Bipolar Hillary

They didn’t mention it in the official report, but the federal police officers who captured El Amarillo, the suspected co-founder of Los Zetas [a major drug cartel] stated that they captured him very drunk. So drunk in fact that, in the early morning of Jan. 18, during his transport from Oaxaca to Mexico City, he did not seem to understand what had happened. He was unable to even form words until the next morning when he was presented to the news media.

This current presidential administration’s war against organized crime is being fought on two fronts: the police and the political. While the aforementioned event was going on at the Secretariat of Public Security, the foreign minister was preparing for the visit of a powerful international figure. This figure has had an almost bipolar relation with the Mexican government. In just a few months, she has gone from declaring Mexico under siege from the narco-insurgency that has authorities backed into a corner to declaring herself literally a fan of Calderon, [purportedly] because what he is doing is absolutely necessary to confront organized crime. On Jan. 24, Hillary Clinton, the United States’ secretary of state, was in Guanajuato and Mexico City.

In 2009, Barack Obama compared Felipe Calderon to Elliot Ness, the legendary anti-mafia investigator immortalized [in the movie] “The Untouchables,” because of Calderon’s decision to confront the cartels. This was at the crest of the enthusiasm for what was seen as a historic change in the relationships between the U.S. and the rest of the world, due to the arrival of the first African-American president to the White House. At the beginning of 2011, it has become clear that this change is only limited to the style of discourse, and the WikiLeaks scandal has just embarrassingly exposed the true diplomacy of this world power. Hillary Clinton lives for lofty discourse, but she does not advance any further than that. Pure words, pure elegies that alleviate the pressure in Los Pinos [the Mexican White House], but nothing more.

President Calderon is not the only one confronting pressures at home. Obama is in the same situation after he lost the majority in Congress to the Republicans in the midterm elections. Both men, with 2012 on their minds, could lend a hand to the bilateral relationship to pursue electoral objectives, with Obama seeking his own re-election and Calderon his party’s re-election.

It is expected that the topic of Mexico will be much more important in the American elections than vice versa, for the tragedy in Arizona — the attempt against Gabrielle Giffords’ life — has given a little taste of what the anti-immigrant discourse can be like. These tend to be on the border of inciting violence, and can incubate hate, racism and eventually turn against the ultra-right members of the Republican Party.