Mexico hears echoes of US interventionism after Venezuela attack, takes Trump seriously

The reported attack on Venezuela and the alleged abduction of President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend sent shockwaves across Latin America, reviving long-standing fears of a return to overt United States interventionism.

Nowhere are those anxieties sharper than in Mexico, Washington’s neighbour, trading partner, and historically uneasy ally.

Mexico was among several countries, alongside Cuba and Colombia, singled out by US President Donald Trump following Saturday’s attack on Venezuela, which killed dozens of people and was widely condemned as a violation of international law. In his remarks, Trump went a step further, openly floating the idea of US military action on Mexican soil under the banner of fighting drug trafficking.

“Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning, just hours after the Venezuela strikes. “She [President Claudia Sheinbaum] is very frightened of the cartels,” he added. “They’re running Mexico.

Sheinbaum responded with an unusually blunt defence of Mexican sovereignty.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal matters of other countries,” she told reporters on Monday. “It is necessary to reaffirm that, in Mexico, the people rule and that we are a free and sovereign country,” she added. “Cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no.”

Mexican leaders have long walked a careful line: maintaining workable relations with the United States while pushing back against encroachment. Under Trump, that balancing act has become riskier, as his rhetoric increasingly mirrors earlier eras of US imperial reach.

Announcing the Venezuela strike, Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century policy used to justify US dominance in the hemisphere.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine’,” Trump said.

The message was reinforced days later when the US State Department posted an image of Trump online with the caption: “This is OUR hemisphere.”

For all her insistence on sovereignty, Sheinbaum has also shown a willingness to cooperate where US priorities are concerned, on migration, security, and trade. When Trump threatened 25 percent tariffs last February, her government deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to the US border. Mexico has extradited dozens of alleged traffickers and maintained close security coordination with Washington.