AMLO’s visit to Central America and Cuba represents an effort to project Mexico’s image as a regional leader of the Latin American left. Paradoxically, the Mexican government has made strong concessions to the US on migration issues that put the integrity of national sovereignty under scrutiny.
What happened?
President López Obrador ‘s recent tour of Central America and Cuba represents, in speech, an effort to project the image of Mexico as a regional leader of the Latin American left.
Why does it matter?
Paradoxically, in reality, the Mexican government has made strong concessions to the United States on immigration matters that put the integrity of national sovereignty under scrutiny, despite AMLO’s open criticism of the Joe Biden administration for modifying its immigration policy.
The context:
- A few weeks ago, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, assured that Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard “bend over” during a negotiation on the migration issue, when in 2019, Mexico agreed to militarize the border with Guatemala to stop the entry of migrants, under the threat of tariffs.
- Starting this Thursday and until next May 9, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began a five-day international tour through countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, and Cuba, the latter, a “non grata” nation for the United States due to disagreements with the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The details:
- According to leaks from the Associated Press and The Washington Post, Mexico “in the dark” signed an agreement to accept receiving Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants deported from the United States under Title 42.
- This is the second time that the López Obrador government has granted concessions to Washington on migration, but the first under the mandate of Joe Biden, who, unlike Trump, did not have to resort to threats.
- According to what was leaked by the US media, the agreement was signed on April 26, three days before a video call between AMLO and Biden, and a week before Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard’s visit to Washington.
- The reports refer to the expulsion of 100 Cubans and 20 Nicaraguans within the towns of San Diego, in California, and El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas. The deportation began on April 27, that is, one day after the signing of said agreement.
- “Until last week, Mexico had only accepted Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans, in addition to Mexicans, under the authority of Title 42,” confirmed the Associated Press, referring to the provisional law introduced in the Trump era, which contemplates expelling migrants by risk of contagion from Covid.
- “It was almost impossible for the United States to expel migrants from Cuba or Nicaragua due to the poor relations with those countries, which had become a difficult problem for the Biden administration, since more and more people from those countries sought refuge in the United States. ”, added the US agency.
- The leak comes amid insistent requests by López Obrador to his US counterpart to include countries like Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua in the next Summit of the Americas, to be held in June in Los Angeles.
- To this is added the repeated accusations of a boycott orchestrated from Washington to attack the Mexican government and flagship projects such as the Mayan Train through financing civil and pseudo-environmental organizations.
- Even in his first stop on his tour, in Guatemala, AMLO criticized the financing of 30 billion dollars that the White House allocated for the war in Ukraine, instead of investing that money in the development of Central America.
- According to the journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio, this agreement only came to ratify an activity that had already been carried out informally, since from October to March 737 Cubans were deported to Mexico, under the authority of Title 42, which is expected to be revoked on May 22 next.
- “The leak does not cause political or economic damage to any of the countries involved, but it contributes to stripping López Obrador’s ethereal Latin Americanist discourse… It is, for practical purposes, an exhibition of the Mexican president’s double standards,” Riva Palacio said.
Source: codigomagenta.com.mx
