Mexico and Central America in Trump’s Second Term

Going forward, we must start from the blunt diagnosis with which the digital newspaper El Faro heads its November 11 edition: ‘For Trump, Central America does not exist and is reduced to the immigration issue.'[viii] The countries of the region only matter to the extent that Washington’s perceptions estimate that they are a threat to the national security of the United States.

Trump’s second term has a “welcome” ready for Latin American and other migrants: mass deportations; imposition of taxes on remittances from the US; end of the TPS (Temporary Protection Status) temporary authorization program for Salvadorans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans; and conclusion of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program), an exercise of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against individuals who arrived in the United States as children – DACA does not provide lawful status, but certain individuals may be eligible to request work authorization. 

The consequences of these measures will be disastrous, and our ability to cushion them very limited. The Mexican elites are counting on the USMCA, US companies with businesses in Mexico, and their political contacts, to tell Trump that these measures mean the U.S. shooting itself in the foot. However, these efforts may end up being useless, as the traditional institutions of American liberal democracy are also very worn out or coming to an end.

Betting on a better future for the region based on Washington’s money is self-deception. Trump is not going to pour money into Central America.  In fact, remittances dramatically dwarf foreign assistance; see Table 2:

The fact is that the biggest investors in the Central American economy and society are migrant workers, but this is not recognized. It never hurts to remember that remittances are private salaries destined for family subsistence. They are not public resources, nor do they have to be a source of pride for governments; rather, they aim to alleviate government shortcomings. 

The oligarchs collect migrants’ money in their banks, in their shopping malls, in all kinds of services, and ship huge amounts of money to tax havens. What a paradox: the poor put money into their countries of origin, while the rich take it out by planeloads. This takes place in the context of a very low average tax burden, which according to the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies (Icefi), in 2022 barely reached 15.3 percent of GDP. [x]

Beyond the Western Hemisphere, Washington has its plate full, facing complex challenges like the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East; the struggle with China for global hegemony; and the interventionism of the Russian government in disinformation tasks in the elections in the U.S., in European countries and in Latin America.

Who will Trump surround himself with? Senator Marco Rubio, born in Florida to Cuban parents, will be Secretary of State.  He is bound to implement a ‘hard line’ on immigration and fiercely attacked then president López Obrador of Mexico:  ‘he has handed over a large part of his national territory to the drug traffickers who control those areas’.[x] With his appointment, Trump ‘subcontracts’ foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean to the Cuban American community – that is certain to be a reason for friction with the Sheinbaum administration in Mexico, who as his predecessor’s, is close to the Havana regime. 

Former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz was initially nominated by Trump for the position of attorney general. He had spoken out in favor of carrying out surgical operations against Mexican cartels. However, after it became known that he had been investigated for sexual misconduct, Gaetz himself announced on November 21 that he was declining his nomination. Trump has now nominated Pam Biondi, former attorney general of the state of Florida.

Michael Waltz will be Trump’s National Security Advisor in the White House; he seeks to designate the Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations. If he succeeds, Washington could trigger an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and deploy intelligence and surveillance resources to “dismantle” the cartels. At the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will be Kristi Noem, until now governor of South Dakota, who does not know the border, but is a hard-liner Trump supporter.

In the immigration area, the grey eminence is Stephen Miller, who already collaborated with Trump in his first term, and who will now be deputy chief of staff. Miller is the ideologue of the “immigration deterrence through attrition” that is detailed in the so-called “Project 2025.” It was he who convinced Trump to make immigration the main campaign issue in the final months of the race to defeat Kamala Harris.

The new “border czar” will be Tom Homan, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that will carry out mass deportations; this official has decades of experience in migrant raids. In Trump’s second term, he is also going against the Mexican cartels, equating them with terrorists.

These appointments (except for Waltz’s) require Senate confirmation. There is no guarantee that all of them will get it, but it is realistic to bet that few legislators will dare to challenge Trump’s appointments.

Between 2020 and 2024, political priorities were reversed in the United States: today, immigration and border control are high priorities, while the defense of democracy in the region is not even mentioned.

What will Mexico and Guatemala do Together?

There is a recent precedent for Mexican cooperation with Central America: The Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and southeastern Mexico, presented on May 20, 2019, [xi] by Dr. Alicia Bárcena, then executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), to the presidents of these countries. The CDP proposed 131 projects for economic development, social welfare and response to climate change, which sought to contribute to mitigating migration, and that in any case it would be safe, orderly and regular, as a free and non-forced option. [xii]

There were at least two factors that came together to prevent the full implementation of the CDP: the countries’ presidents did not get involved in a way they would consider the outcome of their own making; and its priority was to reduce migration – which seemed to be a goal imposed from above and from outside – when its objective should have focused on improving the standard of living of the majority of the population. Additionally, perhaps the biggest factor was that the Government of the United States of America decided not to invest in the CDP and preferred an approach that relied on investment from the private sector and US companies taking center stage. 

The expectations of Central American migrants towards the AMLO government pointed to human mobility with respect for human rights. The opposite occurred: the governments allied to implement militarized migration containment in the region, while organized crime took over the migration routes.

In 2020, researchers from six public research centers of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) published eleven studies to undertake the promotion of investments in infrastructure, productive, investment and commercial opportunities in the region.  The central goal was to promote sustainable and inclusive development that would lead to a better quality of life for the inhabitants of the Mexico-Guatemala cross-border region. 

Governments so far have approached the need for investment taking every need in a haphazard way: here we need a railroad branch; here we take the gas pipeline from Tuxpan to Coatzacoalcos, then via the trans-isthmic corridor to Tapachula and on to Guatemala; furthermore, dams will be built along the river to generate hydroelectric energy. Governments see the territories of indigenous and peasant communities in the border states and departments as lands of conquest, with no attention to the communities’ ownership of the process, which is unacceptable.

Today, Chiapas and a good part of the Guatemalan geography are controlled by organized crime gangs that, in complicity with narco-politicians, conquer water, forests, territory, work, transportation, extort the population and murder those who promote peace. [xiii] History is relentless: in the 1980s, thousands of Guatemalans escaped genocide by seeking refuge in Mexico. Four decades later, in July 2024, it was revealed that, in the context of a serious humanitarian crisis, more than 600 people from indigenous and peasant communities in Chiapas had fled violence in their state and crossed the Guatemalan border. [xiv]

The new Mexican government repeats like a mantra that the strategy is to address the root causes of migration, and proposes a Mexican model of labor mobility, which until now only exists on paper. In fact, on October 2, the second day of President Sheinbaum’s term, the disproportionate use of lethal force by agents of the Mexican State caused the death of six migrants and ten more were injured. The Mexican Catholic Bishops’ Conference pointed out that this tragedy was not an isolated event, but the consequence of the militarization of Mexican immigration policy. [xv]

Nevertheless, we must take into account the fundamental point: these are two governments of neighboring countries, which, from the beginning, have had an understanding at the highest level. The importance that President Arévalo attaches to relations with the United States and with Mexico is reflected in two very important appointments. His ambassador to the United States, Dr. Hugo Beteta, headed the regional office of ECLAC in Mexico and is familiar with the U.S. government and the operation in the region of the multilateral banks based in Washington; while his ambassador to Mexico, Édgar Gutiérrez Girón, is a former foreign minister who knows his host country and has a wide network of contacts with Mexican diplomacy and the Central American diaspora in Mexico.

However, looking ahead to fiscal year 2025, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government faces a severe budget constraint. The Mexican foreign ministry needs to deploy experienced and regionally knowledgeable diplomats and staff in Washington and in Guatemala City to be up to the task. It would be a self-inflicted defeat if the Mexico-Guatemala understanding were held hostage to a misunderstood financial astringency or austerity.

In the case of cooperation between the Sheinbaum and Arévalo governments, it would be imperative to address the enormous social debt with the Mayan peoples: the terrible educational lag, the absence of public health services, and of course, public insecurity.[xvi] Any strategy would have to be proposed and built from and together with the communities in the border states: Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo; and in the border departments: San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Quiché, and El Petén.

The Usumacinta River is born near the point where the departments of Huehuetenango, Totonicapán, and El Quiché meet, and serves as a natural border between Mexico and Guatemala along 310 kilometers. It is a region of humid jungles, highly coveted by extractive industries. Another paradox: the inhabitants of this megadiverse region are an underclass in societies as markedly segregated as Mexico and Guatemala. 

Can the two governments that call themselves progressive address the historical demands of their own peoples?

Is it necessary to reiterate that President Arévalo was sworn in thanks to the support of the indigenous peoples, and above all, of the 48 cantons of Totonicapán? Can the fact that President Sheinbaum won by a large majority in the states of southeastern Mexico, which have the largest indigenous population, be left aside from the equation?

Are today’s governments in Mexico and Guatemala willing to invest in their own people?  Or will they leave things to inertia and adrift, so that their compatriots are forced to follow the inexorable path of migrant exodus in the face of unbridled systemic violence and lack of opportunities at home?

Geography is destiny. Guatemala and Mexico share a coastline on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Mexico and Central America have a shared horizon. Let’s put ourselves in charge of it. Migration is part of our history and will continue to be so. It is crucial to resist the Trumpist onslaught, but the fundamental task is to take responsibility for our structural problems and reverse internal neocolonialism, to turn our countries into habitable places. Nothing more, but nothing less.

*Originally published in the Mexican magazine Nexos on November 19, 2024: https://redaccion.nexos.com.mx/mexico-y-centroamerica-en-el-segundo-mandato-de-trump/

**Associate Professor, Department of International Studies, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Mexico City. 

@Carlos_Tampico

[i]  The respective figures for 2023 were: Honduras 35, Mexico 26, Guatemala 20, and El Salvador 8 violent homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.  Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/muerder-rate-by-country 

[ii]   In Spanish, ‘pacto de corruptos’. 

[iii]   See the digital portal El Faro, https://elfaro.net/en/202411/centroamerica/27628/for-trump-central-america-does-not-exist-and-is-reduced-to-migration 

[iv]   A preliminary version of this segment was originally published in the Mexican daily EL UNIVERSAL: https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/opinion/por-mexico-hoy/trump-mexico-y-los-paises-mexicanos/ 

[v]  La France, Adrienne (2019). Fox Got It Wrong With ‘3 Mexican Countries,’ but It Also Got It Right. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/foxs-3-mexican-countries-chyron-message/586195/ , March 31st. 

[vi]   Cfr. ‘El silencio de Neto’ (Ernesto’s Silence), an extraordinary Guatemalan film directed by Luis Argueda, which takes place in June 1954, during the last month of Arbenz’s government.  Ernesto and his classmates hear from a school teacher who discusses the goof work of President Juan José Arévalo, president of Guatemala from March 15, 1945, to March 15, 1951. 

[vii]  Encounters include apprehensions, inadmissible persons and expulsions. A person can be detained and removed from U.S. territory more than once over the fiscal year.  Cfr.  https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters.

[viii]    Cfr. El Faro, Ibid. 

[ix]    Medina Berdejo, Abelardo (2023).  Panorama de las finanzas públicas en Centroamérica.  https://icefi.org/blog/panorama-de-las-finanzas-publicas-en-centroamerica-2023, February 8th. The tax burden was 20.7% in El Salvador, 19.5% in Nicaragua, 17.6% in Honduras, 14.2% in Costa Rica, 12.1% in Guatemala, and only 8% in Panama. 

[x]   Marco Rubio, a hawk on Latin America, from Attacking the Narco-Dictatorship in Venezuela to welcoming his friend Javier Milei  https://english.elpais.com/usa/elections/2024-11-18/marco-rubio-a-hawk-on-latin-america-from-attacking-the-narco-dictatorship-in-venezuela-to-welcoming-his-friend-javier-milei.html 

[xi]  The Spanish-language version was first published on May 20, 2020; the English version on September 17, 2021.

[xii]  Comprehensive Development Plan for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the south-southeast of Mexico (2021) – the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, cfr. https://www.cepal.org/en/subtopics/comprehensive-development-plan 

[xiii]   Hernández Navarro, Luis (2024). ‘El padre Marcelo’, in https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/10/22/opinion/el-padre-marcelo-4723 

[xiv]    “The gunshots fly by us, we never thought that violence would reach where we live,” (in Spanish) in: https://elpais.com/mexico/2024-07-26/refugiados-chiapanecos-en-guatemala-los-balazos-pasan-cerca-de-nosotros-nunca-pensamos-que-la-violencia-llegaria-a-donde-vivimos.html

[xv]     The Mexican Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Commission on Human Mobility (2024), in Spanish, ‘Sobre los hechos ocurridos en Chiapas’, October 3. Ver: https://caritasmexicana.org/publicacion2.php?id=566

[xvi]    Cfr. Hernández Navarro, Luis (2024).  ‘Chiapas, drug-trafficking and Neocolonialism’, (in Spanish), in: https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/11/05/opinion/chiapas-narcotrafico-y-neocolonialismo-7736                            

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Publish date : 2024-11-25 03:40:00

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