Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
President López Obrador is famous in the international community for his flowery use of what is known as “double-talk”. That is, in the same speech, he announces two different international policies contradictory to each other.
Special mention should be made of his meetings with Latin American and Caribbean countries when the United States and Canada are not present. In those meetings, the Mexican is famous for proposing that everyone should join “sovereign” organizations that exclude the imperial neighbors to the north. But he confuses the public when, at the same time and in the same speech, he proposes to create a strong “American” economic community, which is, obviously, part of a policy of access to the benefits offered by the U.S. and Canadian markets.
His trip to Central America and Cuba is no exception. Throughout his journey in four Central American countries close to his heart, AMLO has systematically attacked the Biden administration for not heeding the request to fund his favorite aid programs (Sowing Life and Youth Building the Future) in the Central American region, while at the same time explaining to those who listen that such support has curbed drug trafficking in Mexico.
An explanation that no one believes, by the way.
But he also asks Biden to invest more in the area, criticizing him for spending more in Ukraine than Central America.
He uttered an unusual phrase during his meeting in Belize. Regarding his proposal to advance in continental integration, with the exclusion of the United States, he said, “only through a united, integrated, brotherly America we will be able to face the turbulence of the world economy and, most importantly, the geopolitical danger that the economic decline of the United States represents for the whole world compared to other regions, especially in Asia. In particular, I am referring to China’s commercial, economic advance, which may even be hegemonic.”
U.S. economic decline? Really, President? If you said the decline in reference to Mexico, it might be credible, but it is not in the case of the United States. Transformation, yes; decline, no.
The inevitable competition and rivalry between economic and military superpowers are different. Someone would have to explain to AMLO that the Chinese predict and desire the continued economic strength of the U.S. because that ensures their own economic growth. If the U.S. economy declines, the Chinese economy will decline.
The perception of the “decline” of the United States is the interpretation of his ultra-left intellectual inner- circle in the National Palace, which has predicted the end of capitalism since Marx wrote, in the Communist Manifesto, that socialism throughout the world was a “historical inevitability”.
The same interpretation comes out of AMLO’s mouth, but as a poor rehash referring to today’s world. He obviously thinks that Chinese communism is advancing steadily in the face of the decline of world capitalism and that Mexico should move its eyes and its economy towards Asia.
With this apocalyptic interpretation of the world capitalist economy, it will be enlightening to hear what comes out of the meeting in Cuba today, especially regarding Latin America. Cuba may be portrayed as having a robust economy, a happy society, and a heroic promoter of the role model for the entire region. It will be the example of the “historical inevitability of socialism” in Cuba and, why not, in Mexico.
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