MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's president said Friday that he won't fight Mexican drug cartels on U.S. orders, in the clearest explanation yet of his refusal to confront the gangs.
Over the years, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has laid out various justifications for his "hugs, not bullets" policy of avoiding clashes with the cartels. In the past he has said "you cannot fight violence with violence," and on other occasions he has argued that the government has to address "the causes" of drug cartel violence, ascribing them to poverty or a lack of opportunities.
But on Friday, while discussing his refusal to go after the cartels, he made it clear that he viewed it as part of what he called a "Mexico First" policy.
"We are not going to act as policemen for any foreign government," López Obrador said at his daily news briefing. "Mexico First. Our home comes first."
López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. He offered to help limit the flow of drugs into the United States, but only, he said, on humanitarian grounds.
"Of course we are going to cooperate in fighting drugs, above all because it has become a very sensitive, very sad humanitarian issue, because a lot of young people are dying in the United States because of fentanyl," the president said.
More than 70,000 Americans die annually because of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are mainly made in Mexico from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China.
"For decades, past administrations in Mexico have thought the war against drug cartels was basically a U.S. problem," said security analyst David Saucedo, noting that Mexican domestic drug consumption, while growing -- especially methamphetamine -- is still at relatively low levels.
"On the other hand, the drug cartels provide jobs in regions where the Mexican government can't provide economic development, they encourage social mobility and generate revenue through drug sales to balance trade and investment deficits."
López Obrador has argued before against "demonizing" the drug cartels and has encouraged leaders of the Catholic church to try to negotiate peace pacts between warring gangs.
López Obrador has also made a point of visiting the township of Badiraguato in Sinaloa state, the home of drug lords like Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman, at least a half dozen times, and is pledging to do so again before he leaves office in September.
It's also a stance related to prickly nationalism and independence.
The president has imposed strict limits on U.S. agents operating in Mexico and limited how much contact Mexican law enforcement can have with them.
While Mexico has detained a few high-profile gang members, the government's policy no longer matches what Mexican drug cartels have become: extortion machines that make much of their money not from trafficking drugs, but from extorting protection payments from businessmen, farmers, shop owners and street vendors, killing anyone who doesn't pay.
They take over legitimate businesses, kill rival street-level drug dealers and murder bus and taxi drivers who refuse to act as lookouts for them.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico had no comment on López Obrador's most recent remarks. But it did note the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions Friday on a Sinaloa Cartel money-laundering network in which the proceeds of fentanyl sales were used to buy shipments of cellphones in the United States, which were then sold in Mexico.
The cartels control increasingly large swaths of territory in northern Mexico -- their traditional base -- and in southern states like Guerrero, Michoacan, Chiapas and Veracruz.