Cuba USA

Mexico's President Goes to Washington: Backyard Pandering?

by Julio Hernández López

source la jornada

Speaking in the original White House, the one not financed by a contractor friend, Barack Obama did not spare [Mexico's President] a reference to Ayotzinapa:

"Obviously, we have followed the tragic events regarding the students."

Without further assessment. he added:

"It saddens us that they have lost their lives."

It was a kind of acknowledgment. It was enough to make the visitor's vulnerability clear. In institutional terms, it made the Mexican who had hoped that the issue of Iguala might not be touched at such a high level even smaller. This was the Three Kings Day visitor who was captured in a Reuters photograph looking somewhere between confused, and perhaps annoyed, by the words of the self-confident host, who after citing the Guerrero noose in the presence of the politically strung-up neighbor, went on to recite a catalog of good wishes and intentions, which Peña Nieto's driven press office turned into induced speculation that Washington would be "committed" to the terms of Peña's fight against organized crime. It's enough, however, to read Obama's exact words to establish that, given the "reform program" presented by Peña Nieto to Obama, "in order to eliminate this violence of the drug cartels (...) We want to emphasize our commitment. We want to be a good ally in this process, recognizing that in the final analysis," the responsibility remains in Mexico and its legal structure.

Behind the scenes, the arm-twisting was more interesting. The Associated Press reported that Obama expected to pressure the Mexican in order to get him, in turn, to pressure Cuban authorities regarding the democratic opening and respect for human rights. It would be sad backyard pandering rendering Peñismo to the gringo power if it would end up serving as the towboat in order to move Washington's agenda forward.

This, after Mexico had moments of brilliant diplomacy, with political costs, by maintaining relations with Havana when the White House ordered subordinate Latin America to break ties with Cuba. Now, Mexico wasn't even invited to the secret negotiations in Canada, with the Vatican as prime mover, which led to the diplomatic thaw announced by Obama and Raúl Castro.

This diplomatic devaluation of Mexico is not just the result of the crazy ideas of the dozen PAN [National Action Party] years—with Vicente Fox [President, 2000-2006], Jorge Castañeda [Foreign Secretary, 2000-2003], and Felipe Calderón [President, 2006-2012] as the cartoon characters. It is also a result of this insubstantial, irrelevant Peñismo, which has neither historical context nor defense of principles. On Monday, for example, one of the Mexico's Under-secretaries of Foreign Affairs, Sergio Alcocer, with eneptitude worthy of a prize, told U.S. reporters that they also have problems and riots like those that began in Iguala, and he mentioned the case of Ferguson and the black community turned against the [New York] police and authorities for the murder of a young African American. With that alleged alibi, Alcocer was confident that that there would be no reason for the Ayotzinapa issue to be touched on during the Peña-Obama meeting.

In a separate session, the U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, and Mexico's virtual vice president (on a downward slide), Luis Videgaray, talked about dividing up the energy pie. Secretary Videgaray, the other beneficiary of Higa Group's promotions [i.e., financing Videgaray's vacation house], said that there was no reason for the North American continent not to become one of the world's most competitive regions. Biden agreed by mentioning that this region is set to become the world's energy "epicenter".

Ah, to bring the subject to a close: Peña Nieto offered support for Obama's sham migration plan, which will temporarily slow the spiral of deportations but offers neither solid nor indepth solutions.

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