Beatriz Pagés
Did López Obrador understand why Biden and Trudeau came to Mexico?
All indications are that he did not. More than a translator, the president needed an interpreter of reality. Someone to tell him: “The leaders of the United States and Canada have come to propose to Mexico to build the most powerful trilateral economic bloc in the world”.
A soft but direct Biden told him: “The goal is to keep North America as the most prosperous and strongest economic region in the world”. And a frank and tougher Trudeau stressed it to him: The GDP of the United States, Canada, and Mexico is greater than that of the European Union. Let’s not miss that opportunity.
While the Canadian and the American had their eyes on the future, the Mexican had his head immersed in the past. While Biden and Trudeau tried to make López Obrador understand that there was an extraordinary opportunity for Mexico to become an economic power, the Mexican president was more concerned about showing off his tree planting.
No, the Mexican president did not understand the scope of the X Summit of North American Leaders. He continued to speak of tawdry sovereignty, of conservatives and liberals, of outdated hegemonies. Or perhaps, he “played Uncle Lolo*” so that his accomplices, the tyrants of Central and South America and even the Russians, would not accuse him of surrendering into the arms of imperialism.
While the country’s most important trading partners proposed strengthening cooperation with Mexico to create better-paying jobs, he came to the defense of Brazil, Honduras, and El Salvador. He pretended to assume the role of leader of Latin America before the United States without anyone asking for it or recognizing it and without having the merits or the stature to be so. Biden stopped it when he elegantly told him that he was ill-informed.
No. Lopez Obrador did not understand Trudeau’s message about the need to support the middle classes. In his twisted mind, Lopez must have asked himself: “Investing so that there will be more “aspirationals” when what I need are more poor people to keep voting for Morena?
Nor was he interested in the issue of climate change. In the face of his indifference, Biden asked U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to publicly demand López Obrador to abandon coal, “forget the past and embrace the energies of the future”.
Biden and Trudeau have very well studied the populist tyrant who governs Mexico. They try not to provoke the primitive impulses of someone who craves pretexts to take Mexico into the orbit of Cuba and Venezuela. The Canadian, however, threw him a hint: “Today’s world faces a high degree of uncertainty with the emergence of authoritarian leaders…”. The only thing missing was to tell him: like you.
Biden and Trudeau know perfectly well that López Obrador wants to be a Hugo Chávez, a Maduro, or a Daniel Ortega. They know that the despot does not give a damn about international cooperation, that he does not want judges or laws that prevent him from governing Mexico as if it were his ranch; they know about his links with organized crime, the attempt to seize the Judicial Power through a plagiarist minister, they are aware that he seeks to eliminate the National Electoral Institute (INE) to control the elections, they are aware of the danger of having a budding dictator as a neighbor and that is why they came to propose to him to be part of the right side of history.
Was López Obrador interested in the proposal? Evidently not. He ended up slamming the door on his partners. In the end, he did not let them speak. Mexico hosted a first-class Summit with a fifth-rate president.
* “You become like Uncle Lolo… who becomes an asshole on his own.”(“Te haces como el tío Lolo… que se hace pendejo solo”)
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