Thread: U.S.-Mexico: Is civilization at stake?

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/16950.html

U.S.-Mexico: Is civilization at stake?
BY FRED ROSEN
El Universal
Sábado 11 de febrero de 2006
Miami Herald, página 1


What´s on Washington´s mind? Why the public challenges to Mexico? First Tony Garza, then John Negroponte, now the Hotel MarÃ*a Isabel Sheraton. The gauntlet has been thrown. But why?
This column has already devoted considerable space to U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza´s tough talk about the Mexican government´s inability to keep "its" drug cartels (really transnational corporations with major branch offices in at least a dozen countries apiece) and northward-bound citizens under control. Garza´s tough talk, we have suggested on a number of occasions, has carried with it a not-so-veiled suggestion that Washington has the right to take necessary steps within Mexico´s borders should the government of Vicente Fox prove incapable of taking more effective action.

It´s gotten worse. U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has now decided to link Mexico with Jamaica and Haiti as "weak states," unable to protect broad hemispheric interests in the region. The veil is lifting: the category "weak state" has frequently been applied to those who were ripe for an unwanted intervention. It means Washington is paying attention: Of all the Latin American elections coming up in 2006, Negroponte told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee this week, "none is more important to the interests of the United States than that of Mexico."

In addition to "weakness," said the intelligence czar, what worries Washington is the emergence in the Americas of "radical populist figures" who advocate "statist" economic policies and "show little respect for democratic institutions." Globalization, he told the senators (and the world press) has created new challenges for the United States, among them terrorism, drug trafficking, economic competition, and competition for natural resources. Then, in a remark heard clearly throughout Mexico, he said that nothing was more worrying than states like Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico that were unable to stand up to the power of organized crime.

But here´s the rub: If the election is important to Washington; if the National Action Party (PAN) government is "weak," and the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) represents "radical populism," with whom are we left? Roberto Madrazo? Is Carlos Salinas writing John Negroponte´s speeches? Is only the heavy hand of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) predictable and controllable enough to gain U.S. acceptance? What is on Washington´s mind?

TROUBLE AT THE SHERATON

And now, consider the U.S. Treasury Department´s order to the MarÃ*a Isabel Sheraton Hotel to send some 16 Cuban officials packing - to a Mexican-owned luxury hotel a short distance away on Paseo de la Reforma. The Cubans were in town to meet with some U.S. Gulf Coast oilmen (members of a business group whose advisory board chair is William Rogers, a Republican former under secretary of state) about the possibilities of U.S. investment in Cuban offshore drilling. The meeting went on as scheduled; the Sheraton turned the Cubans´ six thousand dollar deposit over to the U.S. Treasury; the Fox government was put in an awkward position; and the Cubans will very likely get their money back - from the hotel, not the U.S. Treasury.

I looked to see how this played on a couple of Anti-Castro websites and, as expected, Bush got high praise for having the cojones to stand up to Fidel Castro and the big money boys (mostly from Texas, yet). Cojones? This is a great victory? Making the Cubans and their U.S. trading partners move a few hotels down the block? This seems like a petty act of no political importance whatever - unless one considers that the action was aimed at the Mexican government and not the Communist Cubans, much less the Republican oilmen.

Could it be that the Cubans and the oilmen were incidental players in the Hotel Sheraton fracas, and that the intervention of the U.S. Treasury was designed to show the Mexicans who still rules in the hemisphere? In its caution (or weakness?), the Fox government has not taken the bait and appears to be ready to prosecute the Sheraton for "discrimination," rather than taking the violation of its sovereignty to the various courts of world opinion.

U.S. DOMINANCE

In the Americas, the United States has long considered it a right and a duty to exercise dominance over its "sister republics," and to intervene when necessary to protect its interests in the face of intrusion by other powers, be they Spanish, French, British, Soviet or drug lords. "Chronic wrongdoing," President Theodore Roosevelt told the U.S. Congress way back in 1904, "or an impotence which results in a general loosening of ties of civilized society may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation" - namely, the United States.

Are "impotence" and "chronic wrong doing" loosening the "ties of civilized society" in Mexico? Is that what Washington is thinking? Are the "civilizers" on their way?


frosen@cablevision.net.mx

We can only hope that "civilzers" will destroy the corrupt oligarchy in Mexico, so Mexicans don't keep on fleeing that corrupt country and coming to ours.