

Partly he is a politician that has really put in the shoe leather. He’s probably the only person in Mexico and Mexican politics who can credibly say that he’s visited every single one of the municipalities in Mexico, which number in the thousands. Over the last decade, he’s been out there on the campaign trail. So he is really met with people. And then he also has a way, a mannerism, the way he talks, the way he moves, and his mannerisms and the like, that put him firmly, not in the upper elite, upper class, but in the larger population.

So he has that touch and charisma with local people that really rings true. And what’s interesting is his personal popularity levels, his poll ratings are very high. But when you ask the average Mexican about how they feel about his policies, how they feel … are we better off than we were four years ago? Those sorts of questions. And those numbers are very different. AMLO personally is popular, but his government is not as popular as he is as a person.

Preet Bharara:

That’s so weird to me as someone who most weeks talks about the American domestic political situation, because you have something of an inversion of that here. Wherein Biden’s policies, the infrastructure bill, various other things he’s trying to do, those policies are popular, but he himself is not personally popular. Do you have any way of explaining away the inversion as between Mexico and the US?

Shannon O’Neil:

Partly is this background that AMLO has built in representing the have-nots or those who think of themselves as have-nots. The other thing that AMLO does with incredible effect is he sets the news agenda every day. So every day he opens with a morning press conference that can go … I think the shortest are an hour long. Sometimes they go three plus hours long. And he takes up all of the news, airspace, and oxygen. And that really is important.

So he puts out … often he has what, here in the United States, we might say other facts or other data. In terms of what’s really happening in terms of corruption or security or economic growth and the like. But by setting that agenda, I think he really allows himself to be, one, the center of attention. Everybody’s reacting to what he says in the morning. But also he really sets the narrative in ways that are personally quite beneficial to him and his popularity.

Preet Bharara:

So do you think that Joe Biden should do two to three hour press conferences every morning?

Shannon O’Neil:

Well, he could do two to three press conferences every morning. And then the other thing AMLO has is the media space in Mexico is much more constrained, and some of those concessions … there’s a lot of working with the government, let’s say, out of the big TV networks. The Telavisa, and TV Azteca, who are the two big ones. And there I think he often gets favorable coverage. Some of the things that might cut the wrong way sometimes just don’t appear except in a couple opposition newspapers and the like.

So I wouldn’t suggest that we take away the free and fair press of the United States. I think we should keep that. But it does explain a little bit of the difference.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, where do the cartels and other criminal syndicates in Mexico get their firearms from?

Shannon O’Neil:

Well, much of them come from the United States. We have seen a huge … the number of gun shops that are within 50 miles of the border and the amount of sales that they do are big even for Texas and Arizona and other places. So part of it is a traffic south from the United States. We have actually though also seen … and this gets into some of the challenges of security in Mexico.

There is a version of WikiLeaks that happened that had a whole bunch of military documents. And there’s credible evidence that actually the Mexican military is sometimes selling arms to the cartels in Mexico. Because interestingly in Mexico, as a citizen, you cannot go to a gun shop. There are not gun shops in Mexico. You either have to get them from the military or you have to get them through illegal channels. And many of those begin in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I mean, the reason I ask the question is most of the debate in this country, the issues that the politicians put at the fore are contraband, drugs, and other kinds of things. And violence coming across the border from Mexico into the United States, with not a lot of attention paid to the fact that it’s American guns that are fueling the violence in Mexico itself.

Shannon O’Neil:

It’s American guns and it’s American money, because a lot of the markup where the profits are made in the illegal drug trade is from wholesale to retail, right? It’s made in the United States. So that money ends up also going back to Mexico in various ways that erodes public trust, but also fuels these groups and really funds them.

Preet Bharara:

Do you feel that we really do have a crisis at the southern border?

Shannon O’Neil:

What I worry about more is a potential crisis and instability in Mexico itself. And we here in the United States take for granted that both of our neighbors, but including our southern neighbor, are stable countries. It’s gone through decades where it’s been a little bit more authoritarian than democratic. The last 30 years has been more democratic than authoritarian, but it’s been a stable place. And that to me right now is … it still is, in many ways. There’s still the state in many parts. There’s lots of things happening in Mexico. We’re seeing a huge boom in nearshoring and economic activity and the like as companies move out of China or think about moving out of China.

But it’s no longer assured that insecurity will remain at bay, that we will see a stability there, economic, social, and political. And that would have huge ramifications for the United States. So it’s not just the border, but it’s more, do we have a state with 130 million people where we have a 2,000 long border and is one of our biggest trading partners, one of the biggest sources of people where we have lots of ties across the border. That worries me more than what’s happening just at the border.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about that before we go. What’s the relationship between the US and Mexico, and more specifically between Biden and AMLO? And what more should Biden be doing to aid in the stability of our neighbor to the south?

Shannon O’Neil:

So the relation between the US and Mexico is one of the deepest and most complicated, I think with any state. Perhaps the most deep and complicated. It is commercial, it is the border, it is people, it is environment, it is water, it is air, it is all sorts of things. So it is one of the most expansive, and it is one of the biggest markets for US-based companies when they’re exporting abroad. We export far, far more to Mexico than we do to China, than we do to Asia writ large. So it’s a very important relationship for both countries. And we see that in the US, Mexico … or the embassy in Mexico City. There’s over 2000 people that work there and there’s dozens of agencies. And that just reflects the deepness of the relationship.

Now, over the years, it goes through easier times and tougher times. And I would say right now is a tougher time. And for lots of reasons. Security is a reason, other kinds of things are a reasons. But in part is we have two presidents who are not necessarily similar in personality or take. So between Biden and AMLO … I mean, many people have said this, and I think there’s a note of truth here. Is that AMLO is much more like the former President Trump in his outlook and the way he approaches governments. It’s much more, let’s say, fluid in terms of rules and norms and the like. And there’s a real focus on the personality and also on less time for democratic niceties.

And that’s not where Biden comes from. He’s much more about institutionalizing the relationship. So you see some differences there in approach. And then you see differences on policy. You see differences on security, where a lot of cooperation has fallen by the wayside because the Mexicans don’t necessarily want to have it. You see differences on commerce and the economy in terms of how you treat energy and the like and lots of other businesses. So it is a difficult point, though I do think both governments see that one can’t exist without the other. And so there’s a need to work through all these differences and there are channels to do so. But it isn’t the easiest time in the relationship, to be sure.

Preet Bharara:

Before we go, I want to ask you about a book that you wrote relatively recently, which is fascinating to me. The title itself, The Globalization Myth. People love to talk about globalization. There’s a lot of debate about that in this country. What’s the myth?

Shannon O’Neil:

The myth is two things. The myth is we think about globalization as this all pervasive expansive event that’s happened over the last 40 years. And the reality is that we’ve only seen about two dozen countries transform since 1980 in terms of globalization, where they’ve really grown and globalized. So partly, not much of the globe has actually participated in quote, unquote “globalization”. And the other myth is that when companies went abroad, and money and people and ideas and patents and royalties and the like, they usually didn’t go to the other side of the world. They much more were likely to go next door.

So what we’ve seen over this last 40 years is not globalization, but the rise of three big regions. An Asian one, a European one, and a North American one. And I argue in the book that the way forward for the United States, the way to bring back good jobs in the United States and grow the US economy is, one, you can’t do it alone. And two, you have to turn to those in your region. So this is again, where Mexico and Canada and other countries in the Western hemisphere, but where they really matter for the United States.

Preet Bharara:

We’re out of time, because this is Stay Tuned in Brief. Shannon O’Neil, thanks so much for joining us and thank you for your insight.

Shannon O’Neil:

Thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content including the weekly podcast I co-host with former US attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noa Azulai. The audio producer is Nat Wiener, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.