Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The appointment of the former governor of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, as Consul General of Mexico in Miami, Florida, is the most unfortunate example of how the Mexican federal government is visualizing the coming months and years in the bilateral relationship with the incoming administration of President Trump. The federal government seems to not care about the low respectability image of our representatives worldwide. What matters is to continue using the diplomatic corps and our representations abroad as repositories for domestic political circumstances, misadventures, and discomforts. That is to say, the same diplomatic method of López Obrador.
What was the “diplomatic route” of the previous six-year term? First, it started by conceiving embassies and consulates as spaces considered “golden exiles” for politicians in disgrace or those who had to be bought or neutralized. Both embassies and consulates were used as spaces that had to be financed to accommodate former politicians, former governors, people, and countries of personal interest to the presidential family.
The practical result of this policy was that people with no interest in diplomacy represented Mexico. However, the game of politics meant that these diplomatic spaces were used to satisfy internal political calculations. New party alliances, ongoing political projects, or the need to cover the back of some misguided or corrupt official were all justifications for filling embassies and consulates with people utterly unrelated to the diplomatic task—even individuals openly disinterested in the task.
Thus, Mexico’s most important embassies and consulates were occupied by mediocre characters or, in any case, irrelevant to the diplomatic task. Consequently, Mexico’s reputation declined worldwide, diminished by the lack of representatives of quality, efficiency, and commitment aligned with the objectives of a State foreign policy, not a party foreign policy. They represented domestic politics’ ambitions, commitments, and appetites, wholly removed from international politics.
It was perfectly understood what López Obrador meant when he stated that “the best foreign policy is domestic policy”. Along with the appointment of ambassadors and consuls whose only virtue was to owe political loyalty to the President of the Republic, there were others whose appointments were intended to express a specific commitment to some government. So much so that, for example, the Mexican ambassador to Venezuela is more militant of the Bolivarian Movement than of Morena. Being an acolyte of Maduro, this explains Mexico’s complicit silence in supporting the blatant electoral fraud committed by the Venezuelan government against the majority vote of the people of that country in the last presidential elections.
Mexico’s ambassador to Nicaragua considers himself a Sandinista and is a supporter of the dictatorship that governs that country. Obviously, Mexico is mute in the face of the repression unleashed by the Sandinista regime against the entire country and does not criticize the expulsion, exile, and removal of citizenship of its detractors. Moreover, it promoted the participation of a contingent of Nicaraguan soldiers in a September 6 parade in Mexico City.
And what about Mexico’s love affair with Cuba? At this moment, Mexico is the country that contributes most of its own resources to the island’s government for its support. The primary support is the donation of millions of barrels of oil for more than a year, representing a support exceeding billions of dollars. Secondly, Mexico is a supplier of cash, in millions of euros and dollars, under the pretext of hiring several thousand Cuban “doctors”, under a regime designated by the United Nations as “modern slavery”. This money and the money it receives from selling Mexican oil in the international spot market allows it to acquire products worldwide. All these resources are vital to allow the dictatorial Cuban regime to continue in power.
The Mexican embassy in Havana, not surprisingly, has not denounced the recent wave of arrests of Cuban political dissidents. Nor has it complained about the harsh prison sentences and the lack of respect for human rights that the regime has imposed on political prisoners since the social rebellion of July 11-17, 2021. Cuba is the country in Latin America with the highest number of political prisoners today. And Mexico is silent.
The Mexican ambassador to Russia is an acolyte of the Putin regime. He conceives his role as the emissary of Mexico, who will faithfully follow its position of neutrality in the case of the war between Kyiv and Moscow. It is common knowledge that in the case of an unjust war of aggression, being neutral implies being on the side of the aggressor. The Mexican ambassador is respected in Moscow for his “neutral” position in the Russian war against Ukraine. And that is how the rest of the world perceives it.
In these countries, Mexico repeats with ambassadors appointed by López Obrador, whose mission is to maintain an anti-Yankee profile and in favor of those who show a willingness to confront the United States and, to a lesser degree, Canada and the European Union. Mexico does not want to confront Washington directly but aligns with those who do.
Because Mexico lives internalizing the dichotomy between its love and hate for the United States, it cannot design a congruent policy toward it. When Mexico talks about Washington, Trump, or CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, it hides behind rhetoric about national sovereignty. At present, this concept is empty of concrete content but infused with an irrational emotional garb that tries to make the nationalist heart of the Mexican public beat faster.
Our diplomacy should build a narrative that allows Mexico to recover its role in the world. To achieve that goal, we require representatives who project what is most sensitive and intelligent in our understanding of the world and away from what is most perverse, corrupt, and detestable in the Mexican political underworld.
Therefore, the appointment of Rutilio Escandón as consul in Miami is a regrettable decision. Being a man hated in the state he governed, and who turned Chiapas into a horror of violence, drug trafficking, and death, he has the moral authority of a Somoza, Pinochet, Maduro, or Daniel Ortega. In other words, he has no moral authority and is appointed consul in Miami. This character is considered by the Mexican government as the ideal figure to represent it and to embody its aspirations and the society to which it aspires.
Rutilio’s appointment is worse because it implies that our ambassadors and consuls will be those individuals who, as López Obrador would proudly say, represent Mexico’s foreign policy well because they are the best Mexico has to offer.
@rpascoep
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