Don't have URL for this article - got it from Karen Wald's list. If I find one I will add it to this entry.
--magbana
Date: Tues, Apr 22 2008 11:51 pm
From: "Karen Lee Wald"
Robert Sandels' analyses of Cuba and Latin America are consistently the most cogent and well written of any I have seen, and this is no exception. Should be widely disseminated. klw
**************
Will Mexico Join Latin America?
by Robert Sandels*
Cuba-L Analysis (Albuquerque)
04/22/08
Cuba and Mexico have formally reestablished diplomatic relations, which were
nearly destroyed by former Mexican President Vicente Fox (2000-2006).
Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa and her Cuban
counterpart, Felipe Perez Roque, met in March and issued an optimistic joint
statement on several bilateral issues. Perez Roque said Cuba-Mexico
relations were "fully normalized and a new era of cooperation was
opening."<1> However, better bilateral relations are the old politics;
regional ties are the new.
Beginning in 1999, Mexico altered is position on the annual UN human rights
votes by abstaining instead of voting against US-backed resolutions to
condemn Cuba. Under Fox's Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge Castaneda,
Mexico more or less officially dropped all pretense of sympathy with or
toleration of the Cuban revolutionary government and began voting with the
United States against Cuba on human rights in 2002, at the same time
engaging in a variety of snubs, insults and provocations.
Although the joint statement described the March meeting as "a singular
moment in the history of our two countries," the singular moment was surely
in March 2002, when Fox telephoned Fidel Castro to tell him he could attend
a UN summit in Mexico, but that he should have lunch then leave before
embarrassing President George W. Bush by his presence. "Comes y te vas,"
(eat and leave) became the title to a hit song that encapsulated the
schoolyard pushing and shoving that characterized Mexico's diplomacy in the
Fox years.
In 2005, Fox started fights with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for their opposition to the floundering US
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Mexico's relations with Venezuela
froze up in November 2005 as both nations retired their ambassadors over the
exchange of FTAA insults.
Calderon charges ahead
Calderon started his presidency in December 2006, by hitching a ride to
stability and prosperity aboard the neo-liberal express just as everyone
else in the region seemed to be getting off. During his presidential
campaign, Calderon had insisted that his opponent, Andres Manual Lopez
Obrador, was under Chavez's influence, and took every opportunity to remind
voters that Chavez was close to Fidel Castro. Calderon raised the specter of
subversion by asserting that Chavez was establishing "cells" in Mexico and
helping to finance Obrador's campaign.<2>
Following Calderon's victory in an election almost comically fraught with
irregularities, Chavez said, "We do not recognize the president-elect of
Mexico."<3>
With Obrador consigned to the role of the dangerous populist radical,
Calderon went on the presidential stage to offer himself as the dependable
defender of free-market capitalism. During his January 2007 debut at the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Calderon loudly proclaimed
himself the alternative to Castro and Chavez, touting Mexico as a safe
investment haven for international capital put off by the populist
nationalism of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution.
This hostility to "populism" - which, given the Venezuelan context, meant
opposition to social spending - stems in part from the endogenous anti-Cuba
bias within Calderon's Partido Accion Nacional (PAN): Secretary Espinosa was
a willing partner in the Cuba bashing of the Fox-Castaneda years; PAN
president Manuel Espino and other party leaders have ties to the anti-Castro
legions in the US; PAN has forged ties to leaders in former Soviet-bloc
countries who hate the Cuban government of their virtual-reality imaginings;
and the rabid anti-Castro ex-president of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, actively
campaigned in Mexico for Calderon.
Calderon pivots
Almost from the start, however, Calderon began reversing direction, saying
he was determined to smooth things over with Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela and
everyone else Fox and Castaneda had offended. At an April 2007 Cuba-Mexico
inter-parliamentary meeting in Havana, there was talk from Mexican delegates
of "a new understanding."
However, smoothing things out was not a matter simply of issuing the usual
joint statements about how both parties had held frank and earnest talks.
Fixing Fox's broken diplomacy meant creating daylight between Mexico and the
United States, especially on issues relating to Cuba and Venezuela. That
required dropping the populism invective and the puffery about Mexico's
exalted role as the defender of everything good, and abandoning the issue of
Cuba's human rights record, which once was the core justification for
Mexico's hostile Cuba policy.
Having created and maintained the dissident movement in Cuba, the United
States has judged its friends partly on whether they ostentatiously met with
dissidents. This exercise reached its zenith of absurdity in 2005, when the
European Union (EU) held high-level talks with itself on whether to invite
dissidents to their Havana embassies for tea.<4>
In October 2007, Calderon's government received new ambassadors from
(communist) Cuba and (populist) Venezuela, signaling that the conflict of
the comes-y-te-vas years was over. That December, Espinosa announced that
the Mexican government would not be meeting with any more Cuban dissidents.
Human rights is also off the table. During the inter-parliamentary meeting
in Havana, a PAN senator said, "the human rights issue is not on the
meeting's agenda since that was the cause of the distancing between the two
nations."<5> And, a foreign relations official said Calderon "does not want
the issue to become the cause of more distancing." The Calderon policy, he
added, will be "to promote the human rights issue in multilateral forums,
created ex profeso for that purpose, on the basis of periodic evaluations,
to which all countries belonging to the United Nations should be subject."
<6>
The official is quoting almost verbatim from the rules of the Human Rights
Council, to which the United State objected and which a Mexican diplomat
helped to bring about. It seems that the Calderon turnaround was underway as
early as March 2006, while the electoral contest with Obrador was also
underway.
Calderon charges to the middle
Fox left behind dozens of matters unsettled with Cuba, some routine but
others urgently requiring resolution. Following Castaneda's human rights
votes in Geneva, Cuba reduced its trade with Mexico to a minimum. Between
1995 and 2007, bilateral trade fell by 75%, in part because of the difficult
relations. After comes y te vas, Cuba stopped paying down its $414 million
debt with the Banco Mexicano de Comercio Exterior. Recent talks on
restructuring the debt are paving the way for new commercial agreements that
might revive bilateral trade.
The larger question facing Calderon is not what precise relationship Mexico
should have with Cuba but whether Mexico is going to rejoin Latin America.
Secretary Espinosa said in mid-2007, "In the complex international scene,
Mexico does not have the choice of favoring one relationship and neglecting
another."<7>
What are these complexities, so recently discovered by the Calderon
administration? In his Davos speech, Calderon seemed to see the
international situation as a simple choice between opposites. A year and a
half later, his foreign secretary is saying that Mexico can no longer afford
to cut itself off from the rest of Latin America to please the United
States.
During that period, the regional independence movement has become more
solidified - and without Mexican participation. Since Calderon took office,
ALBA, <8> the regional organization started by Castro and Chavez in 2004,
has been strengthened by numerous bilateral and region-wide agreements and
by the creation of the Banco del Sur, which is the alternative to the
US-controlled IMF and World Bank. Furthermore, two more leftist presidents
have been elected - Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay.
Both of these could easily have qualified as dangerous populist influences
on Lopez Obrador in Calderon's campaign speeches of 2006.
On a recent visit to Mexico, President Correa noted that he and Calderon had
much in common, except that the Mexican president was not a socialist. But,
"we are not giving up hope," he said. Being a rightist in Latin America is
no longer fashionable, Correa added. <9>
Correa had gone to Mexico seeking Calderon's support in his fight with
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe over Colombia's March 2 raid against
FARC<10> guerrillas inside Ecuadoran territory. Calderon's response to the
attack has been tepid - almost invisible - despite the fact that Mexican
nationals were killed in the raid. Correa accused the United States of
assisting in the attack or even directing it from its air base in Manta,
Ecuador.
Calderon's reluctance to take a leadership role in the crisis could be a
result of underestimating the seriousness of the regional unity movement.
Latin American states themselves, meeting at the Rio Group summit March 7,
resolved the crisis with strong leadership from Chavez and Correa without
the presence of the United States.
Bush defended Uribe and accused Chavez of "provocative maneuvers." He told
Uribe that the United States would "firmly oppose any act of aggression that
could destabilize the region."<11> Bush was referring, of course, not to
Uribe's violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty but to Chavez's defensive
deployment of troops along the border with Colombia.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, "we would look to the parties to
be able to work this issue through in the OAS."<12>
How would the Organization of American States resolve the issue when its
most powerful member was likely involved in the Colombian attack? At the
March 6 OAS meeting, the United States defended Uribe, and a weak compromise
statement resulted.
The Rio Group hardly did better - in neither case was Colombia condemned.
However, as Eduardo Dimas, writing in Progreso Weekly, observed, "The Rio
Group summit managed to prevent a conflict between two brother nations. It
managed to do what the OAS couldn't -- to ease tensions. And it permitted
all the Latin American governments to unite on a subject of vital importance
-- the territorial integrity of nations and respect for sovereignty."<13>
Washington's initiatives
Hugo Chavez has thrown a rhetorical life preserver to Calderon. "We need
Mexico with us to have true integration...all of us are necessary for true
integration," he said.<14>
Washington is pulling in the opposite direction with Plan Merida. Also known
as the Merida Initiative and popularly known as Plan Mexico, it is a package
of military and security aid modeled after President Bill Clinton's Plan
Colombia.
Calderon has militarized Mexico's problems by sending the army against
narcos, corrupt police, and popular demonstrations. It is not surprising;
therefore, that he was eager to accept what is essentially the military
equivalent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Just as
NAFTA "harmonizes" trade, exposing Mexican farmers to a flood of US
agricultural imports, Plan Merida exposes Mexico's military, intelligence
services and security forces to the export of US national security policies
and practices by the process of harmonizing "asymmetrical" forces.
Clinton's Plan Colombia sold initially as a drug-interdiction program to
keep drugs out of the United States but became a military/political alliance
with Uribe against Colombia's guerrillas. Money, military hardware and US
advisors were eventually freed for use against the guerrillas because the
Clinton administration concluded that fighting guerrillas and fighting drug
traffickers were the same thing in Colombia. It has not been lost among some
in the Mexican opposition that Uribe's Bush-style attack in Ecuador is a
logical outcome of Plan Colombia.
During a March 2007 meeting in Merida, Yucatan, Bush offered Calderon $1.4
billion for the years 2008-2010. The largest portion ($417 million) of the
initial payment of $500 million goes to the Mexican military and security
apparatus and is labeled as assistance against terrorism and drug
trafficking.
The plan also offers funding to make fundamental change is Mexico's legal
and judicial systems to "harmonize" them with US practice. The US media has
reported the proposed reforms as necessary to improve a notoriously corrupt
system. A Los Angeles Times editorial praising the proposed reforms noted
with concern that they would allow police to detain suspects for 80 days
without charging them with a crime. That was "worrisome," said the
editorial, but it concluded that the housecleaning would help make Mexico
prosperous and an "equal partner" with the United States. <15> How
prosperity entered the picture is neither spelled out in the editorial nor
manifest by the results of Plan Colombia. The promise of prosperity awaits
Mexico in yet another US program, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of
North America (SPP).
The stealth SPP
While Cuba, Venezuela and the other members of ALBA are developing
alternatives to US financial and military instruments of control,<16> Mexico
has opted for membership in SPP, launched in 2005. SPP's annual summits have
been sealed behind police barriers and a media blackout and advertised as an
innocuous North American Leaders get-together. News reports from the April
2008 meeting in New Orleans focus on the reopening of the Mexican consulate
there, not on substantive agreements. The SPP website does not mention the
event.<17>
An SPP fact sheet denies that the project is an end run around
constitutional procedures to create a complex of interlocking executive
decrees and agreements leading to some kind of unified economic system
without benefit of legislative approval.
Fact: "U.S. agencies involved with SPP regularly update and consult with
members of Congress on our efforts and plans."<18>
That may be, but even some Republican members of the supine US Congress are
complaining that they have been shut out of the process. However, the
business community is well informed. Acting as the SPP's secretariat is the
North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) made up of 30 large
corporations such as FedEx, Wal-Mart and General Electric.
Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog organization, is not
satisfied either. It is suing the Department of Commerce for refusing to
release records of NACC meetings in violation of a federal open-meetings
law.
Fact: "The SPP is not an agreement nor is it a treaty...
no agreement
was ever signed."<19> Nevertheless, the SPP website lists a number of
executive agreements and protocols already in operation.<20> At what point
do little pieces of a trilateral treaty add up to an un-ratified treaty is
the question.
Prospering under SPP
SPP's Prosperity Agenda is a distillation of the neo-liberal model rejected
nearly everywhere in Latin America: deregulation; voluntary compliance with
regulatory agencies; labor "flexibility;" liberation of capital to seek its
own level everywhere in North America; and, above all, a guaranteed oil
supply for the US market from Canada and Mexico. This may explain the
urgency of Calderon's drive to privatize Mexico's state-owned Petroleos
Mexicanos (PEMEX) at the risk of causing a social upheaval.
The Prosperity Agenda may prove difficult to realize. The economic prognosis
for Mexico is not very positive just now although Calderon's treasury
secretary thinks Mexico is highly resistant to the effects of a US
recession. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) thinks otherwise,
advising recently that Mexico would be among the hardest hit in Latin
America because, unlike many of its neighbors, Mexico has been slow to seek
commercial and financial ties with China as a way of reducing dependence on
the United States. Eighty percent of Mexico's exports still go to the United
States. The IMF lowered its 2008 growth predictions for Mexico from 3.5% to
2%, while predicting healthy growth in Argentina (7%), Venezuela (5.8%) and
other countries that have diversified their trade relations. Cuba estimates
its growth for 2008 at 8%.<21>
Mexico's flagging economy is hitched to an economic partner with growth
expectations of less than 1% for the next two years, while Argentina,
Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, among others, are doing business with a Chinese
economy expected to grow above 9% in 2008 and beyond.
Notes
<1> Por Esto (Mexico), 03/13/08.
<2> Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), 03/20/06.
http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/NewPressReleases2006/06.19MexicanCamp
aignDirtyObrador.html.
<3> El Universal (Caracas), 11/16/06.
http://www.eluniversal.com/index.shtml.
<4> See "Cuba and European Union End Cocktail Wars," Cuba-L Analysis,
04/09/05. http://cuba-l.unm.edu/.
<5 World Data Service (Cuba), 04/07/07.[br />
<6> Notimex, 06/02/07,
<7> La Jornada, 06/02/07.
<8> Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA).
<9> La Jornada, 04/12/08.
<10> Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.
<11> Reuters, 03/04/08.
<12> Department of State, Daily Press Briefing, 03/04/08.
<13> Progreso Weekly, 03/13-03/19/08.
http://progresoweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=388&Iemi
d=1..
<14> Prensa Sindical Internacional, PSI (Caracas), 08/10/07.
<15> Los Angeles Times, 3/07/08.
<16> A planned mutual security council (Consejo Sudamericano de Seguridad)
was given urgency by the Colombian incursion into Ecuador. Brazil's Defense
Minister Nelson Jobim has said that the council could be a reality in 2008.
La Jornada, 04/16/08.
<17> Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).
http://www.spp.gov/news_and_updates.asp.
<18> Myths vs Facts. http://www.spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp.
<19> Ibid.
<20> Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America SPP).
http://www.spp.gov/.
<21> La Jornada, 04/10/08.
* Robert Sandels is an analyst and writer for Cuba-L Direct.
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