On Trial: The Mexican Foreign Ministry’s Legal and Political Strategy Confronting the Arms Industry (2021–2024)

Abstract

This article examines the legal and political strategy advanced by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE, in Spanish) during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in its unprecedented challenge to the U.S. arms industry. The strategy materialized in two lawsuits directed against firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retail outlets in the United States.
Beyond reconstructing the process through which this Mexican strategy was conceived and subsequently navigated across distinct legal stages, the juridical and political merits of the lawsuits are questioned, and their broader repercussions within the United States are evaluated in the article.
The central hypothesis is that Mexico’s litigation strategy constituted a significant innovation in its broader efforts to curb the illicit trafficking of firearms from the United States, representing a qualitative leap in the articulation of foreign policy instruments to address transnational security concerns.
In doing so, we aim to enrich scholarly assessments of the López Obrador administration’s foreign policy by highlighting an issue that has been largely overlooked, while also contributing to a deeper understanding of the evolving strategies employed by the Mexican state over the last decade in relation to arms trafficking.