Mexico’s foreign policy: back to the future?

ANDRES MANUEL Lopez Obrador, long considered the favorite to become Mexico’s next president, is often described as the consummate anti-American, left-wing, populist politician -- a characterization that raises the question of where he would take his country’s relationship with the United States if he were to win next month’s election.

Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City and candidate of the Democratic Revolution Party, would be the first Mexican president in three decades who does not speak English and the first who has not studied abroad. In a break with tradition, he has announced that he will not take as many trips abroad as his predecessors so he can concentrate on domestic goals such as creating social programs to benefit the poor and the elderly. It’s something of a guess as to just how well he understands the U.S., its people and its institutions.

Jose Maria Perez Gay, a close advisor, insists that Lopez Obrador would restore credibility to Mexico’s foreign policy by reinstating its traditional principles of “self-determination” and “nonintervention” (a veiled reference to the fact that President Vicente Fox is perceived as too close to the U.S. and, as a result, too hostile to Cuba on human rights issues). “We’ll let the world take care of itself and, in reciprocity, we expect the rest of the world will leave us alone” is how Lopez Obrador puts it. But Perez Gay says that “friendly relations with the U.S. will remain the cornerstone of that policy.”

In contrast, Jorge G. Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister, says Lopez Obrador “doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to conduct” foreign policy but simply repeats old cliches about a “principled” policy that demands international “respect” and protects Mexico’s “sovereignty.” Castaneda predicts Lopez Obrador would revert to the “old trick of bullying the gringos in public and fixing the problems in private.”

Most likely, however, Lopez Obrador would adopt the foreign policies of former center-left presidents of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The possibilities range from the moderate leftist policy of Adolfo Lopez Mateos, who was president from 1958 to 1964, to the multilateral populism of Luis Echeverria (1970-76) and Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-82).

The approach Lopez Obrador could adopt would depend on which way U.S.-Mexico relations go, and the politics of immigration in the U.S. could be the final determinant.

If the ties between the two countries remain as good as they have been under Fox, a victorious Lopez Obrador probably would pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Lopez Mateos, who successfully balanced two competing needs. The former Mexican president knew that his country’s economic growth depended on American investors and U.S. preferential treatment for its exports and migrants. On the other hand, he also knew that the legacy of the nationalistic Mexican Revolution and his party’s leftist politics required him to build a bridge to revolutionary Cuba. For many years, Mexico, despite fierce U.S. pressure, was the only country in Latin America not to break diplomatic relations with Cuba.

As president, Lopez Obrador similarly could not afford to jeopardize the ever-deepening economic ties that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement has fostered between Mexico and the U.S. He also would need a healthy economy to implement his ambitious domestic agenda. Like Lopez Mateos, Lopez Obrador must flex his leftist credentials from time to time, and embracing Fidel Castro (still regarded in Latin America as the preferred icon of the left) is the easiest way to accomplish that. Thus, for Lopez Obrador, the foreign policy of Lopez Mateos could be a model.

On the other hand, if there’s a flare-up between the U.S. and Mexico, all bets are off. With the Border Patrol adding personnel, the Minutemen already there and National Guard troops headed for the area, the chances of a Mexican migrant being shot as he crosses illegally are rising. Should that, or something similar, happen, Lopez Obrador might do what Echeverria and Lopez Portillo did when the going got tough with the U.S. -- play the Latin America solidarity card.

The assumption of such a foreign policy is that if Latin American countries take a common position on issues, they will have a more equal footing with the superpower to the north.

In the 1970s, Echeverria habitually irritated the U.S. by pursuing a leadership role for Mexico in the Third World. He railed at what he called U.S. “expansionism” and support for military regimes in the Third World, condemned Zionism as a form of racism in the United Nations and allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to open an office in Mexico City.

Lopez Portillo sided openly with Nicaragua’s Sandinistas in the 1980s, and his successor, Miguel de la Madrid, sponsored the creation of the Contadora group, which sought to counter U.S. military intervention in Central America through diplomacy.

Few countries enjoy a relationship as deep and wide as that between Mexico and the U.S. NAFTA only deepened those ties by setting them on a course of economic integration, and it’s increasingly clear that no individual from either country can significantly alter that destination.

Barring a flare-up on the border, Lopez Obrador, despite his rhetoric, would likely further deepen the relationship between Mexico and the U.S.