“The time has come to show the United States that it is under threat from a country of 130 million inhabitants that is finally waking up.”
Russia is trying to poison bilateral relations between the Mexico and the US by taking advantage of Mexico’s ruling party Morena’s innate anti-Americanism. That is the conclusion of an article published last week by Washington-based American journalist Dolia Estévez. The apparent basis for this claim is an alleged document published by the “Social Design Agency”, part of a Kremlin-funded global disinformation campaign called Doppelgänger.
That document somehow found its way into the hands of the FBI, and the US Department of Justice declassified it last week. In its decision to reveal elements of the document to Estévez, a reporter with ties to the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, a US government think tank, the DOJ sought to “alert public opinion and the Mexican government about Russia’s sinister plans to drag Mexico into a spurious conflict with the United States”.
“Existential Resentment”
The Russian document advocates intensifying Russian meddling in Mexico by stirring up anti-American sentiment in the country. The authors propose exploiting Mexicans’ “existential resentment” over the loss of over half of their territory to the US in the mid-19th century as well as creating a “perception of threat” on a border overwhelmed by violence and migration — all apparently with one main goal in mind: to help Donald Trump, “our partner”, get back in the White House:
Written in Russian and translated into English, the six-page text.. brings the 1848 war to life with a map depicting California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, part of Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas as not belonging to either the United States or Mexico. Instead, there is an imaginary gap between the two, with the slogan “Mexico does not forgive” along the dividing line. Although territorial annexation is still present in the collective imagination of some, it is crazy to assume that it will lead to another war with the United States, which the writing evokes with a painting of the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847, which Mexico lost…
From the document’s title, A Mexican Pass for Candidate “A”: A Project for Proxies in the November 2024 Campaign – to the last sentence – “The time has come to show the United States that it is under threat from a country of 130 million inhabitants that is finally waking up” – the project makes [Russia’s] intentions clear: to use Mexico as a tool to erode the credibility of the US electoral system and help Trump win the elections.
“Candidate A (Trump), who was building a border wall, who every day of his presidency talked about the immigration problem coming from the South and to whom the baton must be passed to shift the political narrative [NC: presumably a reference to the war in Ukraine], urgently needs an intensifying confrontation with Mexico.” The success of the U.S. economy, which electorally favours “candidate B” (Democrat), leaves Trump the option of “creating the perception of a threat” from violent cartels and hordes of angry migrants at the border.
Morena, the party of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the current head of state Claudia Sheinbaum, is, in the words of the alleged document cited by Estévez, “an easily manipulated centre-left formation with anti-American tendencies, that is favourable to de-dollarisation and a reorientation of Mexico’s economic priorities.” As for Morena’s electoral base, it consists principally of Mexico’s disadvantaged classes, which largely share this anti-American sentiment — again, according to the document cited by Estévez.
But is the document real? Who knows? It could be. But all we have to go on is the word of the FBI, whose judgment was, to put it mildly, sorely lacking in its “investigation” of Russiagate, as the Durham Report concluded last year:
“[T]he FBI discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia… An objective and honest assessment of these strands of information should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes. Unfortunately, it did not.”
Even by the standards of those who brought us Russiagate, this latest story is riddled with holes, not least of which is the alleged document’s use of the word “success” to describe the US economy right now. Then there is the idea that the government of Mexico, whose economy is joined at the hip to the US, is somehow favourable to de-dollarisation. It also seems that Kamala Harris, like Biden before her, is perfectly capable of sabotaging her own presidential campaign without any need of outside help, and one would imagine that Moscow knows this.
Also, both the former Trump and current Biden governments have done a sterling job of stoking anti-US sentiment in Mexico on their own, through a combination of insults (mainly on the part of Trump), lawsuits (mainly Biden) and threats (from both sides but particularly Trump and the Republicans who have been talking about intervening militarily in Mexico to cap the capos for at least five years). And lest we forget, these accusations, whether true or not, are coming from the country that has meddled the most in Mexico for the past 180 years.
That all being said, Russia does have a motive for fanning the flames of anti-US sentiment in Mexico. Exacerbating tensions between the US and its direct southern neighbour and largest trade partner is a good way of keeping the US on its toes in its own neighbourhood, and somewhat distracted from other parts of the world. The same goes for Moscow’s deepening of ties with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
But if that is what Moscow is indeed doing, it pales into insignificance with what the US has done over the past 10 years with Russia’s direct neighbour, Ukraine, which includes (but is by no means limited to) orchestrating the Euro Maiden coup, empowering Ukraine’s Azov Nazis and arming Kiev to the teeth so that it could wage war on the Eastern oblasts. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine finally began, Washington, together with London, did everything they could to wreck any chances of a swift negotiated peace.
Estévez closes her article with this far from convincing exhortation to her readers:
What I relate here should be enough to convince the short-sighted, skeptical or ignorant that Russian interference in Mexico is not an invention of the CIA, nor the product of the “Russophobia” of a handful of journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, but a real and proactive strategy of great importance in which Morena, knowingly or not, is a formidably useful tool.
“Back to the Cold War”
US accusations of Russian meddling in Mexico are likely to continue, if not intensify, in the coming months. After all, this is a trend that began over two years ago. As readers may recall, in the early days of the Ukraine conflict, US Ambassador Ken Salazar told Mexican lawmakers, to their faces, that Mexico cannot ever be close to Russia:
“I have here (he said while indicating lapels on his jacket breast) the flags of Mexico, the United States and Ukraine. We have to be in solidarity with Ukraine and against Russia.”
The Russian ambassador was here yesterday making a lot of noise about how Mexico and Russia are so close. This, sorry, can never happen. It can never happen…”
As we noted at the time, Salazar’s comments were controversial for a variety of reasons:
First, Mexico is a sovereign nation and as such should be able to choose which countries it wants to forge close ties with, even if they are the target of U.S. sanctions.
Second, the hypocrisy stinks. U.S. and its European allies have consistently argued that Russia has absolutely no right to try to determine what happens within the borders of its sovereign neighbour Ukraine, even as tons of weapons poured into the country from NATO Member States such as Poland and the Czech Republic. Yet the US Government, through its ambassador to Mexico, is now trying to literally dictate the terms of Mexico’s relationship with Russia.
What the U.S. essentially seems to be saying is that neutrality is not an option in the escalating conflict between Russia and the West — at least not for Mexico.
Which brings us to the third point: Mexico has a long, albeit interrupted, history of neutrality dating all the way back to the early 1930s. In 1939, a neutrality clause was even added to its constitution by the government of then-President Lazaro Cardenas, which also nationalized Mexico’s oil and gas a year earlier. Since then Mexico has enjoyed close relations with many countries that have been targeted by international sanctions, including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Mexico’s long-held position of neutrality has also made it a haven for people seeking political asylum, including republicans fleeing Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil War and the emigres of the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 1960s and ’70s.
Despite relentless US pressure, Mexico continues to enjoy close ties with Russia, even going so far as to invite Vladimir Putin to Claudia Sheinbaum’s inaugural ceremony, which he ended up declining for obvious reasons. In March 2023, Estévez reported that in a matter of just a few months the total number of Russian diplomats in Mexico had increased by around 60%, to 85. In its September article, “Back to the Cold War: Russia Uses Mexico As a Hub for Spying on the U.S.“, NBC highlighted US officials’ concerns about the recent build up of Russian diplomats and intelligence officers in Mexico.
Russia has added dozens of personnel to its embassy staff in Mexico City in the past few years, even though Moscow has only limited trade ties with the country. U.S. officials say the trend is concerning and believe the extensive buildup is aimed at bolstering the Kremlin’s intelligence operations targeting the U.S., as well as its propaganda efforts aimed at undermining Washington and Ukraine…
CIA Director William Burns said earlier this month his agency and the U.S. government are “sharply focused” on Russia’s expanding footprint in Mexico, which he said was partly the result of Russian spies being expelled from foreign capitals after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Part of this is a function of the fact that so many Russian intelligence officers have been kicked out of Europe. … So they’re looking for places to go and looking for places in which they can operate,” Burns said in London this month when asked about suspected Russian spying out of Mexico. “But we’re very sharply focused on that.”
Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command, even suggested in 2022 that Mexico is currently home to the “largest portion of GRU members in the world… Those are Russian intelligence personnel, and they keep an eye very closely on their opportunities to have influence on U.S. opportunities and access.”
Part of Russia’s growing influence in Latin America is through the media. Unlike in Europe and North America, most Latin American countries, including Mexico, have not banned RT. On the contrary, a study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford revealed how RT and the Sputnik news agency have increased their presence in Latin America after the invasion of Ukraine, adding a group of influencers from the region to their team of presenters and journalists. RT is even broadcast on Mexico City’s public transport.
To the immense frustration of Washington and its European allies/vassals, Mexico’s government, like most governments in the region, has tried to chart an independent course on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This, as far as I can tell, is not a product of pressure or manipulation from Moscow but rather a manifestation of Mexico’s historic commitment to neutrality in wars.
Like Brazil and most other LatAm nations, Mexico resolutely opposes sanctions, for an array of economic, geostrategic and ethical reasons that we have outlined in previous posts (here and here). These countries are terrified, understandably, by the precedent the US, EU, UK and friends have set by attempting to excise Russia from the global financial system as well as Washington’s weaponisation of the dollar.
Lastly, this being BRICS week, an article on Mexico-Russia relations would not be complete without a brief mention of the purely symbolic BRICS banknote Putin flashed for the cameras. It is, I believe, the second time the BRICS banknote has made an appearance, the first time being at the BRICS 2023 Summit in Durban.
As readers may have noticed, one side of the note features the flags of the five founding members while the other (depicted below) shows the flags of 14 other nations — some current members, others perhaps future members. Interestingly, one of the flags featured is Mexico’s, which reignited rumours that Mexico may one day join the BRICS. The Argentine flag also makes an appearance despite the fact Javier Milei declined the opportunity to join the grouping while the flag of Ethiopia, already a member of BRICS+, doesn’t.
The inclusion of the Mexican flag is, I imagine, little more than expert trolling by Putin. As both AMLO and Sheinbaum have said, and in AMLO’s case on numerous occasions, this is not going to happen — at least not in the current context. Mexico’s economy is simply too integrated with the US and Canada’s for it to be able to join the BRICS. And Washington will presumably do whatever it can to ensure it never comes to pass. As Sheinbaum said last week, Mexico will be open to other countries for the next six years of her term, but “our interest is in strengthening the trade agreement with the United States and Canada.”
The only thing that might change that is if the US continues to hurl insults, threats and lawsuits in Mexico’s direction — or even worse, if a new Trump administration delivers on its threat to intervene militarily in Mexico.
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I’m Canadian and the Americans are doing a fine job of arousing anti-American sentiment, no need for the Russian or Chinese boogeymen, thank you very much.
Sigh. Seriously? Trump the RU asset again???
At least British Intelligence at least in the past era was better at this sort of nonsense by order of magnitude.
This is embarassing. Even for the FBI. Its so bad on so many levels.
p.s. I try to get the “leaked” RU original document via https://www.justice.gov/ as linked in the end of the original article.
I can´t find it.
Was is ever there or did they just move it?
…were it real you wouldn´t be able to read it…
What else can they do? They have nothing else. No real accomplishments, no real plan, save Bideness As Usual. Plus, iT wOrKeD tHe fIrSt tImE, dIdN’t iT?
They tried to “Ewww” him. Never forget. Founding Fathers must be high af rn.
“The Russians?”
(Burn After Reading, 2008)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cunAnBRCTN4
lmao.
Let’s assume everything the FBI says is 100% true. That net effect will be 0.1% of 200 years of actual American policy.
That said, Mexicans (those who I met in Mexico out of 100+ milliom) are awesome. A very gracious and hard-working people…who manage to squeeze lemonade out of the lemons that the US Establishment throws at them.
After seeing all the Mexican flags, traditional gender role imagery inpublic service annoucements on TV in Mexico…IMO Mexicans are just as MAGA as US MAGA. (two sides of the same coin)
Make Mexico Great Again!
As always, the malign actions of that ultimate in oxymoron’s The Intelligence Agencies, is boobus americanus.
I started reading, curious and intrigrued? and then I came to the line: “all apparently with one main goal in mind: to help Donald Trump, “our partner”, get back in the White House.”
I started laughing and stopped reading.
“intrigrued?” …LOL… intrigued. Still a bit sleepy-eyed.
“Intrigrued” sounds like intrigue plus triangulation and gruesome with a side of RU!
More such words need to be coined.
Hi Nick, thanks for the perspective. It’s always hard to know what is really going on in the spook world. I suspect half the time the participants aren’t really sure themselves.
What I can see is that my fellow Americans are becoming increasingly paranoid about foreigners, while internationally the US is still widely admired with little or no recognition of the internal problems we face. Everyone in the US is talking war, war, war. Even my longtime, formerly gentle, formerly pacifistic progressive friends are taking up the banner. I see no reason for it except that the wicked flee when no man pursueth. Perhaps committing crimes all over the world returns as the fear that others will do the same to you. In any case there is a lot of delusion and paranoia in the US these days. I hope things even out after the election.
As far as the document being real or not, don’t forget that a huge reason the US went after Assange was due to Wikileaks’ release of the Vault 7 docs which made public the digital tools used by US intelligence. Among them was the ability to spoof the attribution of documents, making it look like they came from any government or organization the spooks wanted.
I’m having a similar experience with my “progressive” friends. A discussion of local politics yesterday turned to the national level and I was upbraided by a whole group for refusing to vote Harris, even after I told them my reason being far too many shredded children on the current administration’s watch, and being respectful of their own decisions. My decision is supposedly a vote for Trump, even though it isn’t, and their decision to vote for Harris is not a vote for more shredded kids, even though it is (I did not voice this last part to them). When I finally left, they were talking about how worried they were about a Russian invasion.
I really hope things even out after the election, but I’m not sanguine that they will. These TDS types really give me the willies. None of them seem to notice that supposedly liberal Western allies of the US are banning political parties, censoring speech, putting dissidents on trial, arresting people for expressing support for Palestinians, etc. Or if they do know, they think it’s all OK as long as it saves them from Trump and Putin.
To be fair, they want to arrest people too. Makes me think of what Bin Laden and Netanyahu said, that there are no innocents. Their words, not mine.
I don’t know what the word “progressive” means anymore. The word certainly seems to have lost the meaning I once attributed to it. On a related note, I thought it quite funny (but not really funny) when extended family members recently asked me: when did the Democrats become such war mongers? Long story, I said…
Aiiyee! The US gets its panties in a twist because of suspected Russian influence on a neighboring country with whom it shares a 3,145 km border. As well as long-established trading relations. (OK, so the US forces Mexico to buy GM corn and hooks them on sugary soft drinks, thereby condemning a generation of their children to obesity and all the health disasters that it entails. Hey, that’s free trade.)
But, the US simply can’t understand why Russia gets hot under the collar when the US coups the government of a country with whom Russia shares a 2,295 km border, and a centuries long history of cultural, religious, and language similarities. And then insists that that country join its ‘defensive’ alliance, which will ultimately entail hosting US missiles, pointing at Russia, along that border. It’s like the US has this policy: what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.
> It’s like the US has this policy: what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.
I think of it as an illustration of the reality that this is US policy (or, more accurately, the policy of US ruling elites)
“Back to the Cold War” It’s really mean and icky of Russia to start a cold war all over again after we tried so hard to be her friend. The entire Western establishment and MSM will back me up on this summary of that of affairs I’m sure.
“Everyone to get from street!”
;-)
Great movie. Whittaker Walt.
Compounding US “concerns” about Mexico is China’s extensive investment in semiconductor manufacturing in Mexico. Got this summary from an internet search:
China has been actively investing in Mexico’s automotive and semiconductor sectors, leveraging the country’s strategic location and trade agreements with the United States. Here are some key points:
Joint Ventures: Chinese companies, such as BYD, have established joint ventures with Mexican partners to manufacture vehicles and components, including semiconductors. This collaboration enables them to bypass tariffs and access the US market more easily.
SMIC’s Role: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest contract chip maker, has been involved in Mexico’s chip industry. In 2023, SMIC produced a 7-nanometer chip for Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone, despite US export curbs.
Access to Chips: Chinese automakers, such as JAC, have an advantage in Mexico due to their access to semiconductors. This allows them to assemble cars more efficiently and competitively, giving them an edge over European and American manufacturers.
Nearshoring: The US-China trade tensions and tariffs have prompted Western companies to look for alternatives to relocate their factories outside of China. Mexico’s proximity to the US and its existing manufacturing infrastructure make it an attractive location for nearshoring.
Government Support: The Mexican government has been actively promoting the country’s automotive and semiconductor sectors, offering incentives and investments to attract foreign companies.
“Donald Trump, our partner” is so on the nose that this just has to be the Russians (probably not even intelligence services) trolling the US spooks. What a bunch of maroons. You can’t make stuff like this up, it’s beyond hilarious.
The Onion headline would be “US stoking anti-US sentiment in Mexico through policies, FBI says”
I lived a chunk of my life in the First Cold War and I am here to say that it never got as stupid as this one with it’s obsession of all things Russian. Thought to look at who the authoress was of this dreck and found this-
‘Dolia Estévez is a freelance journalist and author based in Washington, D.C., specializing in Mexico and U.S.-Mexico relations. She began her career as the Washington correspondent for Mexico’s El Financiero and Radio Monitor in the late 1980s. She has reported for Forbes, Noticias MVS, Poder Magazine, Sin Embargo and Proyecto Puente, among other Mexican and U.S. media. Her lifetime work includes high-impact investigations of Mexican corruption, abuse of power and the drug war, as well as reporting on key developments that have helped shape U.S.-Mexican relations to this day. She is the author of two Spanish language books–El Embajador (Planeta, 2013) and Así Nos Ven (Planeta, 2019); and co-author of Donald Trump, El Aprendiz (Planeta, 2017). She is also author of Journalism Across the Border and one of the co-authors of Shared Responsibility, both published by the Wilson Center. She has given conferences in public and private venues in Mexico and the United States on U.S.-Mexican relations and press freedom.’
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/dolia-est%C3%A9vez
The key there is her association with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars which in fact where this bio was published on. You go to that site and all I see is a government think tank doing what you would expect them to be doing. I wondered if Estévez’s work was typical of what they come up with-
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/
“What I relate here should be enough to convince the short-sighted, skeptical or ignorant ”
The short-sighted and the ignorant, for sure, but not the skeptical.
Lyman alpha bob makes a pertinant point about the disclosures of Vault 7, and AG’s exploring of a disappearing link adds argument. We have no reason to trust intelligence agencies, especially when, in this case, it appears nakedly political. Who is moved by this? The volume of the histrionics make me apprehensive about what Dems and their spooky masters might do next January 6th.
What a stupid country. The voters get what they deserve, but please pity the rest of us.
The voters do not get what they deserve.
The voters are continually given a choice between two mediocrities, of which one will be elected.
In a better world, the voters deserve a better choice.
Choice is not given, but taken.
My rule of thumb for this kind of thing is to assume it’s projection on the part of the US government unless proven otherwise.
It doesn’t always work but in this case I think it’s spot on, as Nick points out.
>>Although territorial annexation is still present in the collective imagination of some… (it wasn’t clear who wrote this section, the FBI?).
Insanely wrong statement. The characterization of existential resentment is much more accurate (though of course, Mexico is not going to start a war with absolutely anyone…because of course they’re not…)
The Mexican-American War (called the “US Intervention” in Mexico) and the annexation of Texas, New Mexico and the Alta California territory is deeply embedded in Mexican patriotic ideology. The 1847 US invasion is commemorated all over the country in monuments to the Niños Héroes (“hero boys”), a group of teenage military school cadets who were attacked by US troops and killed themselves rather than surrender–most likely mythical, but few dare say that out loud, it’s like asking if Mary was really a virgin.
Every year on September 13th, there are ceremonies to commemorate the boys throughout the country–again, despite the fact that they may never have existed, and it is celebrating a suicide. It’s not a holiday, but schools have traditionally had some kind of commemoration.
New books, films, TV programs, etc. bring up the invasion at least yearly.
It is a very, very different country if you speak the language. In fact, that’s probably true of every country.
You should distrust anything you read or hear in English about Mexico (and probably every other country?except if it’s on NC :)
You should distrust anything you read or hear in English about Mexico (and probably every other country?except if it’s on NC :)
Can confirm, as non-native English speaker from other country. Stuff on NC is so-so. They say that a smart man only believes half of what he hears, a wise man knows which half.
To confirm my suspicion, I had to look up spurious. Yes, it is true. In DC words have lost all meaning.
The Bureau who Cried Wolf….
I grew up in California with many ‘Mexican’ friends. I worked with the Brown Berets during the anti-Vietnam War protests. I also lived two years working in Mexico. Never have I heard anyone having revanchist thoughts about reclaiming lost Mexican territory. We did often speak of ‘Califas’, but that was more an expression of cultural integrity rather than expelling the ‘Anglos’. We just wanted them to behave like human beings.
This idea of Russian meddling might have Cold War roots, but we saw the evidence during Russiagate as nonexistent or just silly. It is the height of arrogance to believe that Russia employs the same kind of dark arts to transform societies in their favor as the US does. Russia does involve itself with the world, but for the most part, I understand she cares little for American politics, rightly understanding that the American ruling elites are insane.
Russia’s national policy is the non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. Of course, this novel political philosophy is beyond understanding!
I forget- was the Zimmerman Telegram legitimate? Because this really sounds like a second Zimmerman Telegram.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_telegram
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann#background
(hand to ear, receiving an update) Wow, I guess the Zimmerman Telegram WAS legitimate!
By the way, there’s an old C M Kornbluth science fiction (I think it might be somewhere in “The Syndic”, but Frederik Pohl used it in “The Engineer” in which the US military is so politicised and so obsessed with corporate revenues that it manages to lose a war with Mexico.
I always insist that the true prophets are the science fiction novelists (well, except the one who wrote about the giant tarantula — I hope!)