Mexico

Mexico Under Siege — The drug war at our doorstep (LA Times extensive coverage since 2008)
(Reuters) Chronology: Checkered history of the PRI’s rule in Mexico
Beauty and the Beast
(The Atlantic, October 2011) A good-looking governor seeks to make Mexican voters forget the corrupt past of their old ruling party.

El Chapo’s Capture: A Distraction From the Disaster That Is the Drug War and Peña Nieto’s Presidency
By Daniel Robelo, research coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance
(HuffPost) The internet is aflame with chatter about the recent recapture of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the world’s most wanted man twice escaped from maximum security prison. The cacophony of commentary and ridiculous coverage about the event miss the real point: El Chapo’s re-arrest is a distraction from the fact that the drug war, like the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, is a devastating failure that’s destroying Mexico.
First of all, the capture won’t change a damn thing when it comes to the drug trade or drug addiction. It certainly won’t impact the flow of drugs. In a leaked 2010 memo, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security itself admitted as much, saying “The removal of key personnel does not have a discernable impact on drug flows … While the continued arrest or death of key DTO [drug trafficking organization] leadership may have long-term implications as to the control and viability of a specific DTO, there is no indication it will impact overall drug flows into the United States.”
El Chapo himself said the same in his ludicrous interview with Sean Penn, saying “the day I don’t exist, it [drug trafficking] is not going to decrease in any way at all.”
There is always the possibility that violence will actually increase following Chapo’s removal, as lieutenants vie for control or other organizations try to muscle in on the Sinaloa Cartel’s action.
We must also recognize that no one in Mexico believes anything that the Mexican government says about this incident — or about anything else for that matter. With crisis after crisis, scandal after scandal, human rights violation after violation, the Mexican public has lost all confidence and trust in its state institutions.
9 January
Drug lord El Chapo met with Sean Penn while on the run from authorities: Rolling Stone
Joaquin Guzman’s interview with U.S. actor helped expose his hiding place in Mexico, official says
In an article published late Saturday in Rolling Stone, and authored by Penn, the actor describes the complicated measures he took to meet the legendary drug lord. He discusses topics ranging from drug trafficking to Middle East politics with Guzman.
“I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats,” Guzman is quoted as saying.
Asked about who is to blame for drug trafficking, Guzman is quoted as saying: “If there was no consumption, there would be no sales. It is true that consumption, day after day, becomes bigger and bigger. So it sells and sells.”
Drug lord Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman’s plan for biopic helped lead to capture
Fugitive apprehended after shootout in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa
Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman’s role as Mexico’s most famous drug lord may be worthy of a Hollywood movie, but a plan to make something like that happen was apparently his downfall, according to Mexican authorities.
Officials in Mexico have so far avoided talking publicly about any extradition to the U.S. for the head of the international Sinaloa Cartel, who also made a prison break in early 2013 before being recaptured. But even if they decided to send him to the U.S., the process likely would not be fast. …
The calls for his quick extradition were the same as those after the February 2014 capture of Guzman, who faces drug-trafficking charges in several U.S. states. At the time, Mexico’s government insisted it could handle the man who had already broken out of one maximum-security prison, saying he must pay his debt to Mexican society first.
Then Guzman escaped a second time on July 11 under the noses of guards and prison officials at Mexico’s most secure lock-up, slipping out an elaborate tunnel that showed the country’s depth of corruption while thoroughly embarrassing the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.
2 January
Mayor of Mexican city slain 1 day after taking office
Gunmen burst into Temixco Mayor Gisela Mota’s home on Saturday and killed her, state government says

2015

20 July
‘There’s No Real Fight Against Drugs’
Discussing El Chapo’s escape with an ex-cartel operative, a Mexican intelligence official, and an American counternarcotics agent
(The Atlantic) A few days earlier, Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, had escaped again from one of that country’s maximum-security prisons. No one in this deeply sourced group was surprised. Nor were they particularly interested in the logistical details of the escape, although they clearly didn’t believe the version they’d heard from the Mexican government.
They were convinced it was all a deal cut at some link in the system’s chain. Our breakfast minister even thought that Chapo had likely walked out the front door of the jail, and that the whole tunnel-and-motorcycle story had been staged to make the feat sound so ingenious that the government couldn’t have foreseen it, much less stopped it.
10 January
Clashes in violent western Mexico state call government’s security strategy into question
(AP) Top cartel leaders have been captured or killed, and President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration has held up Michoacan as a success in battling drug violence. But now former vigilantes are fighting with government forces and each other. All sides are accused of being infiltrated by drug traffickers trying to take over from the Knights Templar, which controlled commerce, politics and daily life in much of the state until self-defence groups rose up in February 2013.
5 January
Jorge G. Castañeda: Mexico is Burning
(Project Syndicate) The last time Mexico experienced a political crisis more serious than the one it is undergoing today was in 1994, when a group of so-called Zapatista guerrillas staged a semi-armed uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. The president’s handpicked successor was assassinated, and, as if that was not enough, the value of the peso had plummeted by nearly 70%. Today’s crisis is not quite as bad, but it is getting close.
In December 2012, President Enrique Peña Nieto took office under inauspicious circumstances. He was elected with just 38% of the vote, without a majority in either house of Congress, and with the opposition in control of Mexico City, the capital. The presidential runner-up, opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, questioned the results of the election.
Two years on, success seems to be slipping through Peña Nieto’s hands. The country and its increasingly grey-haired president are experiencing one tragedy, scandal, or disappointment after another.
The price of oil, from which the government obtains one-third of its revenue, has plunged 40% in six months. With last year’s economic growth expected to be 2%, following just 1.1% growth in 2013, Mexico will barely have grown faster during the first third of Peña Nieto’s six-year term than it did during the last quarter-century.
Meanwhile, a pact Peña Nieto made with his predecessor is returning to haunt him. In exchange for support in the Senate for energy-sector reform, he gave Calderón and his aides a tacit blanket pardon for any conceivable misdeeds committed by Calderón’s presidential administration. This hurts Peña Nieto’s image in exactly the areas in which Mexicans most mistrust their leaders: violence and graft.

2014

28 November
Mexico and Canada: allies, at a distance
The visa has caused tension but something’s missing from the debate
(Open Canada) Earlier this year, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird marked the 70th anniversary of bilateral relations with Mexico by calling the country a “trusted and long-term partner of choice.” A month later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a state visit to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and the two expanded an air access agreement. But despite official niceties between the two governments, one issue continues to stick out like a sore thumb — Canada’s visa restriction on Mexicans, which the Harper government imposed in 2009.
Since the Canadian government announced the restriction, citing a spike in Mexican refugee claimants and the need to curb the number of people “trying to use the refugee system to jump the immigration queue,” criticism from various sectors and political groups in both Canada and Mexico has been fierce.
Most critics have highlighted the damage the visa causes to business and political ties between the two countries, especially in light of expectations set by NAFTA.
But by focusing on economic and political impacts of the visa, its criticism has avoided confronting the serious questions the visa raises with regards to social justice, refugee determination and the context behind the rise in claims — the increase in drug-related violence and impunity in Mexico.
In the wake of the disappearance of 43 students from Guerrero, the lack of understanding and appreciation of the reality in Mexico, by the Canadian government but also by Canadians, seems more apparent than ever.
More evidence has emerged that local authorities were likely involved with the students’ disappearance, as cartel members have claimed police officers handed the students over to them to be killed. Protest and anger against the Peña Nieto administration have escalated ever since.
Meanwhile, back in Canada, public discourse on the visa restriction has done little to question the Canadian government’s bold assumption that there are no safety and security concerns in Mexico that might explain a rise in refugee claims. Even by visa critics, there has been little disagreement with the Canadian government’s assertion that the rise in refugee claims by Mexicans, which by 2008 had become 25 percent of all claims in Canada, is “undermining our ability to help people fleeing ‘real’ persecution.” …
Luis Horacio Najera, a long-time Mexican journalist who covered the disappearance of women and the narcotrade in Ciudad Juarez for La Reforma: “I do think there is indeed a lack of awareness and therefore a lack of understanding among Canadians about the situation in Mexico, and how this complex and constantly evolving reality affects hundreds or thousands of lives daily. The current situation in Mexico is migrating from the violence by organized crime to the violence against human and civil rights activists by the government,” he says.
28 February
Mexican kingpin’s fall clouds future of drug heartland
(Reuters) While Guzman’s feared Sinaloa Cartel fed the U.S. craving for illegal narcotics, it also hooked the economy of his home state on the southward flow of drug money.
“People are afraid that the economy could collapse,” said Jorge Chavez, a lawyer and citizen representative on the state’s security council of police and politicians. “I cannot say by how much, but the economy depends on this money.”
In Mazatlan where Guzman was caught, the boardwalk is lined with hotels, restaurants and night clubs. Every few blocks sit boarded-up premises that locals say were fronts for drug gangs closed after police raids or bloody shootouts between rivals.
The billions that Guzman’s gang allegedly made by shipping north tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin is laundered in condominiums, gas stations, beauty parlors and even a day care center, according to the U.S. government.
22 February
Mexico’s top drug lord Joaquin ‘Shorty’ Guzman arrested
(BBC) Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto used his Twitter account to praise the forces involved in the arrest in the north-western resort of Mazatlan, in Sinaloa state.
Guzman was taken to Mexico City and paraded before the media, before boarding a helicopter surrounded by heavily armed troops.
13 January
Mexico to Turn on the Pumps
(Geopolitical Monitor) After years of declining output, Mexico’s energy industry looks like it will be turning a corner in 2014. Legislation was passed in December to end the monopoly long enjoyed by Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and open the industry up to much-needed foreign investment. After the energy bill is ratified by a majority of Mexico’s states (it is expected to pass without a problem), the first licenses for foreign energy companies will be issued in late 2014.
The end of Mexico’s 75-year oil monopoly is a watershed event, albeit a somewhat predictable one given the pressures of an increasingly supply-glutted international energy market. The capital-starved Mexican industry was beginning to look like an anachronism next to its competitors north of the border, and it will need outside technology and investment in order to exploit the country’s full potential (which in terms of shale gas and deep-water reserves is thought to be quite lucrative). Thus, as foreign investment starts to flow into the country’s energy sector (to the tune of $20 billion a year according to some analysts), Mexican output will to ramp up. Expect this to have a meaningful impact on global supply beginning in late 2014, because even with the myriad of inefficiencies that dogged the soon-to-be-defunct Pemex monopoly, Mexico is still the 10th largest oil producer in the world between Venezuela and Kuwait. That means there’s plenty of room for improvement.

2013

Troops flood western Mexico to protect towns, but doubts remain
Mexico’s top security officials gathered Tuesday in the western state of Michoacan to launch a campaign with thousands of army troops to rescue towns besieged, sometimes for months, by the powerful Knights Templar drug cartel.
Mexico’s cosseted elite — Named and shamed
(The Economist) … something positive is emerging in Mexico, a country that, despite some improvements, still has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in Latin America. Those armed with iPhones, cameras and recording devices—albeit they too, probably, living far better than most Mexicans—are increasingly calling politicians and others to account for unjustifiable extravagance, in effect forcing them to take responsibility for their actions. So is the mainstream media.
3 May
Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico — The unmentionables
(The Economist) … Héctor Aguilar Camín, an expert on the bilateral relationship, says the two countries are beginning to address on their own account two issues that were deliberately left out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) almost 20 years ago because at the time they were considered far too controversial—migration and energy reform. Find solutions to these problems, he says, and the two countries may be on the way to achieving an old dream that could really improve prosperity in Mexico: a North American common market.
… Better, instead, to focus the relationships on legal exports—especially as robust trade between the two countries is a bright spot at a time of sluggish global growth. It may be too early to start discussions on a North American common market; neither energy reform in Mexico, nor immigration reform in America will be easy to accomplish, and both hurdles would need to be overcome first before anything so ambitious could be considered. But it is heartening to see the two presidents talk at length about the potential for shared prosperity if they manage to increase access to Asian markets via the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The more they talk free trade, the better for both of them.
2 May
Why US firms are turning to Mexico, leaving China behind
… There has always been an electronics manufacturing hub in Tijuana, but Chinese competition damaged its business a decade ago.
Now rising wage costs in Asia and a higher exchange rate are prompting many companies targeting the US market to take another look at Mexico.
… “Now the wages in China are more than they were before, that’s one thing, then China is six weeks away from the most important market, which is the US,” said Armando Vega Garduno, director of manufacturing and operational excellence.
“So we are migrating all the production we had in China and moving it here. Fifty per cent of what we used to bring from China is now manufactured in this facility.”
9 April
‘Made in Mexico’ increasingly means high-tech motors, not sweatshops
Times are tough for the assembly-for-export plants known as maquiladoras clustered along the U.S. border, a region that has lost economic muscle in the face of competition from China, successive U.S. recessions and drug war violence.
But there are signs of a turnaround elsewhere. Mexico is winning back U.S. import market share and an energetic new government promises deep economic reforms in pursuit of 6-per-cent annual growth.
17 March
Mexico and the US, two nations indivisible
(Emerging Markets) Mexico’s future is closely tied to that of the United States; but to get to the next level of prosperity, it must solve its security issues, says Shannon O’Neil
When it comes to Mexico, people usually think about the security issue, and that’s what much of the news coverage has been. But underneath that, behind the headlines, we have seen a transformation of Mexico’s economy over the last couple of decades: it has moved from a very closed, inward-looking economy, one whose exports were dominated by oil, to an economy that is one of the most open and increasingly competitive in the world [emphasis added]. In measures like trade to GDP, Mexico outpaces not just the United States or places like Brazil, but it outpaces China. It is quite an open and competitive economy now.
A big part of that is due to its deepening ties to the United States. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) was signed almost 20 years ago, we have seen the creation of regional supply chains for a myriad of different types of industries and companies. For every product that is imported from Mexico in the US, on average 40% of it would actually have been made in the US. It has become a very symbiotic relationship, and it has become an integrated economy in many ways and in many sectors, and particularly in manufacturing. There, we see almost seamless integration in some companies, where production happens on both sides of the border. What it means is these economies, companies and industries are now not only intimately tied, but permanently tied at this point.

2012

1 December
Mexico inaugurates new President Peña Nieto, but takes on ‘old’ party reputation
Corruption will likely be a constant challenge for Peña Nieto and his PRI party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years largely through graft before it lost the presidency in 2000.
Not only will the PRI likely have to continuously prove clean credentials to skeptics, corruption itself is deeply rooted in Mexico, affecting everything from fighting drug traffickers to collecting taxes. The National Action Party (PAN), which took power from the PRI in 2000, made some limited progress, but graft remains rampant. And corruption has morphed from a more localized problem of bribing to a sophisticated, multi-country phenomenon that involves multinationals and all three branches of government. Exhibit A is the recent Walmart scandal in Mexico, in which the American corporation allegedly bought permits to more quickly construct big-box stores here.
Clashes in Mexico after president sworn in
(Al Jazeera) Hundreds of protesters clash with police outside congress shortly before president Enrique Pena Nieto gives speech.
Mexican town gains autonomy amid logging fight
Residents of a mountain town in the Mexican state of Michoacán are fighting back against illegal loggers backed by criminal syndicates by closing roads, ejecting police and politicians, abducting loggers and taking up arms — sometimes with weapons as feeble as rocks and fireworks — against paramilitaries armed with AK-47s. Nearly three-fourths of the surrounding oak forests have been decimated by loggers. The New York Times (tiered subscription model) (8/2)
30 July
Drug traffickers seek to intimidate Mexican media
(CBS News) The attack against El Norte’s offices in Monterrey’s metropolitan area is the third in less than a month against the newspaper. Experts say it could be an escalation in the efforts by drug traffickers to intimidate one of the few regional outlets that continues to cover the drug war and investigate official corruption linked to cartels, while others fall silent to intimidation.
Other newspapers in northeast Mexico have stopped covering drug cartel violence all together to protect their staffs against violent attacks including kidnappings and murders carried out by gangs that want to prevent their activities from appearing in print, or are angered by coverage. El Norte and Reforma publish drug violence articles without reporters’ bylines to protect from retribution.
Drug cartels have targeted journalists working for national media chains.
5 July
Final Mexican results confirming Pena Nieto win
(Reuters) – Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto was a clear victor in Sunday’s presidential election, according to a second tally of votes made after the runner-up refused to accept defeat.
2 July
Analysis: Mexico’s creaky economy to test Pena Nieto’s ambitions
(Reuters) – Mexico’s creaky domestic economy, riddled with monopolies and inefficiencies, makes the next government’s goal of boosting growth to rates last seen in the 1970’s seem like a pipe dream.
The return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Sunday’s presidential election may be a chance for the most significant economic remodeling in a generation.
But the checkered history of reforms in Latin America’s second-biggest economy, producing failure as often as success, underscores the size of the challenge.
1 July
Sadly, no surprise  The party that ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century claimed victory on Sunday as a senior election official said the party’s candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, held an irreversible lead over his rivals. President Felipe Calderon congratulated him on his win. Read more
Mexicans vote: 4 key reforms the next president must tackle
(CSM) “Mexico has not lived up to [its] potential,” says Lorenzo Lazo, a political analyst in Mexico City who served in several PRI administrations. And if it is going to, here are the key reforms the next leader must tackle, according to observers across the political spectrum:
Cartels cast shadow over Mexico polls
(Al Jazeera) Speculation rife over role of criminal syndicates as country votes for new president amid continuing drug violence.
29 June
Mexico’s New President Needs to Bust Its Business Cartels
(Bloomberg) From bread, beer and milk to telephones, television and electricity, monopolies and duopolies dominate Mexico’s economy. Loosening their grip would give Mexican consumers more choices and more money to spend. It would also spur economic development and invigorate political and economic institutions, thereby helping society combat the effects of the drug war violence that has led to more than 47,000 deaths over the past six years.
… No cow is more sacred than Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, the state-owned oil company created in 1938 by the expropriation of foreign companies. Partly as a result of a ban on foreign investment in the oil sector — a prohibition that Mexico shares with Iran and North Korea — Pemex’s output has been declining for almost a decade, and it has lagged in finding and exploiting new reserves.
Party of “perfect dictatorship” set for comeback in Mexico
(Reuters) – Accused of every dirty trick in the book during its 71-year grip on power in the 20th century, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party has bounced back and is on the verge of a dramatic victory in Sunday’s presidential election. The PRI has seized on the anemic economic growth and rampant drug violence plaguing Mexico under the ruling conservatives and is promising to restore order and make voters better off if it returns to office after a 12-year hiatus.
27 June
Gwynne Dyer: Why Enrique Peña Nieto will win the Mexican presidential election
(Straight.com) … Mexico has been doing very well economically under the PAN governments that have run the country since 2000.
Mexico is the rising star among Latin American economies, with an annual growth rate that now exceeds that of Brazil. And in an economy with low inflation and manageable debt, real incomes have risen as well.
Per capita income in Mexico is now as much as 50 percent higher than Brazil’s. So if Brazilian voters were so happy with the results of President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s eight years in power that they gratefully elected his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, to the presidency in 2010, why have PAN’s 12 years of economic success not entitled it to re-election too?
The answer is simple: President Felipe Calderón’s declaration of war on Mexico’s drug cartels in 2006 has embroiled the country in a bloodbath that blinds both foreigners and its own citizens to the remarkable progress that is being made on most other fronts.
(PBS) In Mexico, War Against Drug Cartels Inflicts High Cost
PRI presidential hopeful would face host of challenges in governing Mexico
(Globe & Mail)  … In the past decade, Mexico has made great strides, with a stable, well-managed economy, a growing middle class, greater political freedom than ever and stronger institutions.
Mr. Pena Nieto’s challenge will be to bring about the structural reforms the country of 113 million needs and propel it from developing to developed status.
The return of the PRI to office 12 short years after it was supposed to have been relegated to the dustbin of history underscores the party’s famous pragmatism and ability to transform itself. It spent its years away from the presidency building a power base in many of the country’s 31 states and getting PRI governors elected.
As the party transformed itself, so, too, did the country. The electorate is more sophisticated and independent, and Congress and civil society are more capable of challenging the executive.
23 June
Fresh face, same old party
The party that held power for seven decades is poised to take back the presidency. Is Mexico ready?
(The Economist) …  Since 2000 Mexico has been governed by the conservative National Action Party (PAN), first under Vicente Fox, a genial campaigner but poor political manager, and then under Felipe Calderón, a career politician ….  Lacking a majority in Congress, both PAN presidents proved unable or unwilling to forge the alliances needed to recast a political system ill-equipped for a multiparty democracy, and an economy restrained by public monopolies (of energy) and private oligopolies (telecoms, television, beer and cement, for example).
Mr Calderón broadened access to health care, improved infrastructure and took some measures to boost competition. He also tried to improve education, only to be thwarted by the mighty teachers’ union. He could have achieved more had he set aside his visceral dislike of the PRI, which in return saw little reason to help him. So economic growth was moderate. It was set back first by competition from China after it joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, and then by the implosion of America’s banks. Mr Calderón will be recalled most for donning a military uniform and sending the army to confront organised crime.
22 June
Jorge G. Castañeda: The Return of Mexico’s Nemesis
(Project Syndicate) On July 1, Mexico will in all likelihood vote the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country for seven decades, back into power. The PRI’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, holds an insurmountable lead late in the campaign. Many Mexicans, as well as the country’s foreign friends, fear that this turn of events heralds a return to the authoritarian, corrupt, and discredited past that Mexico had left behind when the National Action Party’s candidate, Vicente Fox, won the presidency in 2000.
20 June
Mexico election diary: #YoSoy132 at a crossroads
(The Economist)  The pressure group, which was born in May after a disastrous visit by Enrique Peña Nieto, the leading candidate, to a Mexico City university, got the candidates together for two hours of discussion ahead of the election, which is now little more than a week away. (rabble.ca) #YoSoy132: Meet the new social movement shaking up Mexico’s election
14 June
‘Dark Angel’ and the Mexican Meth Connection
(Stratfor)  Mexico’s methamphetamine trade seems to be booming these days. Earlier in 2012, the Mexican military made the largest single seizure of methamphetamine ever (15 tons, worth around $1 billion) outside Guadalajara. As the United States increased its restrictions on the pharmaceutical chemicals used to produce methamphetamine, Mexican producers stepped in to meet the growing demand. Details from Operation Dark Angel provide insight into how traffickers in the United States are getting their product to market and, more interestingly, how they are laundering their profits.
23 April
Paloma Anós Casero: Can global headwinds slow down Mexico’s economy?
(World Bank blogs) Uncertainty surrounding the global economy remains high. Despite relative calm in the markets, several black clouds are on the global economic horizon in 2012, with potentially serious consequences for Mexico, depending on how complicated the global situation becomes.
How does this scenario affect Mexico?
Despite the uncertain global climate, economic forecasts for 2012 are fairly positive. Under the so-called benign scenario –no new global recession- Mexico’s economy will grow by over 3% with growth driven by the recovery of manufacturing, the solid increase in domestic demand, prudent macroeconomic management and a financial system with limited risks for external contagion.
Under a pessimistic scenario, a sharp global economic slowdown, Mexico’s terms of trade, finances and economic forecasts will take a dip. Mexico’s economy will suffer trade losses from a decline in export demand, raw material prices dropping, a shrinking credit and exchange rate pressures. Mexican consumers and businesses could reduce their demand for goods and services – postponing consumption and investment decisions as an adverse reaction to the economic uncertainty.
However there is no reason for alarm. The Mexican economy is well prepared to absorb external shocks. Its key strengths include an absence of financial and fiscal imbalances and a prudent sovereign debt management –an achievement that opens doors on the international capital markets. Additionally, Mexico has implemented a flexible exchange rate that helps absorb external shocks -for example, by mitigating a decline in external demand (as Mexican exports would benefit if the local currency depreciates).
27 March
Jorge G. Castañeda: The Summit of Muted Intentions
The Summit of the Americas, which takes place roughly every three years, could be viewed as the sort of Latin American boondoggle that convenes heads of state for a few days, either south or north of the Rio Grande, to make endless speeches that lead nowhere. But every now and then, the Summit – an American initiative launched by US President Bill Clinton in 1994 – actually helps to place key issues on the hemispheric table.
One such issue was the so-called Free-Trade Area of the Americas, which was proposed by former US President George H.W. Bush in 1990, and then collapsed at the Mar del Plata summit in Argentina in 2005. Incensed by the presence of Bush père’s son, President George W. Bush, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez rallied thousands of anti-American demonstrators to protest against the agreement.
The Summit of the Americas thus serves as a bellwether of United States-Latin American relations, even if it fails to accomplish much of significance.