MEXICO CITY, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Merida Initiative, a major instrument of cooperation between Mexico and the United States against drug trafficking, may be dismantled or made irrelevant by the upcoming U.S. administration of Donald Trump, experts warned.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope predicted that the Trump presidency would end the bilateral agreement, which was signed into law in 2008, seeking to strengthen Mexican security institutions and thwart cartels on both sides of the border.
"The Merida Initiative will be over. I believe that, with nothing to replace it as we have seen no proposals for that, we will see a break in institutional relations for security matters," the expert told Xinhua.
Since being agreed upon by former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the two countries have taken a mutually responsible approach to fighting drug traffickers. From 2008 to 2015, Congress also granted around 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in cash, equipment, training and technology to Mexico as part of the deal.
David Crow, a professor of international studies at Mexico's CIDE, a higher education institution focusing on economic research, said: "I see absolutely no sign that this work will continue under the Trump administration."
For Crow, the initiative will remain inert during the initial months of Trump's mandate before potentially being gutted down the line as a way to save resources being spent by Congress.
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