Specialist Alejandra Spitalier is a lawyer who graduated from the Escuela Libre de Derecho (Free Law School). Her professional career began in the private sector, but she has moved to the public sector in recent years. She is currently a columnist for El Financiero, and this is her latest on the current political situation in Mexico.
Claudia Sheinbaum must condemn an intervention contrary to international law, without ignoring that Mexico figures in the legal narrative the United States uses to justify its extraterritorial actions.
The Nicolás Maduro regime has committed systematic human rights violations: repression, political persecution, torture, and an institutional collapse that has led to the forced displacement of more than eight million people.
These events prompted the opening of an investigation in 2021 for possible crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court. However, no matter how serious these events may be, they do not automatically legitimize external intervention or the violation of international norms.
Public international law is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of states: none can impose itself on another or intervene in its internal affairs. This principle is linked to non-intervention and respect for the free self-determination of peoples.
When powerful nations disregard or downplay these limits, they not only affect the targeted state but also erode the very legal framework they claim to protect.
The central problem is the lack of an effective mechanism to sanction the United States. Because it is not a party to the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court lacks jurisdiction.
Thus, any intervention is illegal and, in practice, goes unpunished, leaving only political and diplomatic condemnation. This reveals a clear contradiction: it is impossible to argue in defense of principles that are simultaneously being violated illegally and deliberately.
Given its history of selective interventions, Latin America observes this scenario with caution. However, the current logic seems to respond less to regional interests and more to a geopolitical ambition of an economic nature.
Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves, although its production has declined due to the complexity of extracting its heavy crude. The United States, for its part, has significantly increased its dependence on this type of oil and, to obtain it with difficulty, has specialized refineries in Texas and Louisiana.
Furthermore, control of Venezuelan extraction gives it power over China—the main buyer of the intervened country—and strategically positions it against Russia—which also has reserves of heavy crude.
All of this without overlooking the vast natural gas reserves of the South American country, which constitute considerable wealth.
With this, the repercussions in the oil market would foreseeably be gradual and long-term. This is not a conspiracy, but rather an economic rationale: Venezuela represents an exceptional and unparalleled energy prize in the Latin American region.
However, Mexico has a particular position that is not without risk. In the complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Maduro, our country is mentioned as part of the transnational drug trafficking network, not as an accused state, but as a territory linked to explicitly identified criminal organizations.
This inclusion is significant and limits Mexico’s political and diplomatic options.
Hence the discomfort Sheinbaum faces: she must condemn an intervention contrary to international law, without ignoring that Mexico figures in the legal narrative the United States uses to justify its extraterritorial actions.
Therefore, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s statements were superfluous and increased the complexity: in a democracy, foreign policy is the exclusive responsibility of the sitting head of state, not of legacy governments that weaken the country’s institutional voice.
International law, as a point of convergence, can survive if it is applied as a common limit, rather than as a flexible tool of power. To renounce this coherence is to accept an order in which force replaces law, in which dictators are condemnable and “saviors” are above any judgment.
Source: El Financiero
