Idioma
When we look at the golden age of Mexican foreign policy, we are reminded of the relationship that two humanistic presidents had: that between the then Mexican president, Adolfo Lopez Mateos and American president, John F. Kennedy. Now that Mr. Obama has been reelected in the United States, many look towards the Barack Obama – Enrique Pena Nieto pairing with the hope that it will be productive for both countries. This hope exists, for more than any other reason, due to the fact that the United States’ first Afro-American president won 75% of the Latino vote.
It could be said that the Latinos managed to “take over” the White House.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Pena come from a generation of innovators, of politicians that are aware that the system or the way that things are going in their respective countries have led to dead ends and that a new way to govern and do politics is needed.
The two president elects have a lot of things in common. For example, both presidents had to campaign in countries that are deeply politically divided, where politicians and political parties have lost their credibility. Just like Pena Nieto had to fight his way through the political mud-slinging going on in Mexico, a country torn apart by the right and left-wing, Barack Obama had to deal with consequences of the famous “Axis of Evil”, a left over from the messianic George W. Bush that left the world in pieces just as it divided the opinions of Americans.
At the very beginning of his reelection campaign, Mr. Obama criticized the extremists that were trying to separate his country into different-colored states, Republican Red and Democratic Blue. The same thing is happening in Mexico among the yellow PRD party, the blue PAN party and the red PRI party. The result has been a political rainbow that, instead strengthening diversity, has become a synonym for intolerance and the breaking apart of national unity.
The future President of Mexico and the American Head of State have another thing in common: they know that the world has changed and that it is now time to go about solving problems differently. The relationship between the United States and Mexico should be on the agenda amid these coming innovations.
Many experts are predicting that the governments of both countries will be working more deeply and conclusively on issues like migration and national security and that the solutions won’t have anything to do with employing more border police or putting up a wall or electric fences. The new solutions will focus on the bilateral relationship between the two countries, where social issues are given more weight than the military.
Both leaders know, as they have both expressed on different occasions, that the phenomena of illegal migration and drug trafficking have different causes and that it is necessary to work together to economically develop the Mexican border and invest in strategic zones in the Americas – like the border Mexico shares with Central America, for example – to cut the violence of organized crime at its root.
With Obama again in the White House, more chances of a dialog between Mexico and the United States exist. There were hints of it during Mr. Obama’s first four years in office, when his government entered the word “co-responsibility” in the discussion on a bilateral relationship and solution to problems.
This past 6th of November, Americans turned out at the polls to choose between a presidential candidate that represents the 21st century, as does Mr. Obama, and a candidate that harkens back to Mediaeval times, as Mitt Romney does. The Republican represented a world which no longer exists and this made him not only dangerous to international stability, but also to every-day American life.
It is time to begin to take a careful look at what it means for the United States’ influence and system, that minorities, Latinos, African-African Americans, the middle class and society’s most down-trodden, have been responsible for the current president’s reelection.
What value and real weight will this vote have in the transformation of the United States into a country that is less racist, more tolerant and that interferes less in other countries’ affairs?
Mr. Obama is well-aware that his country is no longer the sole power in the world and that its intervention in other countries is no longer accepted or wanted. During his first term in office he had to work on a pacific foreign policy that would undo the damage that the Bush dynasty’s war-driven policies had caused.
On June 4th, 2009, Mr. Obama delivered a memorable speech in the University of Cairo that spoke favorably of Islamic countries and which recalled Thomas Jefferson: “I believe that our knowledge grows along with our power and that it teaches us that the less we use our power, the stronger we will be”.
It is hoped that a new relationship with Mexico will be forged with this very, same philosophy.