Claudia Sticks the Landing

Rallying around a refusal

Here in Mexico, schoolchildren are taught about the various incursions that the United States have made into this country, one such incursion having resulted in Mexico losing a huge portion of its country to the U.S. Mexicans, needless to say, are sensitive to the U.S. military entering Mexico’s sovereign space.

Recently, reports emerged in both Mexico and the U.S. that Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum refused a U.S. military C-17 aircraft loaded with soon-to-be deported Mexican citizens from entering Mexico’s airspace and landing on a Mexican airfield. Neither Mexico nor the U.S. has confirmed this report.

But that hasn’t stopped many Mexicans I’ve been speaking with to enthusiastically ask me if I heard about what president Sheinbaum did. What she did - or may have done, in any event - turns out to be a source of great pride for many Mexican people; a giant middle finger to the despotic and unilateral actions of a United States gone off the rails. Regardless of their political leanings or their feelings about the Morena party (Sheinbaum’s political party), Mexicans are proud of their presidenta, at least for the moment.

Mexico has even gone a step further, having denied U.S. military aircraft bound for Guatemala and Colombia with manacled immigrants aboard from entering Mexican airspace: those C-17s had to fly around Mexico to get to their destinations further south.

Of course, from a purely pragmatic sense, this is perhaps just a bunch of theater: Mexico is unequivocally allowing civilian aircraft from the U.S. to land on Mexican soil in order to repatriate deported Mexican citizens. And, in the near future, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Mexico relent and allow military aircraft from the U.S. into the country: Mexico has a lot to lose by alienating the current administration of their backwater northern neighbor.

To be sure, this is a moral low point for the United States, and it is sad to witness. The U.S. has all the money, the arms, the best-funded military in the world. But nobody likes a bully - oh, except clearly many registered voters in the U.S. do. Maybe those voters just don’t understand what a bully is: a tough guy on the outside and a coward on the inside. Not a glamorous look, not a lot to like there.

And a lot of people in Mexico feel quite disrespected right now. They hear the things that the new U.S. administration is saying, and they see the things the administration is doing. The hatred for Mexico dribbling from the mouths of MAGA politicians is not lost on the Mexican people; nor is the fact that the U.S. has been treating Latin America as a collection of vassal states ever since president Monroe opened his big, stupid mouth.

So Mexico refused to clear a flight plan for a U.S. military aircraft. Big deal. All countries control their own airspace and can - at any given time - allow or prohibit flights through it. But the people of Mexico know: this was their president standing up to the 500-pound grinning idiot bully gorilla: a tough guy in a suit. A coward. Good for you, Sra. Presidenta.