Low expectations in Mexico as US election approaches
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A week before U.S. elections, expectations and attention are unusually low in a foreign country that may have more at stake than any other. Many Mexicans would be glad to see a more neighborly president who hasn’t called Mexicans rapists or threatened to build a wall against them, but the relationship has survived a Donald Trump presidency, so there’s a feeling it can handle any outcome.
In the streets, few can name Democratic candidate Joe Biden, but there’s a general sense that Mexicans are ready to take their chances with someone other than Trump.
“No Mexican, no human being likes to be called a rapist, a thief, told that you’re not liked,” said Ana Vanessa Cárdenas Zanatta, a political science professor at Monterrey Technological and Anahuac universities in Mexico City. “The least that any human being, and the Mexicans in this bilateral relationship, can hope for is respect.”
Respect can be especially important when roughly three-quarters of a country’s exports go to the United States and hundreds of millions of people cross the border in both directions yearly for work, shopping, family visits or vacations.
In a Trump administration marked by unpredictability that has left allies reeling, Mexico has been one country that has been able to carve out a fairly predictable, if sometimes pressured, relationship with Trump. For example, when Mexico was on the brink of defaulting on treaty obligations governing water-sharing this month, the Trump administration provided a graceful exit.
Trump so far hasn’t targeted Mexico in his campaign like he did the first time around. The pandemic and the economic crisis it sparked have overtaken all other issues — on both sides of the border.
Mexico has lost at least 1
million formal jobs during the pandemic, the economy is forecast to shrink 10% this year, violence remains beyond the government’s control and COVID-19 infections are climbing again.
Regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins, immigration, security and trade are expected to dominate the historically unbalanced relationship.
On immigration, there is skepticism that much would change.
Trump made Mexico an immigration waiting room for the U.S. and some say effectively pushed the U.S. frontier south for immigrants. Thousands of asylum seekers were forced to wait out their cases in Mexican border cities before the pandemic allowed the U.S. to effectively suspend its asylum system at the border.
Through the threat of tariffs on Mexican imports, Trump got the Mexican government to act more aggressively toward migrants crossing its territory. Early this year, Mexico’s National Guard and immigration agents broke up a migrant caravan near the Guatemala border before it gathered any steam.
“If Biden makes it, I believe there will continue to be great pressure to stop the migrant caravans,” Cárdenas said. “But I think the nuance, the tone in which its done will be different.” That might even complicate things for Mexico President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, depriving him of a bully to blame for an immigration policy tougher than the one he promised.
Mexico’s violence continues to confound López Obrador’s administration. The pace of murders has stabilized, but the toll remains high. The National Guard, the new security force that he promised would help turn the tide, was initially diverted in part to deal with migrants and has been unable to significantly reduce violence between battling drug cartels.
The persistent violence is a concern to U.S. authorities, both for its ties to drug trafficking and as a potential driver of immigration. Mexico might expect greater recognition of shared responsibility from a Biden administration, but Mexico’s own security strategy has been difficult to decipher.
“It’s putting Mexico at a more vulnerable position than otherwise had (López Obrador) actually taken more of a concerted, organized line about security in Mexico,” said Gladys McCormick, a history professor at Syracuse University specializing in the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
In his first campaign, Trump said the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada was a bad deal and promised to get a new one. He did, signing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement this year.