Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Despite the President’s repeated offer, a Security Agreement between the United States and Mexico was not signed. For several weeks before the visit of Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, to Mexico, President Sheinbaum had stated that she was in the process of finalizing a Security Agreement between the two nations and that the last details were being ironed out. But such an agreement never materialized, and, therefore, there was no signing. There was, however, a press conference with Rubio and the usually absent Mexican Foreign Minister.
Protocols are always a peculiar thing in this type of event. The US secretaries or undersecretaries who visited Mexico before Marco Rubio’s visit had never held press conferences. In this case, there was a press conference, and Marco Rubio took advantage of the moment to alternate between speaking in English and Spanish, addressing both the US and Mexican publics.
His message in English took advantage of the attack and sinking of a speedboat by the US armed forces near the Venezuelan coast to emphasize that his country will always attack “terrorism, wherever it may be.” In diplomatic language, this is undoubtedly a message for Venezuela, and also for Mexico. When he spoke in Spanish, Rubio praised the “historic” collaboration between Mexico and the United States. The US press editorialized on the comment in English—the sinking of the boat and the death of its occupants. Rubio’s comment in Spanish, which dealt with the “historic collaboration” between the two nations, never appeared in the press in his country.
There was no private meeting between President Sheinbaum and Marco Rubio. According to diplomatic circles, it was the Mexican president who did not want the private meeting to take place. She felt, they say, more comfortable in a meeting with members of her cabinet, so that there would be no subsequent nerves in the upper echelons of Morenismo. There was great fear that, in a meeting of this private nature, Rubio could have raised sensitive issues that were for her ears only.
Among the presidential cabinet attendees, some individuals could report to Palenque everything that was discussed and said at that meeting, with the assurance that nothing was said or suggested that would cause fear or anxiety.
The fact that Ambassador Ron Johnson was sitting next to Rubio empowered him as a valid interlocutor with the Mexican government. And the fact that Esteban Moctezuma, the Mexican ambassador to Washington, was seated as far away as possible from the president, and after an undersecretary, immediately disempowered him as a valid interlocutor in Washington. What good is it for Mexico to have an ambassador in Washington whose own government does not even respect?
Obviously, such an ambassador is of no use to Mexico. He is not the only diplomat in this situation (one wonders why they accept it, or where their personal dignity has gone). But it speaks volumes about the 4T’s contempt for the world. We send ambassadors who have been defenestrated in their own country, but who serve Morena internally to maintain strange balances that only they understand. For now, the rest of the world receives Mexican ambassadors as part of the debris of internal politics and, therefore, as a lack of respect for the host country. That being the case, it is impossible to expect the world to respect our country when it receives these diplomatic representatives, who are considered scum in their own country.
Returning to Rubio’s visit, it is clear that the importance of the visit was diminished when it became clear that no Security Agreement would be signed. The strong and central issues were left out of any conversation, and what was agreed upon was light, politically speaking. The agreed terms were watered down to the extent that it was decided that there would be no “one-on-one” meeting between Sheinbaum and Rubio. It was obvious, before Rubio’s arrival in Mexico, that this Security Agreement would not happen. The meeting achieved two contradictory outcomes.
On the one hand, Rubio reached out to Mexico, speaking of a historic collaboration. On the other hand, the fundamental mistrust between the two governments continues.
Rubio extended a hand, but also set a trap. Mexico will now have to fulfill the mandate of “historic collaboration.” And how can that collaboration happen if the U.S. side is afraid to share sensitive intelligence, considering that the government’s armed forces are in a certain collusion with organized crime? There is the case of the Navy Vice Admiral recently arrested for corruption and links to organized crime. Who can assure us that he is the only one, when there are various reports of links between the military, police, and politicians bribed by organized crime, Zambada dixit?
Finally, what Rubio’s visit to Mexico revealed is the dilemma that Washington considers it faces with the “Mexican enigma.” Given the strong economic, political, and social interrelationship between the two nations, with strong and perhaps impossible-to-dissolve codependencies, any serious confrontation must take all these factors into account. Mutual distrust exists and is a relevant fact at this time. Mexico has resisted any significant collaboration on security matters, stating that “they will give us intelligence and we will see what can be done internally.”
On the US side, there is a conviction among Republicans and Democrats that the Mexican state maintains deep ties to drug trafficking. Therefore, any transfer of strategic or vital information will be seen by the United States as “the terrorist enemy.” And after Rubio’s visit, the United States reaffirmed its conviction that the Sheinbaum administration cannot, or will not, do anything to attack, at the very heart of the 4T, this link between politics and drug trafficking. This fact indicates that the Security Agreement could not be signed.
That is why the relevant fact of Rubio’s visit was that fact. He left the country without the Security Agreement. The fact was disguised with details of some relevance to security. But Rubio himself shifted attention to the issue of the USMCA and tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
Hence, at the press conference, Marco Rubio speaking in English was totally different from Rubio speaking in Spanish—literally, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In diplomacy, smokescreens always serve to hide something more critical. In this case, the non-signing of a Security Agreement, because that “non-signing” means that there is no agreement. And that “non-agreement” foreshadows stormy waters ahead in the bilateral relationship.
@rpascoep
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