Obama in Mexico

It’s about time. Barack Obama wanted to go to Mexico since he was a presidential candidate. He told me in an interview. But after his trip to Berlin, he was not able to risk that people criticize him for worrying more about Mexico than about the economic crisis raging in the United States. And he didn’t go.

Obama, who has proven to be a magician in measuring political times, calculated correctly that this is the appropriate moment to visit Mexico. The accusations jumping from one side of the border to the other at the moment are really inexplicable.

Do they perhaps have no telephones or Internet? Where are the ambassadors, diplomats, foreign ministers and heads of the press? Why have the arguments between neighbors raised in tone? What happened in the last couple of weeks between the governments of Mexico and the U.S. is a real dialogue of the deaf. And as if it were a circus, Mexicans and North Americans are fighting on two tracks at the same time.

First track. Officials in the U.S. are criticizing Mexico for being a failed state and losing its control of the territory in the face of drug traffickers.

In only one year, more than a thousand people have died in crimes related to drugs. Because of this, the U.S. is considering sending more soldiers and members of the National Guard to the border.

And Mexico again corrects the criticisms by saying those to blame for the drug violence are the 35 million North Americans over 12 years of age who used cocaine, according to a national health survey, and the weapons of the drug traffickers of which 90 percent come from the U.S.

And to make it worse, President Felipe Calderon blames Forbes Magazine for exalting violence by including the drug trafficker Chapo Guzman in their list of the richest men in the world.

And here they answer that the list includes everyone; the crooked and those who are not. And if they are worried so much, then they should not allow drug traffickers like Chapon to earn so much money (and then they would not put him on the list.

Second track. After the prohibition that Mexican truck drivers deliver their merchandise beyond 25 miles inside U.S. territory, the government of Mexico considerably increased taxes for dozens of American items. That is, an eye for an eye.

But in this fight, the two countries are being knocked out. At stake are the 350 billion dollars in trade between both nations and the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The prohibition and the sanctions could have been avoided with a little coffee or a trip (economy class, of course, now that we are in a crisis). They didn’t do anything, and now to resolve these matters, it is going to cost a lot. Why didn’t Mexico send a high level official to negotiate in Washington before Congress approved the law that left Mexican trucks outside of the United States? The hope is that Barack Obama ends the circus on two tracks and smoothes expectations with his visit to Mexico, April 16th and 17th, and with the trip of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

What message will Obama bring to Mexico? Here is the answer. In an interview I conducted last September 27th in North Carolina, the then candidate Obama spoke about Mexico in a completely conciliatory manner. And seeing that the new president made himself famous by his consistency (and for the saying, “No Drama Obama”) the message of Obama to President Felipe Calderon will be the same one I heard in that interview.

“What is absolutely certain is that we must be partners,” said Obama. “Mexico must do a better job preventing drugs from reaching the north, and the U.S. must do a better job preventing weapons and money from flowing to the south; we must deal with the issue of drug demand.”

And after saying that he was in favor of the Merida Plan (of anti-drug cooperation), he gave all his support to president Felipe Calderon. “He is trying to do something very difficult,” he explained,” “not only cut the root of drug trafficking, but also end the corruption that surrounds drug trafficking.

Although the position of Obama with respect to NAFTA is still in question – what does Obama want: to suspend, renegotiate, strengthen or leave the NAFTA the same – he is aware that for the United States, it is necessary to have a very economically strong Mexico. The equation is simple: more jobs in Mexico, fewer illegal immigrants in the United States.

“Working in Mexico at reducing the poverty there and creating jobs and opportunities,” he told me, “is the best formula that we have to deal with undocumented immigration in the long term.”

So we already know. The attitude of Obama toward Mexico has always been positive.

Mexico would have saved itself a lot of yelling and protests with a simple call from Calderon to Obama. In exchange, they preferred to take the fight to the circus, and now the lions have already escaped from the cage.