Mexico’s foreign minister on Thursday blamed America’s high demand for illegal drugs as the reason for the cartels’ rise south of the U.S. border and the innocent people who have died amidst the violence.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray told NBC’s “MTP Daily” the U.S.-Mexico plan to deal with the cartels cannot be a “blame game” between governments.
“For years, from the Mexican perspective, people say, ‘OK, the problem with drugs — that it’s creating so many violence, so many deaths of young people in Mexico — is because there’s demand for drugs in the U.S.,'” Videgaray said.
“We happen to be neighbors to the largest market for drugs. From the American perspective, it’s just the other way around… It’s we — we have all these drugs because Mexico is selling these drugs to us. So it’s a blame game and — it’s not — but that’s a totally incorrect approach if we want a solution for the problem,” Videgaray added.
Videgaray said if the U.S. is serious about helping Mexico disrupt the cartels’ “business model,” it will need stopping the flow of weapons and cash over the international boundary.
“We need to stop illegal weapons flowing from the U.S. into Mexico,” Videgaray said. “We always think about illegal stuff moving through the border south to north, but people forget that most guns — and we’re not talking small guns, we’re talking heavy weapons — they get to the cartels and create literally small armies out of the cartels.”
The Mexican official also urged the U.S. government to stop the flow of cash, not wire transfers, that moves south over the international boundary.
