Mexico & Nafta - October 2006 (ISSN 1741-444X)

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made some strange observations about Mexico when she gave a tour d'horizon of US foreign policy to editors of the Wall Street Journal on 25 September. In her view, Mexico was emerging as a bipartisan democracy. This stunned most Mexican political analysts who see Mexican politics as a good deal more complicated with at least three major parties active at all three levels of Mexican politics: municipal, state and federal. 

President Fox's spokesman Rubén Aguilar said that the government welcomed Rice's comments praising the solidity of Mexican institutions, but did not agree with her comments about the emerging bipartisanship. Aguilar said that the government was very proud of the multiparty nature of Mexican democracy. 

What Rice actually said was: "Mexico has come through this crisis [post-election] and I think it has been a real vote of confidence in the Mexican democratic system, which after all, is_just now maturing in a kind of two-party system. And I think that that has come out in a way that, while President [Hugo]Chávez [of Venezuela] continues to say he'll support Andrés Manuel López Obrador [the losing, leftwing candidate in the presidential election] and all of that, the question is [:] will Mexicans. And it doesn't appear that they will. It appears that the Mexicans wish to get back to reality here, to a stable political environment." 

Rice then went on to discuss what the Central America Free Trade Agreement, which also includes the Dominican Republic (Cafta-DR) and the Andean Free Trade Agreements mean for Latin America before reverting to making general points about US policy towards Latin America that also apply to Mexico. "The US obviously cares about economic growth and cares about free trade, but we also do happen to care about the improvement in health and improvement in education and improvement in the lives of people. And_ some of our best allies in the region came to us and said: `But you never talk about that. It is always free trade and economic growth, as if it has no relationship to, but should have no relationship to, the lives of the people.' And we've been trying to make very clear, after Monterrey a few years ago, that this is also about improving the lives of people.

"And so we've tried to have a much more well-rounded, I will say, approach to Latin America that still starts with the importance of open economies and open trade but recognises the need to make those work for people, even for the most marginalised people. And we've tried to be disciplined about having a positive agenda for the region rather than constantly answering the Venezuelans," she concluded. Rice's intentions and principles may be honourable, but what the US actually does continues to rile Mexicans. The government was unhappy that the State Department issued a warning to all US travellers in early September on the dangers of visiting Mexico. Then, right at the end of the month, on 28 September, the Mexican foreign ministry issued a strongly worded attack on the US proposal to build a double wall along about a third of the border with Mexico. 

The Mexican foreign ministry statement came on the eve of a vote in the US Senate, on 29 September, to approve the building of a double wall along about a third of the total US-Mexico border. The Democrats did not dare vote against the proposal because of fears about the way the Republicans might spin that vote in the campaign for the mid-term elections which is now only six weeks away. 

The US House of Representatives voted in favour of the proposal on 14 September: all that will remain is approval by the US President. President Bush has said that he will sign it into law. The Mexican foreign ministry said that the construction of the wall would harm relations between the two countries. The foreign ministry accepted that the US had the right to build the walls, but argued that the issue of migration needed "a single focus based on the principle of shared responsibility." The ministry said that "partial measures determined by security considerations were more of a political response than a viable solution." 

The foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, went further in a press conference at the foreign ministry: "Walls will not solve the US's immigration problems in the best way; unfortunately, [the walls] will damage [our] relationship with the US." The senate voted on 28 September to cut short the debate on the issue of building the walls along about a third (1,126km) of the 3,200km border. This meant that a vote was on 29 September. The vote went the way expected. Democrats and moderate Republicans felt that they cannot vote against the proposal for fear of how their political opponents will stigmatise them in the forthcoming mid-term elections. 

The walls have come in for some strong criticism from commentators in the US. One argument is that the walls will keep illegal migrants, who would otherwise return home, inside the US. These migrants will not dare to return home, as usual, because they fear that they will be unable to get back into the US. Another argument against the walls is that they will actually encourage more illegal migration to the US. Migrants will bring their families because they are not sure that their families will be able to join them later. It is worth noting that, according to the Pew Research Center, 50% of all illegal migrants to the US arrive legally, with visas, at airports. They simply overstay their visas and become illegal.