Thread: Obama, Calderón Meet Amid Tensions Over Immigration, Drugs

Obama and Calderón Meet Amid Tensions Over Immigration, Drugs

Published March 02, 2011
Fox News Latino
Comments (181)


It is hard to remember a more important meeting between the president of Mexico and the United States.

U.S.-Mexico relations are at boiling point as both nations prepare for an Obama-Calderón summit meeting in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday that would include conversations on controversial issues such as Mexico's drug war, diplomatic cable leaks, the influx of U.S. arms and a wave of anti-immigration initiatives in the United States.

These issues are all taking a toll on the border nations relationship that had shown steady improvement in the recent years.

As President Felipe Calderón prepares for an official visit to Washington on Thursday to meet with President Barack Obama, frustrations have come out into the open and the rhetoric in some ways has regressed to the 1980s, when the two governments routinely traded barbs about drugs, money laundering, trade and investment issues.

The visit comes a little more than two weeks after the killing of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata, who was shot to death on a highway in northern Mexico on Feb. 15 — with a gun that was smuggled in from the United States.

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Killing of ICE Agent Jamie Zapata Was Case of Mistaken Identity, Says SuspectThe killing brought back U.S. doubts about Mexico's ability to control violence, at the same time Mexico is beginning to chafe under what it sees as a lack of U.S. willingness to reduce its demand for drugs or stem the flow south of guns that fuel a conflict that has cost over 34,600 lives here since Calderón took office in 2006.

"As far as reducing the demand for drugs, they haven't done so ... as far as reducing the flow of arms, they haven't, it has increased," Calderón said in unusually harsh comments the week before the visit in an interview with the newspaper El Universal. "Institutional cooperation has been notoriously insufficient."

Calderón "has not gotten a response beyond rhetoric on the gun issue ... and I think he is bothered by the prospect that special interest groups in the United States have more influence than Mexico's entire leadership," said Raymundo Riva Palacio, a veteran columnist and political observer in Mexico City.

According to Mexican officials, the Calderón-Obama meeting was planned before the Zapata killing, and will focus on economic issues, anti-crime cooperation, and conditions for the estimated 12 million migrants living in the United States.

But Calderón's most important meeting may be with the new U.S. House Speaker, Republican John Boehner, according to Pamela Starr, professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. It may be Mexico's best opportunity to defend the next phase of the $1.4 billion U.S. Merida Initiative anti-drug aid plan.

Calderón "wants to make sure they don't cut the funding for Merida, in their zeal to cut," Starr noted.

Contributing to the friction was the release of leaked cables written by U.S. Embassy personnel depicting Mexico's armed forces and police agencies as inefficient, corrupt, riven by infighting and "reliant on the United States for leads and operations."

Calderón's response was furious and, at times, personal.

The cables "have done a lot of damage with the stories they tell that are, in truth, distorted," Calderón said.

He objected to cables that talked about a lack of coordination among Mexican agencies. "I do not have to tell the U.S. ambassador how many times I meet with my security Cabinet, it is none of his business. I will not accept or tolerate any type of intervention," he said.

"But that man's ignorance translates into a distortion of what is happening in Mexico, and affects things and creates ill-feeling within our own team," Calderón said.

Calderón's office refused to say whether the "ignorance" remark referred specifically to U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual. The office said Pascual has met regularly with Calderón, despite local press reports suggesting Calderón was avoiding him.

Julian Ventura, Mexico's assistant secretary of foreign relations, denied reports of disenchantment and said the government had "a direct, intense relationship" with Pascual.

But the ambassador may have stepped on some toes in Mexico.

Calderón complained that "the ambassadors or whoever wrote these cables are pushing their own agendas." Riva Palacio noted there was a "self-congratulatory tone" in cables like the one sent after Mexican marines killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva in a Dec. 2009 shootout.

"The impression they left was of a big celebration what 'we' (the United States) did," Riva Palacio said, despite the fact that Mexico has born the human and economic toll of the drug war.

Pascual may have also ruffled feathers in the government and the ruling National Action Party by dating the daughter of Francisco Rojas, the congressional leader of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Rojas' office and the U.S. embassy declined to comment on the issue.

"It can't help since she's the child of a PRI leader and Calderón is anti-PRI to the core of his being," said Starr. "Calderón will do whatever he can to defeat the PRI. He's convinced the worst thing that could happen to Mexico would be a return to the PRI."

In practice, the day-to-day contacts across the border between regulatory and law enforcement agencies, private companies and investors are immeasurably better than in the 1980s, when the U.S. suspected top Mexican officials of complicity in drug trafficking, money laundering or attacks on U.S. agents.

Things got so bad that in 1990 the DEA paid operatives in Mexico to kidnap and bring north a suspect in the 1985 torture-murder of DEA Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.

But things changed. Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the PRI lost its 71-year grip on the presidency in 2000, Mexico began extraditing record numbers of suspects and Calderón launched an offensive against the cartels in 2006.

The country has also opened to investment, inspection and regulation to such a degree that some U.S. agencies now operate what are essentially satellite offices here.

But while the United States wonders if Mexico can control violence and bring criminals to justice, Mexico has just been left wondering whether that opening is reciprocal.

Mexico continues to wait for the opening of U.S. highways to Mexican trucks, something it is entitled to under the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. Congress has simply blocked that program under pressure from industry groups with arguments about highway safety.

And Mexicans have been angered at tough measures to crack down on illegal immigration in several U.S. states. They are especially alarmed about proposals that aim to deny citizenship to children of undocumented migrants born in the United States.

Two days before Calderón's visit, Mexico's Senate urged him to "express emphatically and categorically" Mexico's opposition to such measures in his meeting with Obama.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2 ... latestnews

And Mexicans have been angered at tough measures to crack down on illegal immigration in several U.S. states. They are especially alarmed about proposals that aim to deny citizenship to children of undocumented migrants born in the United States.

Two days before Calderón's visit, Mexico's Senate urged him to "express emphatically and categorically" Mexico's opposition to such measures in his meeting with Obama.

They don't want to get pushed off of the gravy train. No citizenship, no welfare, medicaid and housing, less money for Mexico.

Originally Posted by jamesw62

And Mexicans have been angered at tough measures to crack down on illegal immigration in several U.S. states. They are especially alarmed about proposals that aim to deny citizenship to children of undocumented migrants born in the United States.

Two days before Calderón's visit, Mexico's Senate urged him to "express emphatically and categorically" Mexico's opposition to such measures in his meeting with Obama.

"**** what Mexico wants, this ain't Mexico!"
"Clean up that shit hole country of yours and stop sellin' "Crack!"

Originally Posted by Newmexican

And Mexicans have been angered at tough measures to crack down on illegal immigration in several U.S. states. They are especially alarmed about proposals that aim to deny citizenship to children of undocumented migrants born in the United States.

Two days before Calderón's visit, Mexico's Senate urged him to "express emphatically and categorically" Mexico's opposition to such measures in his meeting with Obama.

They don't want to get pushed off of the gravy train. No citizenship, no welfare, medicaid and housing, less money for Mexico.

Yup, they don't want to lose the remittances, which are a major source of income for Mexico. Not only the money, but the U.S. is acting as a safety valve for Mexico, taking the pressure off their government to provide for their poor illiterate peasants. I'm convinced there would be riots like those in Greece if Mexico couldn't push their citizens out of the country.

Who gives a rats butt what mexico thinks. Their senate can put it where the sun don't shine. This is OUR country and if we say NO to anchor brats then that answer is NO. Oh I bet Obama is trying to tap dance some kind of sweet deal with his backside buddy from mexico. No doubt saying he is going to continue push for AMNIST and DREAMS as well as pushing the feds to stop the immigration bills all these states are trying to push through. Bottom line is the states are going to pass laws aimed are removal of illegals withing the states borders, REAL AMERICANS are going to dig their corporate heels in and stop funding of education of illegals. We are going to demand and we WILL get a secure border even if it takes troops and armor to do it.

i am sick and tired of kissing Mexico's backside.

its bad enough that the government is aiding and abetting in the illegal alien invasion of the US by printing comic books a few years ago that were either 32 or 36 pages... and get this, ONLY FOUR pages told people how to come here legally. the rest was telling people how to illegally enter.

its bad enough that if a mexican citizen kills an American and runs back to mexico, the government there will not send him back for trial unless there are guarantees that there will be no death penalty,. no matter how brutal the killing is.

way to go everyone Im with you all on every thing you Post
No Amnesty

Heads of U.S., Mexico to Meet as Tensions Rise

Violence From Drug War to Top Agenda as Calderón Visits Obama in Washington

Comments (25)
By JOSé DE CóRDOBA

MEXICO CITY—President Felipe Calderón will meet in Washington on Thursday with President Barack Obama in an attempt to repair relations at a time when spiraling violence in Mexico's drug war has frayed ties between the two allies.

The meeting comes just three weeks after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent was killed and another wounded by alleged drug gunmen. Jaime Zapata, the slain ICE agent, was the first U.S. law-enforcement official to be killed in the line of duty in Mexico in a quarter century.

Mr. Calderón's visit, announced last week, also comes after a spate of ill-timed comments by U.S. officials about Mexico's drug violence. Among them are that Mexican drug gangs could be allied with Islamic terrorists and that drug traffickers could overthrow the Mexican state, forcing the U.S. to send troops. Such statements have enraged Mexican officials, who are notoriously sensitive to any suggestion of U.S. interference in national affairs.

"I don't recall this kind of bad blood in a long time," said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister.

At home, Mr. Calderón has also been feeling political heat. As Mexico enters its 2012 presidential electoral season, polls show the government's inability to halt rising violence, even as it kills or captures drug kingpins, increasingly worries Mexicans. That's a blow to the president, who has made security the centerpiece of his government program.

Analysts believe that weary Mexican voters may reject the candidate from Mr. Calderón's center-right party and vote to bring back the Institutional Revolutionary Party—anathema to Mr. Calderón—which controlled Mexico for most of the 20th century and whose presumed candidate is leading in the polls.

In an interview with El Universal newspaper published last week, Mr. Calderón lashed out at what he said was the U.S.'s lack of cooperation in Mexico's effort to curb drug cartels. More than 34,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence since Mr. Calderón took power in 2006 and sent out the army and federal police to recover large areas of Mexico where drug cartels held sway.

U.S. "institutional cooperation ends up being notoriously deficient," Mr. Calderón said. He also lambasted what he said was the disarray in U.S. interagency cooperation. He said the U.S. should help Mexico deal with the violence unleashed by drug trafficking by lowering U.S. drug consumption and cutting the flow of arms, many of which end up in the hands of cartel gunmen in Mexico. But Mr. Calderón said the U.S. hasn't been able to make progress towards either goal. "Instead, the flow [of arms] has increased," he said in the interview.

Relations, in particular with U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual, have been strained by the publication of embassy cables released by WikiLeaks that described the alleged inefficiency and lack of coordination in Mexico's security apparatus, especially in the army. In the interview, Mr. Calderón lashed out at Mr. Pascual and former ambassador Tony Garza, who signed many of the critical reports.

In an apparent reference to Mr. Pascual, Mr. Calderón said his "ignorance" as expressed in the WikiLeaks reports was a "distortion" of Mexican reality. People close to Mr. Calderón say that when the Mexican president met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Mexico City in January, Mr. Calderón "vented" his frustration and blamed the U.S. for not cooperating. A Calderón spokesman declined to comment on the meeting. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman on Wednesday called the meeting a "frank exchange of ideas."

In a background briefing, Mexican diplomats strove to put the relationship, and the upcoming meeting in a positive light. "We see a very productive meeting with positive messages from both presidents," said Julian Ventura, Mexico's undersecretary for North America. "The importance that each country holds for the other will be ratified."

U.S. officials also played down tensions. "This bilateral relation has matured to a level in which a simple statement or a given event does not have the power to wreck the relation entirely," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson in Washington on Tuesday.

Most analysts believe that despite the frayed relations the ties between the two countries run so deep and are so complex that both governments realize their interests far outweigh the present ill will. "There is a shared recognition that the mutual interests are too important to let tensions overwhelm them," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.

High on Mr. Calderón's meeting agenda is progress on controlling the sale of weapons on the border, many of which eventually end up in the hands of cartel hitmen. Indeed, the arrest Monday of three Dallas men, one of whom bought the weapon used in the killing of Mr. Zapata, the ICE agent, could well be used by Mr. Calderón to make his point on the need to restrain arms sales. Mr. Calderón would also like to see a bigger U.S. effort to cut down drug consumption.

Mr. Calderón is also scheduled to meet with U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to address the $1.3 billion Mérida Agreement, which provides material and training to Mexico to help in the drug war.

http://online.wsj.com

Obama to discuss armed US agents in Mexico

Mar 2 05:28 PM US/Eastern

The United States will discuss the idea of US armed agents operating inside Mexico, which is being rocked by deadly drug violence, when President Barack Obama meets his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon, a senior US official said Wednesday.

Obama welcomes Calderon to the White House on Thursday.

"It's a top priority for the US government to ensure that measures are being taken to protect our personnel," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists in a phone briefing.

"That will continue to be a topic of conversation between both governments and will undoubtedly be a topic that gets discussed tomorrow between President Obama and President Calderon," the source said when asked about US agents' inability to carry their weapons in Mexico since 1990.

The ban on US agents carrying weapons became a topic of discussion again after the February 15 murder in Mexico of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata on a Mexican highway.

His was the first killing of a US federal agent on Mexican soil in 26 years, and raised the stakes for the US government in Mexico's increasingly violent drug war.

The two countries launched a joint probe into the killing of Zapata, 32, and wounding of Victor Avila, a second ICE agent, in the roadside attack in the central state of San Luis Potosi.

Both sides have since been active against Mexico's vicious drug gangs.

More than 34,600 people have been killed in rising drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when Calderon's government deployed soldiers and federal police to take on organized crime.

www.breitbart.com

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Not only the [remittances] money, but the U.S. is acting as a safety valve for Mexico, taking the pressure off their government to provide for their poor illiterate peasants.

There is no shortage of money in Mexico, but the people who are running that country have figured out that there is a shortage of determination among our own elites. And when Mexico's elites see 'Bama in bed with the Chamber of Commerce, how can we not expect them to take advantage of us?
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