Michelle O. Takes Off Alone For Mexico City

Exit Carla [Bruni]. Viva Zavala! The White House just announced that Michelle Obama will make her first official trip without her husband this week to Mexico. Everything in this trip is symbolic.

For a short time, the American newspapers were speaking less about her personal crusades as First Lady and perhaps she was seen less on our screens. During the Sarkozys’ trip, she was not seen nor heard. This strategy of relative silence (always very effective) just came to an end and makes her “reappearance” particularly stand out: Michelle Obama will complete her first solo trip as First Lady from Tuesday, April 13 to Thursday, April 15. She chose Mexico, and this is not simply because she hasn’t been to this country or because she wants to visit the Anthropological Museum. It is a strong political sign for the largest American minority. Hispanics and Latinos represent 47 million people and 15.6 percent of the population of the United States.

Now, what Mexico evokes for the U.S. is contained in a few words: illegal immigration, drugs, criminality. Just last month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano came to meet Mexican politicians to advance their common strategy of cooperation to combat the criminality that is rotting the relationship between the two countries. Nearly to this day in 2009, the 44th president dedicated his second official trip (after Canada) to the Mexico of Felipe Calderon and addressed the subjects that make people angry.

Michelle O.’s trip symbolizes the importance that the U.S. attaches to the relationship with Mexico and allows it to be placed within a plan of sympathy. Thus, it will go beyond the image of drugs, immigration and crime that is stuck to this country. Not for nothing. A 2009 Gallup poll shows that half of the Mexican population says they are in proximity to drugs and 18,000 Mexicans will have been killed since 2006, the year that the Calderon presidency kicked off. It is even said that, last year, 6,000 people were assassinated for these reasons.

Of course, she will be received by Zavala, Felipe Calderon’s wife, who, like her, is involved in the political life of her country and of her husband. Of Brazilian origin, she was elected deputy in Mexico and has true experience in Mexican public life. Thus, these are two women of the same generation (47 and 42 years old) who are going to speak from experience. Two women of state.