Sheinbaum rebuts Rubio: Mexico is 'nobody's piñata,' accuses US of election-year framing

After Secretary of State Marco Rubio said near the US diplomatic compound in Quito on 9 September that Mexico's cartel crackdown falls 'not nearly enough' short, President Claudia Sheinbaum told her 10 September morning press conference that 'Mexico is nobody's piñata' and that Washington should 'attend to its own drug consumption' rather than use Mexico in what she called a US election-year campaign — a reference to the run-up to the 3 November US midterms. Sheinbaum's rebuttal cited CDC provisional data published 31 August projecting 67,798 US drug overdose deaths for the twelve months ending March 2026, a 12.3% year-on-year decrease. Mexico remains a coalition holdout, limiting cooperation with Washington to intelligence-sharing rather than joint operations.