Checking In With Our Former North American Allies

Mexico extradited 29 convicted and suspected cartel members to the United States on Friday. Caro Quintero, the convicted murderer of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, was the most notable one, and the others were members of a laundry list of cartels including the Sinaloa and Zeta organizations. A lot of these guys had been in prison for a long time and are older (Quintero is 72, for example).

This extradition might be in response to Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Tuesday, it could be in response to US adding cartels to the list of terrorist organizations, or it might just be another instance of President Claudia Sheinbaum backing away from her predecessor AMLO’s Hugs not Bullets policy. This policy promoted social welfare programs to make life better for people living in cartel-dominated areas. AMLO and Claudia’s Morena party is still committed to that policy, but Claudia seems more inclined to crack down. Her government has cooperated with the US in allowing drone overflights of Mexican territory. Those drones are equipped with sensors that can detect fentanyl labs.

Claudia didn’t say a lot about this at her Friday press conference, but she did note that part of the reason for the extradition was that her government lacked confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and was concerned some of them would be released from prison. Quintero, for example, was released from prison in 2013 after an appeal, disappeared before he could be imprisoned after losing an appeal to the Supreme Court, and was captured in 2022. Mexico has judicial elections this year after AMLO pushed through judicial reform last year.

Claudia dives into crowds all over Mexico with little visible security in her car tours or when she flies (coach, commercial) to other towns in the country. She’s fearless. I’m concerned for her safety now that the cartels are almost certainly out for revenge.

Now let’s look to the North. If you’re not reading Charlie Angus, who is a Member of Parliament for a town in north Ontario, you’re missing out on a great political communicator. In the last couple of days, he’s detailed his visit to anti-Russian protests at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, his take on Canada leaving the “five eyes” intelligence gathering arrangement with Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US.

Doug Ford, Ontario Premier, won re-election on Friday. Cue sad trombone. He gambled by calling a snap election, and won on the strength of his voiced opposition to Trump’s tariffs. His party kept their majority in the provincal legislature, picking up one seat. The Liberals did so poorly that their leader, Bonnie Crombie, lost her riding, yet she was re-elected to her post as party leader. Ford took a political risk here and won. He definitely is MAGA-curious, but his strong anti-US rhetoric, coupled with quickly pulling US goods from the LCBOs (province-run liquor stores) and threatening to cancel a Starlink contract certainly helped his case. He was able to win before the fact that he was full of shit about cancelling a Starlink contract and that he quickly put the liquor back on the shelves when the tariff threat abated truly sunk in.

The Liberals, who were left for dead politically last year, are surging in Canadian polls, almost entirely at the expense of the Tories. Libs are the red line, Tories are the navy blue line below:

Most of this is due to the Canadian Tory leader Pierre Poilievre being considered likely to sell out Canada, and not meeting the moment because he’s just a sloganeer (“verb the noun” is a taunt made about his slogans). Liberal appear to be uniting behind Mark Carney as leader. Carney is the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, worked for Goldman, etc. In other words, he’s going to be the white, male, somewhat conservative leader that the Liberals think can appeal to a broad swath of Canadians.

Oh, and this is funny (not funny ha-ha): Trump might have to ask Canadians for eggs.

(A note on the Mexico news. My correspondent R is a more seasoned Mexico traveler than me, and we both agree that’s getting good analysis of the political picture there in English is tough. I use Mexico News Daily, and I recently discovered Mexico Daily Post. Neither is great for politics, but both will tell you where to find the best food and beaches. The Spanish newspaper El Pais also has an English edition that has some Mexico news.)