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Mexico also looks south

2019-09-21T13:37:34.561Z


[OPINION] Pedro Brieger: Without leaving the north, Mexico looks south again, and its place in the region can be of the utmost importance.


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Editor's Note: Pedro Brieger is an Argentine journalist and sociologist, author of more than seven books and contributor to publications on international issues. He currently serves as director of NODAL, a portal dedicated exclusively to the news of Latin America and the Caribbean. He collaborated with different Argentine media such as Clarín, El Cronista, La Nación, Page / 12, Profile and for magazines such as News, Somos, Le Monde Diplomatique and Panorama. Throughout his career, Brieger won important awards for his informative work on radio and television in Argentina.

(CNN Spanish) - The decision of the Mexican government to assume the presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2020 surely surprised its own and others. The body created by the 33 countries of America without the United States and Canada is virtually paralyzed and few believe in their ability to play a role for regional integration. Mexico seems so.

The famous phrase "poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States", does not lose relevance also when thinking about Mexico's relationship with Latin America, since to the north of the Rio Grande there is an economic, political and social giant that influences every movement that any Mexican government can make. The question is how Mexico can weave links with the south, taking into account the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States throughout history in what it considers "its" backyard and which, obviously, also includes Mexico. The balance for any Mexican government is not simple and during different moments the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, managed to take distance from the foreign policy of the White House, especially by rejecting the blockade against Cuba or participating in negotiations in the different conflicts that affected Central America.

However, on January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Canada and the United States came into operation, and where Mexico seemed to favor the economic link with the North over politician with the south.

The date of September 11 for the collective memory of Latin America is linked to the coup d'etat that in 1973 overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile, well before the attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001. However, while the chancellor Argentine participated in a reminder of the attack on the Twin Towers and did not say a word of the coup in Chile, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, on Twitter, on the same day recalled both events, looking north and south. And on the same day, the Mexican representative at the OAS expressed her “categorical rejection” of the invocation of the TIAR, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of 1947, to justify an intervention in Venezuela since Mexico favors the dialogue between the government and the opposition.

Without leaving the north, Mexico looks south again, and its place in the region can be of the utmost importance.

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2019-09-21

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