“We already have the evidence. A shipment arrived from a port in China, a container, to the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, then all the laboratory analysis was done and we are very respectfully going to send this information,” López Obrador said in his conference. daily press.
AMLO will send a new letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping to reiterate his request for support to combat the illegal fentanyl trade, which causes 100,000 deaths annually in the United States and has unleashed political pressure on Mexico from Washington, according to López Obrador.
The president had sent a first letter in April, but then Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that “there is no illegal trafficking of fentanyl between China and Mexico.” Despite this statement, the Mexican Navy found “a few days ago” a shipment of more than 20 tons from China that contained fentanyl and methamphetamine.
The container, which first left the Chinese port of Qingdao and made a stopover in Busan, South Korea, brought 600 packages of fuel resin weighing between 34 and 35 kilograms each, the Mexican Secretary of the Navy, José Rafael Ojeda, stated on Friday. “The product is contaminated with fentanyl and methamphetamine,” Ojeda said.
El presidente @lopezobrador_ insistió que no son los migrantes quienes introducen el fentanilo en EE.UU., como cree el 60% de los ciudadanos que se identifican con el Partido Republicano.
— Gobierno de México (@GobiernoMX) May 5, 2023
El 86% de los presos por fentanilo en EE.UU., de hecho, son ciudadanos de ese país. pic.twitter.com/WHelV19AQh
López Obrador pleads with Xi Jinping to prevent fentanyl trafficking
With this information, López Obrador will ask Xi Jinping “if it is possible for them to prevent these chemicals from leaving their ports, that only substances or fentanyl used for medical purposes be allowed to leave, which is not the case that was detected.”
“We are going to send a letter to the President of China with this information, very respectfully, very respectfully, reiterating the request that they help us with the information because this would allow us to have more control,” he remarked.
The petition comes amid growing criticism of Mexico from US politicians, particularly Republican lawmakers, who are calling for a declaration of war on Mexican cartels and designation of them as terrorists.
The Mexican president acknowledged that he wrote the request to Xi Jinping after a visit by congressmen from the United States, whose Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) maintains that fentanyl is produced in Mexico with substances from China.
“They came from both parties, the Republican party and the Democratic party, we met and they asked me to intervene with the Government of China, to control the arrival of fentanyl from Asia, assuming that the fentanyl was sent from Asia and especially from China,” he said.
