Mexico: Reactions from Obama's Visit
Cautious optimism describes the Mexican reaction to President Obama’s first official visit to Mexico on Thursday. The U.S. president met with his counterpart, Felipe Calderon, to discuss how each country could solve shared problems in a new era of a growing partnership. Of course, at the top of the agenda is the drug war that has claimed more than 10,000 lives since Mr. Calderon took office in 2006.
The differences in the two leaders' approaches have to do less with substance and more with time. Mr. Calderon needs for the United States to take concrete steps to lower American demand for drugs and to limit the flow of guns into Mexico. Furthermore, he needs this to happen now. His PAN party faces congressional elections in June. If Mr. Calderon cannot convince Mexico that his tactics for fighting the drug cartels are working, then his party will lose its majority in both houses of Congress and Mr. Calderon will find it ever the more difficult to execute his policies.
On the other hand, Mr. Obama must lower expectations. Former Ambassador to Mexico, Jeffery Davidlow, explains that President Obama is a pragmatist and that he will not promise anything to Mexico unless he is sure that it can be accomplished politically. For example, this past week Mr. Obama rebuffed the Mexican request for the United States to pass a renewal on a ban on assault weapons that Mr. Bush had allowed to expire during his term. Mr. Obama stated that while he thought a renewal is a good idea, he proposed instead to encourage the U.S. Congress to ratify an arms trafficking treaty President Bill Clinton signed in 1997. The treaty calls for countries to crack down on the illegal export of weapons, share gun-tracing information and extradite gun-smuggling suspects to other countries.
What criticisms have been levied at Mr. Obama this past week have usually come in the form of accusing the President of not providing enough plans for action. Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of co-responsibility for the drug problem a couple of weeks ago was a home run diplomatically. Now, Mexican leaders and journalists want to know how the United States is going to take responsibility for arms trafficking and drug consumption. An editorial in the left-leaning La Jornada sounded a pessimistic note at the promises that Mr. Obama has made. It stated that Mr. Obama’s promises have not been signed into law and that American foreign policy is still as “neo-colonial, predatory, and unilateral as it always has been.”
Nevertheless, most thinkers in Mexico are cautiously optimistic. They understand fully the severe obstacles that must be overcome, yet they are confident that both the United States and Mexico will work as partners in the future. A columnist for Excelsior observes that promises made in the past at meetings between Mexico and the United States have failed. Yet this meeting was different because of the shared nature of drug violence. He continues:
Everyone knows that the violence that lives in Mexico derives from narcotrafficking and insecurity, but much less is said of the kidnappings that occur in Phoenix and Houston, of the bodies, including decapitated bodies, that appear also on the other side of the border, or of the criminal networks that begin in South America and have a powerful presence in Mexico, but grow and develop in San Diego, Seattle, or New York. (My translation)
His point is very poignant. Mexico and the United States need each other and it seems that President Obama understands this.
