🇲🇽 Mexican president demands answers after car crash kills four officials, including two U.S. officials linked to embassy, revealing secret anti-narcotics operation Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is soliciting answers from the U.S. Embassy and the government of Chihuahua after four officials, including two U.S. officials linked to the embassy, died in a car accident following an anti-narcotics operation. The accident inadvertently revealed previously unknown cooperation between the U.S. Embassy and the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, with Sheinbaum stating in a press conference Monday that her government did not have knowledge of the direct participation of U.S. officials in operations with the state of Chihuahua. Pie de Nota journalist Luis Chaparro reports that the two personnel killed were CIA. The Mexican leader said that her administration does not authorize joint actions of that kind inside Mexico at any level, with collaboration limited to intelligence sharing, and that joint work must be carried out under a strict framework of respect for sovereignty. Mexico passed strict legislation in 2020 that requires that all collaboration with foreign agents receive prior authorization at the federal level. The president ordered that information be gathered to determine whether legal provisions were violated. U.S. Ambassador Ron Johnson acknowledged the incident, expressing his condolences in a post on social media; meanwhile, the State Department declined to comment.

TODAY—Noboa’s administration has arrested his former presidential opponent, Luisa González. She is the fifth member of Revolución Ciudadana jailed. Other imprisoned opposition figures, including the nation’s former Vice President, bear signs of torture and starvation. Luisa’s supporters gathered this morning to denounce her arrest, chanting “Down with the dictatorship.” Former Colombian President Gustavo Petro also condemned it as a dictatorship. Luisa’s party, Noboa’s largest opposition force, has been banned from elections. Guillaume Long, senior diplomatic adviser to the Hague Group and a former Ecuadorian foreign minister, told me for Drop Site that the arrest is “an exercise in intimidation” and a bid to tilt the upcoming local elections in favor of Noboa’s party, which he says had poor prospects before. “Every time a leader is arrested… paraded in high security jails in orange jumpsuits and with shaved heads, this sends a chilling effect in the ranks of the political opposition,” Long added. The November vote is critical to consolidating the U.S.-backed regime’s grip on power as joint ground operations with U.S. Southern Command, the first of their kind in the region, continue to escalate.