November-2, 2020 - The immediate results of the U.S. decision to take former Mexican military commander Salvador Cienfuegos into custody in Los Angeles on October 15 are in. The capitalist class and the mass media are celebrating the arrest as a legitimate "victory" and assertion of U.S. "leadership" in the "war on drugs," while for the working masses, the clandestine operations of the U.S. government and its violation of the sovereignty of Mexico are being quite clearly distinguished and denounced. 

The U.S. Justice Department has accused retired Mexican Defense Minister Cienfuegos of corruption and acting to help drug traffickers avoid interdiction while he was serving as the head of the Mexican Army and Air Force. By relying on the claim that honoring the terms of the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty would be inconvenient for the United States, U.S. magistrate judge Alexander MacKinnon tried to justify the U.S. decision to rigidly exclude the Mexican government from negotiations and to trample on the right of the Mexican people to carry into effect their own sovereign authorities. U.S. imperialism is acting as if it has appointed itself the judge, jury and executioner of every department of Mexican government. 

According to the U.S. government's logic of Might Makes Right, its superior military power entitles it to dismiss its international agreements with Mexico on the chauvinist and aggressive grounds of labeling it "weak" and unable to meet the needs of its own population. Thus, the Drug Enforcement Agency is prepared to carry on secret investigations, issue its own arrest warrants for high ranking Mexican officers, and create every possible opportunity to guarantee their placement under confinement and trial in the U.S. instead of being condemned or released by process of Mexican law. 
 
The U.S. government's indifference to the established norms of relations between states and its agreements with the Mexican government exposes the U.S. as an international outlaw. 

Moreover, U.S. imperialism's talk about fighting against the "international drug trade" is a sham. Behind this rhetoric are the real expansionist, capitalist motives of U.S. imperialism – the drive to control the markets and economies of the countries of Latin America, which the U.S. capitalist class has always considered as its "backyard." The U.S. capitalist class and government, which are up to their own necks in every type of criminal activity imaginable, are certainly not interested in stopping the drug trade in Mexico.

The refusal of the U.S. government to honor its agreements with Mexico also shows that U.S. imperialism does not consider or treat Mexico as an independent country, but rather looks upon it as nothing but a strategic colony which must follow to the letter the dictates of U.S. policy. 

We must fight against U.S. imperialism's economic strangulation of Mexico and denounce U.S. interference there. This is an important part of the working class program for a democratic foreign policy which demands an end to Big Power interference and intervention against sovereign nations and the democratization of international relations on the basis of recognizing the inviolable right of every nation to determine its own affairs. Every nation must be recognized as equal.