El deterioro de los derechos humanos y del orden internacional en el mundo es anterior al mandato de Donald Trump. Pero el regreso del republicano a la Casa Blanca está teniendo un efecto acelerador y de “intensificación” de las crecientes prácticas autoritarias en muchos países, incluso en Europa. Una tendencia que amenaza con “echar por tierra” décadas de construcción y promoción del sistema de derechos fundamentales en el mundo, advierte Amnistía Internacional en su último informe mundial, en el que llama a las democracias ―especialmente a las europeas― a “resistir” estos “embates” contra el orden multilateral.

“Los primeros 100 días del presidente Trump [se cumplen este miércoles] han sido desastrosos para los derechos humanos en EE UU e internacionalmente”, ha afirmado la secretaria general de Amnistía, Agnès Callamard, al presentar en Bruselas el último informe global sobre la “más que alarmante” situación de los derechos humanos en el mundo.

“El Gobierno estadounidense encabeza un asalto global contra la justicia de género y racial, ha adoptado amplias normas de mordaza contra el derecho al aborto, ataca de forma implacable la diversidad y la inclusión, los derechos de las personas trans y está arrebatando brutalmente los derechos de migrantes y de refugiados”, ha enumerado la exrelatora de derechos humanos de la ONU. También ha denunciado los ataques de la Administración estadounidense a la lucha contra el cambio climático y a las instituciones que ejercen un contrapeso al poder ejecutivo, desde la justicia a las universidades o los medios de comunicación.

El informe, en el que se hace un repaso del estado de los derechos humanos a lo largo de 2024, denuncia el “genocidio” de la población palestina en Gaza. Asimismo, acusa a Rusia de matar en 2024 “a más civiles ucranios que el año anterior”, continuar atacando infraestructuras civiles y someter “a los detenidos a tortura y desaparición forzada”. También recuerda la “violencia sexual generalizada” contra mujeres y niñas en Sudán o los continuados ataques a la comunidad rohinyá en Myanmar. Registra asimismo la “represión cruel y generalizada de la disidencia” en numerosas partes del mundo, los “insuficientes esfuerzos por abordar el colapso climático” y un “creciente retroceso mundial de los derechos de las personas migrantes y refugiadas, las mujeres, las niñas y las personas LGBTI”, entre otros.

“A menos que se logre dar un drástico giro a la situación mundial, todos estos aspectos se deteriorarán aún más en un turbulento 2025”, advierte la organización internacional.

La mayoría de estos atropellos a los derechos humanos comenzaron mucho antes de la nueva era Trump. Pero su vuelta al poder, y sobre todo su “ataque sin cuartel” al multilateralismo y justicia global, “están agravando el considerable daño que ya han sufrido esos principios e instituciones, y animando aún más a otros dirigentes y movimientos contrarios al reconocimiento de derechos a unirse a su embestida”, según Callamard. La francesa ha hecho por ello un llamamiento a la “resistencia” para preservar el sistema de justicia internacional construido los últimos 80 años sobre las cenizas de la II Guerra Mundial y el Holocausto. “El mundo debe despertar a esta realidad ahora o, de lo contrario, esta coyuntura histórica se convertirá en una devastación histórica”, advierte Amnistía, para la que Europa, que considera tiene una responsabilidad especial, no se está mostrando a la altura del desafío.

“La UE no está plantando cara a Donald Trump, no está plantando cara a sus propios miembros que violan los derechos, como Hungría, y está protegiendo el Tribunal Penal Internacional de mala gana. No hay una voz estridente, alta, colectiva que proteja la justicia internacional o el sistema multilateral”, ha lamentado Callamard.

In 1975, the renowned historian Rafael Segovia published a survey called The Politicization of Mexican Children in which schoolkids were asked which country inspired the least sympathy in them, and the majority responded: the United States. Another question asked them if they had to live outside of Mexico, which place would they choose. The answer: the United States.

Mexico continues to engage in this kind of tightrope walk in its relations — whether diplomatic, cultural, migratory, gastronomic or commercial — with its neighbor to the north. But those children are now witnessing a conversation unseen at least since World War II, in which U.S. President Donald Trump is wielding a baton that is shattering the trust built between two nations with a history fraught with quarrels and agreements.

International experts call it a new paradigm, alluding to the intrusion of opportunistic politics into trade agreements that had been proceeding without any major setbacks. Trump’s first term already shook the pillars that supported a decades-long understanding, but the current version of the same president is dramatically rocking the boat. With only a few days left until the president’s 100th day in office, the waters are choppy around the world, but Mexico, America’s largest trading partner, is already looking for domestic economic solutions to overcome a crisis that threatens to completely change bilateral relations.

The 1,954-mile border separating both countries has witnessed territorial wars, but also multiple commercial and human exchanges that continue today with different overtones. What was once viewed as a labor force is now seen as undesirable immigration by the Trump administration; the same goes for drug trafficking, once promoted for use by soldiers in armed conflicts and now transformed into a many-headed hydra that leaves thousands of victims of fentanyl in the U.S. and deaths from violence in Mexico.

“But the trade agreements that were reached [NAFTA in 1994, now converted into USMCA, between Mexico, the United States, and Canada] left out political disputes, which were dealt with separately,” explains Erika Pani, a professor at the Colegio de México. “That was a diplomatic achievement for Mexico, compartmentalizing the problems. But now the conversation is tainted, and the negotiation of tariffs is based on either fentanyl or migration.”

“They are tools that mobilize people politically, and that complicates the matter extraordinarily,” she continues. “The story between the two countries has always been complex, involving many actors, but we must be clear about the fact that this isn’t just a matter between Washington and Mexico City.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has cautiously and efficiently handled 100 days of an uncertainty that is far from over. Mexico has sidestepped the onerous tariffs imposed in other regions of the world and, for now, faces only the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as on certain products outside the trade agreement.

The country still has its head above water, but auto parts are its big concern and a major problem for its big business, vehicle assembly, which keeps the production lines of major auto brands in Mexico. A 25% tariff has been planned for these components, which will be gradually reduced as they become American products rather than Chinese, for example. But the criteria to measure this before implementing the tariff are missing.

“If you break the integration of the automotive sector, you break the very reason for the USMCA,” the trade agreement between the three North American countries, says diplomat Martha Bárcena, who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the United States during the last two years of Trump’s first term.

The Republican president’s whims have Mexico in a state of turmoil, waking up one day with threats to tomato exports and the next with controversy over water sharing for border agriculture.

The economic and diplomatic teams are sleeping on their heels, while at the same time, curious political windows are opening, such as the worldwide fame Claudia Sheinbaum has gained with her “cool-headed” strategy to confront the insatiable blond-haired magnate. All of Mexico is preparing to stand up to the American president, following their own leader’s rhetoric upholding the dignity and sovereignty of its people. The opposition is closing ranks against the danger from the north, and governors from all parties are joining forces in the capital’s great square to make a show of unity and strength.

However, no one can ignore the fact that the asymmetry in relations between the two countries remains unchanged: the south is the weak partner. “Mexico has protected us to a certain extent, but the USMCA is in intensive care; in reality, they have been yielding on everything. It is also true that Trump is being more drastic and chaotic than we expected and is undoing the international order inherited from World War II and dismantling the security of global trade,” says Bárcena.

So much so that the Mexican government wants to reorganize its basket, given that 83% of its exports go to the same destination: the United States, where it sent goods worth more than $505 billion in 2024. No other country in the world sells more to Uncle Sam, not China and not Canada. The dependence appears mutual, but it is unequal, and Sheinbaum has rallied the national business community around a strategy that seeks to increase domestic production for its own internal market. Mexico has 126 million inhabitants; it’s not a bad deal if production and consumption are focused on domestic products. But a dramatic shift is needed to achieve this.

“In the face of certain crises, it was previously easy to know how the United States would behave, and Mexico tended to adapt to decisions made there, but Trump has placed the government on a reactive policy. The president is aware that we’ve spent a century developing a model of cooperation with the United States, and that doesn’t change overnight, but we must look for opportunities in this context,” says Estefanía Cruz Lera of the Center for North American Research at UNAM. “We must seek to rebuild ourselves in some way and rethink long-term relations.”

Strengthening Mexico’s economic sovereignty doesn’t mean abandoning the United States, not now or ever; that seems impossible. Moreover, some of the changes being proposed today arise from demands made by Trump, who imposes penalties on those who negotiate with other countries beyond what he prescribes, such as auto parts with China or oil with Venezuela.

In Mexico, one of the major changes in these 100 days has come in the area of security, with Trump making tariffs conditional on combating drug trafficking and the presence of fentanyl in his country. Sheinbaum’s administration has deployed a completely new security strategy, distinct from that of her predecessor, and attacks on drug lords are occurring daily. In recent months, more than 18,000 people have been arrested for high-impact crimes, 144 tons of drugs have been seized, including two million fentanyl pills, and 839 clandestine laboratories have been destroyed.

Immigration, the other issue on which the Republican president demands results, is, however, a constant point of contention, given the supremacist drift and contempt displayed by the current U.S. administration, in a country that is home to millions of Mexicans. It is on this point that Sheinbaum has raised her voice somewhat, most recently to order a change to the law that allows foreign countries to broadcast political propaganda on Mexican television stations, where Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has deployed a racist anti-immigrant campaign. But she hasn’t had the support of the opposition or the major television networks, who faced multimillion-dollar fines and have halted the initiative.

Despite this, Sheinbaum wraps herself in the Mexican flag and enjoys high national recognition. Mexicans are very nationalistic, and this only inflames their positions. “The United States is once again using the trade relationship as a political weapon, and in Mexico they appeal to Mexican sentiment. All of this could undermine a pragmatic relationship for both,” says Cruz Lera.

Trump has traded the common destiny of both nations for Manifest Destiny, that 19th-century political doctrine that relied on the United States’s inherent letter of marque for territorial expansion. Mexico then lost a large portion of its territory, but geopolitics eventually restored good relations between the neighbors, based on trade that solidified significantly during the Porfiriato and collapsed with the Revolution. General Lázaro Cárdenas and President Roosevelt established a “special relationship” that, after the end of World War II, implanted in the consciences “the mutual need” that both countries share, although it will always be asymmetrical, says historian Pani. “It became clear that they had to maintain a friendly and stable relationship, free from political ups and downs.”

Trump has shattered this balance by frequently alluding to “historical aberrations” in his speeches, says Bárcena. It’s worth remembering the change from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, or his return to expansionist ambitions toward Canada, Iceland, or the Panama Canal.

“He’s gone back to the 19th century without seeing the gray areas of history,” adds the diplomat Bárcena, but behind the historical curtain lurk the economic and imperialist interests of a ruler who wants to recover the United States’ lost greatness, she says. “Trump’s actions will undo years in which the population was changing the psychological relationship between the two countries, from seeing the United States as an invader to treating it as a trading partner and investor,” Bárcena laments.

Pani believes that “the mechanisms for conflict resolution are broken at the moment,” but, although very different, they are neighbors and are destined to understand each other. She adds: “There has always been a relationship of love and hate. It remains to be seen whether this lasts or remains a mere flash in the pan.”

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New York, 2010. At the legendary Cipriani restaurant on Wall Street, the oil industry gathers to honor its own at the Platts Global Energy Awards. At the event, an executive casually extols the virtues of a rapidly expanding technique in the hydrocarbon sector: fracking. He predicts it will revolutionize the oil and natural gas markets, transforming the United States from a hydrocarbon importer into an energy-exporting powerhouse.

The executive had good information. Just over a decade later, the U.S. has become the world’s leading producer of natural gas — accounting for 25% of global output — surpassing even Russia and Iran, and achieving energy self-sufficiency. Fracking, which extracts shale oil and gas by fracturing rock with pressurized water and injected chemicals, has become the fuse for Donald Trump’s trade war.

Gas and oil extracted through fracking — primarily in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Louisiana — now fuel both the civilian and military needs of the United States. This energy security has empowered the current administration to rethink the foundations of global trade, free from fears of supply shortages. It’s not just about natural gas, much of which is exported as liquefied natural gas (LNG); in 2022, two-thirds of all U.S. oil came from fracking, a dramatic increase from less than 7% two decades earlier. Since 2015, oil extracted via hydraulic fracturing has accounted for more than half of the country’s total crude production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Trump has abandoned any pretense of environmental concern. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement for a second time and is now leveraging the nation’s hydrocarbon abundance to reshape trade relations — especially with the European Union. It’s no longer just about money, but also about geopolitical influence: U.S. gas instead of Russian gas. Trump has hinted that he could lower tariffs — currently on pause — if the EU agrees to purchase $350 billion worth of American energy.

This poses a new challenge for Brussels. According to Eurostat, the EU imported 45.3% of its LNG and 16.1% of its oil from the U.S. in 2024 — well above the shares imported from Russia (17.5%) and Norway (13.5%).

The Trump administration has embraced the controversial technology of fracking — a method criticized for using not only water but also chemical compounds in undisclosed proportions. However, the strategic gamble on fracking didn’t start with Trump. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 under president Barack Obama, actively promoted fracking both domestically and abroad.

In 2010, she introduced the “Global Shale Gas Initiative: Balancing Energy Security and Environmental Concerns,” a policy that signaled strong institutional support for unconventional hydrocarbons. Within the State Department, the Bureau of Energy Resources was tasked with assessing foreign policy challenges related to energy over the next 25 years.

According to documents from Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) under Obama produced the first global assessments of technically recoverable shale oil and gas in 2011 and 2013. These reports analyzed 137 shale formations across 41 countries. An updated version in 2015 expanded the scope to include Chad, Kazakhstan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

By 2013, the EIA already acknowledged the global significance of these resources. “Globally, 32% of the total estimated natural gas resources are in shale formations, while 10% of estimated oil resources are in shale or tight formations,” it said in a report.

In this context, Canada’s potential as a producer of shale gas — long recognized by the United States — helps explain Trump’s annexationist rhetoric. The notion of Canada as the 51st state of the U.S. is underscored by its rich energy resources. Canada began using hydraulic fracking in the Montney Formation in British Columbia in 2005, followed by the Horn River Basin in 2006. Interest in these reserves soon spread to Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.

According to a 2020 report from the Canadian government, the country holds 11 geological formations rich in shale and tight gas. Additionally, Canada possesses significant unconventional oil fields in formations such as Bakken/Exshaw, Montney/Doig, Duvernay/Muskwa, Cardium and the Beaverhill Lake Group, Viking, Lower Shaunavon, Lower Amaranth, Macasty (Anticosti Island), Green Point, and Canol, according to the 2013 EIA report. It is a highly desirable energy cache.

In Europe, the EIA identified shale gas potential in as many as 13 countries. However, the technology has failed to take off due to environmental concerns. In Spain, fracking was effectively banned under the 2020 Climate Change and Energy Transition Law, halting the ambitions of companies like Sociedad de Hidrocarburos de Euskadi (SHESA) — partially controlled by the Basque regional government — and Oil&Gas Capital, backed by Basque investors and executives, including some affiliated with companies such as Gamesa and Iberdrola.

Meanwhile, the EIA — the statistical and analytical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy — continues to forecast a favorable outlook for the U.S. gas industry. Its most recent report predicts an 18% increase in gas exports this year, spurred in part by new liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, such as the Plaquemines LNG facility in Louisiana, which became operational at the end of 2024. The U.S. now boasts eight LNG export terminals.

“Although China is not currently importing LNG from the United States,” the EIA notes, “we assess that ample global demand for LNG and flexible destination clauses […] mean that U.S. LNG exports will be largely unaffected by recent trade policy developments.”

To borrow the 2008 slogan of Maryland’s former lieutenant governor Michael Steele: “Drill, baby, drill.”

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