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| Obama motorcade travels from Mexico City airport to National Palace Photo: Alfredo Dominguez |
La Jornada: Julio Hernández López
"Tell me what you announce and I will tell you what you hide." That would be the bi-national version of the very clear Mexican saying about what is shown off versus what is missing. So it was that Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto came to their first meeting with reporters in the framework of the imperial visit of the former to the country managed by the latter.
Security and migration?? Well, there are significantly more important issues, declare the evaders We are focusing on economic issues, on markets and investments in pesos and dollars, on the inevitable paradise promised to those who follow, to the letter, the adventurous new guidelines of the two neighboring administrators. They left the real rough points of the uneven meeting (and not just in the matter of height) for private sessions.
Mexico the marvel, the democratic example, beginning with its three-party pact [Pact for Mexico], a sanctuary of plausible reformism, an example of good political work.
This leaves in the background what to do about Central American migrants pulled off the top of a train for not paying fees or whole regions dominated by criminal cartels and where the natives stay at home, with adequate employment and compensation, without having to risk their lives in journeys north.
The important thing is business: "give me profit and I will move the world," is the motto of the duo to whom are entrusted, like Archimedes, the longest of levers. The first generation dream of Salinas [President Carlos Salinas, 1988-94, who promoted NAFTA and the opening of Mexico to the global market] is presented in its current version: from free trade agreement to freely trading the country.
The commercial dream attempts to convince Mexicans of an alternate route to happiness. It is by way of the consolidation of the U.S. annexation [of half of Mexico's territory via the Mexican-American War], in a scheme to sell the remainder of the nation ... for the benefit of the elites of both countries. It attempts to convince us that it is worthwhile to accompany Peña Nieto and his tutors in the redesign of the pie that is to be shared.
That is why everything flows along with a surface calm in a duet of courtesies between a Mexican and an American who claim to respect each other's respective spheres of influence, although in fact the first comes to tighten the screws on the second and draw the lines in what, from the heights, is seen as a backyard run by helpful managers or administrators.
The irony is widely discussed in the new media world of Internet: the armored vehicle used by the visitor is called The Beast, just like the train of death in which Central Americans and Mexicans often travel on route to the north of the failed "American dream". Two different beasts and one true, monstrous inequality. ...
Economics as an alibi for the medium and long term in place of what is important in the short term. It would have been bad for yesterday's meeting to focus on issues such as greater U.S. control of the border with Mexico, the trafficking of gringo weapons into Mexico in furiously interventionist operations, and the details of the Calderón war on drugs, now elevated to the aspirational category of an unofficial truce arrangement.
Obama says he does not get into the issue of security, but in fact he aims to restore the level of appeasement practiced during the servile Calderón administration, when agents and strategists from the neighboring country made decisions, supervised actions and moved with unusual freedom inside Mexico.
And Peña Nieto returns prudent courtesies to establish that the issue of immigration reform belongs to the United States, which is a rigorous and incontestable truth. But in political terms, and facing a Mexican migrant community that is in a struggle for legalization, it was well worth a few words of political encouragement and solidarity, careful and respectful of the internal life of the U.S., but clearly placed on the side of those citizens who, because of the failures of our economic and political systems, have undertaken a massive exodus north.
So passed the first day of a two-day visit by the charismatic speaker, who basically specializes in maintaining [the U.S's] imperial status, with just cosmetic changes. The work teams, meanwhile, tuned the details and finished the draft agreements already widely worked out in previous weeks in sessions in Washington. As for what was resolved there, that will become known later, via irreversible facts and not by smooth statements made in press conferences. ... Spanish original