Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Marco Rubio, the designated U.S. Secretary of State under President Trump as of January 20, 2025, is the son of a Cuban family based in Florida. He is the first Cuban-American appointed head of U.S. foreign policy. The fact of appointing a Hispanic American to that post implies that foreign policy will be concerned not only with the traditional geopolitical issues of conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and competition with China. There will be a shift toward Latin America, especially with a strategic focus on Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
This shift will directly impact the Mexican government’s policy towards the three Latin American dictatorships. For this reason, it is essential to enumerate the looming conflicts between Mexico and the United States because there will inevitably be a clash of policies, conceptions, and interests in their relationship. The outcome of the announced clash will define, to a significant extent, the course that the renegotiation of Mexico’s trade relationship with the United States and Canada, in the treaty known as CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, will take.
In other words, renegotiating the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC will become an obligatory global, strategic, and political redefinition of the North American bloc’s relationship. Will it be a bloc of three countries, or will it become a new agreement between two nations only, excluding Mexico? Will there be respect for the explicit and implicit rules originally agreed upon in the trilateral relationship, or will there be a definitive breakup of that pact?
Cuba is at the center of the foreseeable discussion between Washington and Mexico. The conditions are in place for a large-scale confrontation. Although they are not the only ones, two areas of confrontation that, in themselves, define radically different conceptions of the island’s government can be mentioned.
The U.S. government has officially declared the “Cuban medical brigades” as a form of international human trafficking due to the conditions of slavery in which they operate. Consequently, it establishes that the Cuban government officially promotes slavery as its own business. The United Nations was the first international body to recognize the “slave-like” nature of the Cuban brigades.
Mexico has followed a policy of hiring these supposed Cuban doctors and recently announced the increase of their ranks within the country. From the forms of contracting bilaterally agreed between Cuba and Mexico, it is clear that it is an ideal instrument to justify the transfer of billions of foreign currency to the Cuban dictatorship, especially dollars and euros.
It is foreseeable that Secretary Rubio will use this argument to pressure Mexico to change its policy towards Cuba, or the consequences of a negative response will be seen in the renegotiation of the Trade Agreement.
It is the same in the trade relations between Mexico and Cuba, with Mexico supporting Cuba with millions of barrels of oil to sustain its failing electric power system. In essence, we must assume that Mexico is giving away that oil, valued at several billion dollars, on the open market, although it has been suggested that there is some sort of “pay when you can” mechanism.
Trade between Mexico and Cuba, especially in that volume, violates legal stipulations and prohibitions that the U.S. Congress passed many decades ago with the Helms-Burton Act.
Secretary Rubio will have the political space he needs to demand that Mexico change its trade policy with Cuba or face the consequences. Those consequences will be seen not only in the renegotiation of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC but also in Mexico’s specific policies towards drug trafficking and the immigration crisis, where the expulsion of thousands of undocumented foreigners from the United States will disrupt society and life in Mexico.
Mexico has been deafeningly silent in the face of the Venezuelan crisis. This is not surprising. Our ambassador in Caracas is an active militant of the chavista-madurista cause and Bolivarian socialism. That is why he was appointed ambassador to Venezuela: to sustain Mexican solidarity with the supposed revolution in that country. This is the only way to understand Mexico’s silence in the face of such a blatant electoral fraud. And that silence extends to the repressive actions of the Maduro government against the opposition.
Mexico is, in fact, supporting the repression against the democratic forces in that country.
Here, too, Mexico will face a dispute with Washington. The conflict will be very soon because Maduro intends to be installed as “legally” elected President in January. And we all know that he did not win the election, so his government is spurious. Is Mexico going to continue recognizing that government in Caracas? The clock is ticking, and Morena continues to express its solidarity with Maduro and his coup plotters. Is Mexico going to recognize Maduro because an electoral power controlled by the ruling party declared so? Of course, it is not far from the circumstances of the Mexican INE, but hope is the last thing to die.
Definitions are already at the door: Cuba, Venezuela, and the Nicaraguan tragedy. Even Bolivia is approaching a crisis situation, even though it is the weak link of Latin American Bolivarianism. The war unleashed between the two sides of the same party, between President Luis Arce and Evo Morales, has all the conditions to plunge that country into a civil war, with challenging consequences for the several South American countries bordering Bolivia.
Marco Rubio intends to articulate an aggressive policy against several countries in the region. The corrupt and authoritarian fake lefts are in a situation of economic weakness in the face of changing conditions in regional and global alliances. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine make the bloc of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea more occupied with sustaining their economic war efforts rather than conquering new Latin American territories. U.S. anti-Chinese pressure will be felt throughout the region. We can envision a new era of U.S. domination in the Americas as a whole, by agreement or by forceful action.
The sovereigntist, narco-nationalist, exclusionist conception of the Mexican 4T, together with its hints of authoritarianism, populism, and militarism, clash with the new policy emanating from Washington. The apex of Mexico’s relationship with North America is the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC. Therefore, this is the most vital point of the relationship and, at the same time, its weakest link. With or without an agreement, if the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC is transformed, changed, or canceled, the whole edifice built up to now falls.
Conceptually speaking, the 4T is against the USMCA. In practice, it tolerates it because it lacks a credible economic alternative. All it offers is more poverty and fewer opportunities. Therefore, a train wreck can be expected with Rubio in the State Department. Is Mexico prepared for that reality when the President swears that nothing is happening?
@rpascoep
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