If President Andrés Manuel López Obrador listens to what his advisers must be saying to him, by last Friday, when he had an extraordinarily strange and violent morning, he must have realized that the relationship with the Joe Biden government not only soured, but which was publicly broke. In a week the growing annoyance that the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, has warned him for months before his statements against the United States, where the President withdrew in some, although it did not take long to return to his hostility, was corroborated. Well, they finally got tired in Washington.
López Obrador, as has been stated here, thought that Biden would not dare to toughen his dealings with him because of the popularity he enjoys, without understanding that this variable does not govern the bilateral relationship. There were two primary reasons for that to happen. The first, that he did not radicalize and ran to Venezuela, which not only happened but also escalated, adding his allies to the number one public enemy of the United States, China. The second was because of the dirty work that Mexico agreed to do with migration to avoid an internal problem, which was already exceeded because what Mexico did was insufficient to prevent a strong political wear on Biden and, furthermore, because that problem was He also returned in a Mexican one.
The relationship with Biden was never good and the relationship with the United States government, with a career civil service that functions beyond who is in the White House, has broken down since October, when López Obrador threatened serious damage to the relationship. if they did not immediately return to the former Secretary of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos, who is still accused of links to drug trafficking. By decision of the President, the activity of the United States intelligence services was restricted and, unilaterally, Washington turned off quality information. When Biden took over, things got worse.
Diplomats in the embassy had to temper the annoyance of the officials who traveled to Mexico to prepare the visit of Vice President Kamala Harris, and neutralize the negative image they have in Washington. It was of little use, because López Obrador did not stop using an accusatory speech of intervention. He stopped when they told him that if he continued in that line, they would cancel his vaccine donation, but they are clear about how uncertain his behavior is. In one of his talks with Harris, he demanded that the United States not give him more vaccinations, but he stopped him in his tracks. The United States, he told him, had no obligation to Mexico, and therefore the complaint was misplaced.
Last week the state of the relationship with the Biden government worsened, and López Obrador does not seem to have fully realized it either. On Friday he confirmed that the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had canceled his attendance at the 200th commemoration of the consummation of Independence this Monday, while the day before, in an unscheduled emergency meeting that he convened in New York with the foreign ministers of Mexico and Central America, Blinken spoke of the need to respect investments and the rule of law, in direct allusion to Mexico, with whom they have had such disputes.
López Obrador did not react well when he tried to mitigate the impact of Blinken’s snub, who was coming to Mexico on behalf of Biden, although they knew in advance his reservations, such as when the President summoned Biden, and Ebrard was told that it was inappropriate an invitation in the national month. When forced to confirm his absence, López Obrador said that representatives of other governments would come, starting with the French and the Russian, with whom the United States has disputes for different reasons.
With the French, a crisis in the bilateral relationship is just being resolved due to the protest of President Emmanuel Macron over the agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom to build a wall in front of China in Asia, not only military, but to stop its digital expansion, a proposal identical to the one the State Department made to Mexico weeks ago, and which López Obrador rejected. Russia is the other public enemy of the United States, and the Mexican government has also not agreed to collaborate with Washington against Russian cyberterrorism.
The week had started with López Obrador’s optimistic statement that, having completed the Covid-19 vaccination in all border municipalities, there were no further impediments to the reopening of the border with the United States. Ken Salazar, that country’s ambassador to Mexico, said that would not be the case and the border would remain closed to all non-essential traffic. In the middle of the week, in an announcement totally out of context, the State Department tripled the reward for information leading to the capture of Ismael el Mayo Zambada to $ 15 million, underlining his relevance as a leader in drug trafficking in Mexico and raising the political cost to López Obrador of not acting against the Sinaloa Cartel, which in Mexico does not have a single open investigation folder.
The signs were very clear by then. They tolerated it in silence for many months, but because of what happened in a few days, after the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, with the culmination of a recorded speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping, modified the public treatment of Washington towards López Obrador. Where will the relationship go? How rotten it is will seek to contain itself. There will be active American diplomacy, as Salazar has already shown, and strong calls for attention, such as this week. It will scale to the extent that López Obrador wants to scale it. But what became clear is that if you wanted their critical attention, you already have it. The wolf that Ebrard told him was coming so many times was real.
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