Is the U.S. orchestrating protests in Mexico to pave the way for war on Venezuela?

The evidence is clear: Washington is actively attempting to destabilize Mexico. The target is not only the progressive government of President Claudia Sheinbaum but the very sovereignty of the nation, a move that aligns with the escalating threats against Venezuela.

The script is familiar. Corporate media outlets like Fox News and CNN are trumpeting violent protests, branding them as a “Generation Z” revolt. The unrest, sparked by the Nov. 2 murder of the mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, who’s been likened to the reactionary Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, is being cynically directed by right-wing forces. Former Mexican President and Coca-Cola millionaire Vicente Fox is a key player, promoting these demonstrations.

The hidden hand of U.S. imperialism is plain to see. So-called independent media outlet “Animal Politico,” which receives direct funding from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is amplifying the calls for protest. The NED, along with the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Google News Initiative, provides its funding, and the U.S. embassy provides training. U.S.-based social media platforms have ratcheted up their algorithms to promote the unrest, mirroring the insidious manipulation of the 2011 Arab Spring.

The protests, with their anti-authority branding, carry a sinister, anti-socialist direction, linking Sheinbaum to Cuba and Venezuela. This is not an organic youth movement; it is a manufactured crisis.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said, “We agree with freedom of expression and freedom of demonstration if there are young people who have demands, but the issue here is who is promoting the demonstration. … People should know how this demonstration was organised so that no one is used.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. far right is seizing the opportunity to advance its agenda. MAGA figures like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones are labeling Mexico a “narco-terrorist state.” 

They have magnified the false narrative that the Mexican government of Sheinbaum is about to collapse under the weight of a popular “revolution.” The official figure for the Nov. 15 demonstration in Mexico City was 17,000 people. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government approval ratings remain above 70%. Currently, there is no existential risk to her government. 

Trump escalates: open threat of U.S. military strikes in Mexico

Donald Trump has seized on the unrest to issue one of the most brazen threats against Mexico in modern U.S. history: unilateral military strikes on Mexican territory.

On Nov. 17, a during an exchange with reporters in the White House, Trump was asked if he would support or launch military ground strikes inside Mexico similar to the lethal maritime strikes against small boats in the Caribbean.

Trump answered: “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs.”

Pressed further, Trump pointed to images from Mexico City and said, “I looked at Mexico City over the weekend. There are some big problems over there.”

Although Trump did not announce a formal plan, he openly signaled his willingness to violate Mexican sovereignty — and declared he would be “proud” to use U.S. firepower against foreign targets, a phrasing he has previously used when discussing strikes in the region.

These remarks amount to a public green light for military escalation. Coming from a president who has already designated major Mexican cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” a move meant to provide a legal pretext for the kinds of drone strikes and Special Forces raids the U.S. routinely conducts in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately rejected the threat, stating that U.S. military personnel will not be entering Mexico and that such intervention is “absolutely ruled out.” 

“Mexico’s sovereignty is not negotiable,” she said at a Nov. 18 press conference.

Who are the real drug traffickers?  The CIA.

If Trump were sincere about combating drug trafficking, he would look closer to home — at the CIA.

The CIA’s complicity in drug trafficking is a documented fact. In the 1980s, the agency worked with Contra-connected drug dealers in Nicaragua, a connection exposed by journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series, which revealed how these networks helped spark the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. 

This pattern repeated in Afghanistan, where the U.S. allied with opium-trafficking warlords and militia allies during the 2001 U.S. war on Afghanistan.

The issue is not about drugs. It is about imperialist control. The issue is about manufacturing consent from the people of the United States who are suffering under an epidemic of drugs, an epidemic that is ironically a by-product of both capitalist profiteering and the resultant despair of its population.

The current orchestrated unrest in Mexico is a dual-purpose operation: to undermine a sovereign government that refuses to bow to Washington and to manufacture public consent for a wider war on the independent nations of the Global South. While Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba will bear the brunt of this aggression, the U.S. working class will also suffer unless this drive toward war is stopped.