This article Mexican Sovereignty in the Era of the Donroe Doctrine was published by Jacobin.

US governments have long relied on Mexico as a southern gendarme, even as it proudly declares its sovereignty. Faced with Trumpian imperialism, the challenge for Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is to make that independence more real.

When it comes to US-Mexico relations, 2026 thus far reads like a Taylor Sheridan script. Last April, the CIA’s clandestine operations inside Mexico became public when two agents died in a car crash in the northern state of Chihuahua after raiding and dismantling a mountain drug lab. Reporters soon revealed that four CIA agents had participated in the operation, albeit wearing Chihuahua state police uniforms, and that this was their third counter-narcotics raid since January.

In May, CNN and the New York Times broke a stunning and seemingly related story. Reporters claimed that the CIA had been running a “secret war on cartels” since last year, assassinating lower- and mid-ranking members to dismantle entire criminal networks. This secret war went beyond the kingpin strategy that prioritized the arrest or killing of “cartel” leaders to “a playbook not much different than counterterrorism missions to destroy groups in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.” Except that this was taking place clandestinely and illegally inside Mexico.

Read the full piece Mexican Sovereignty in the Era of the Donroe Doctrine published by Jacobin.

*This article is the result of After Order, a research project by Alameda that explores the contemporary transformation of sovereignty.