The headlines this morning from Felipe Calderon’s visit Thursday with President Barack Obama show a bilateral relationship on the mend. The New York Times and LA Times highlight the announcement, made at Thursday’s joint news conference, of a “breakthrough” on a longstanding trade dispute that has prevented Mexican semi-trucks from carrying goods across the US border. According to the Times, the Obama administration now says Mexican carriers will be allowed to take part in a cross-border trucking operations – per 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement – should Mexican trucks meet basic US “safety standards.” In return the Calderon government agreed to a two-part reduction in tariffs on a variety of American products. The first half of those reductions will go into effective immediately while the remaining 50 percent will be ended when the first Mexican trucks are actually allowed to cross into the US.
As the LA Times notes, the program has been criticized by unions and the American trucking industry for some time because of the effect it is expected to have on US trucking jobs.
A White House statement about what was discussed Thursday between Mr. Obama and Mr. Calderon also has the appearance of normalcy. In addition to the trucking dispute, the White House highlights discussions about bi-national “regulatory cooperation,” as well as energy and environment matters.
But a Washington Post piece suggests there was much more behind Thursday’s public cordiality. Speaking with the Post Thursday, Calderon said a series of Wikileaked cables criticizing Mexico’s fight against organized crime had caused “severe damage” to the US-Mexico relationship. Calderon in a discussion with Post reporters and editors:
“It’s difficult if suddenly you are seeing the courage of the army [questioned]. For instance, they have lost probably 300 soldiers ... and suddenly somebody in the American embassy, they [say] the Mexican soldiers aren't brave enough…Or you decide to play the game that they are not coordinated enough, and suddenly start to bring information to one agency and not to the other and try to get them to compete.”
In what the paper calls Calderon’s “strongest comments to date” about comments made in Wikileaks diplomatic cables, the Mexican president took specific aim at US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual – the author of many of the cables in-question. When asked by the paper whether he’d “lost confidence” in Pascual, the Post writes that Calderon first paused before remarking: “It's difficult to build and it's easy to lose.”
The Post goes so far as to speculate that the relationship between the Mexican government and the US embassy is so damaged that Pascual could be recalled – what would be the “most prominent U.S. casualty of the WikiLeaks scandal,” according to the paper.
Ambassador Pascual was apparently present at yesterday’s meeting between Calderon and Obama. No word yet about whether or not the two men were able to talk through their differences, although the New York Times quotes an anonymous US official who said yesterday that the Obama administration had no plans to recall Ambassador Pascual.
“We told [Calderon] Pascual is our ambassador,” the US official tells the Times, “And that was that.”
With Calderon out of town, another busy day in Mexico. Here’s your recap:
· In Mexico’s capital city the AP reports that a judge ordered authorities to stop screenings of a new documentary about shortcomings in the Mexican justice system. The film “Presunto Culpable,” which focuses on the questionable 2005 murder conviction of 26-year-old Antonio Zuniga (a decision that was later overturned), opened in Mexico in mid February. But this week a judge decided to pull the film from theaters after one of the prosecution’s witnesses, shown in the film, alleged that his right to privacy was violated by the documentary. Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter Thursday his administration will appeal the court’s ruling, calling it an “abuse against freedom.” The country’s Interior Minister has also said it will appeal.
· Reports from El Diario that the 20-year-old woman who made headlines in November 2010 for becoming the police chief of the Chihuahua town of Praxedis G. Guerrero, Marisol Valles García, has left that post after receiving a series of death threats. The paper says she has already fled to the US and is now petitioning the for asylum More from El Blog del Narco. Meanwhile, in Torreón, another northern Mexican city plagued by drug-related violence, the Wall Street Journal writes on an attack of the convoy Gen. Carlos Villa, one of the countless military men now running a local police force.
· From Juarez, EFE on the closure of some 2000 city streets in the border city – apparently an attempt at preventing the free movement of armed groups.
· The LA Times reports this morning on a federal “anti-gun trafficking” operation which intentionally allowed suspected weapons smugglers to pass guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels so the weapon’s movement could then be traced. The problem, according to the Times: the fact that ATF authorities in charge of the 15-month operation, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” lost track of hundreds of those weapons they were trying to track. Highlighting the blood which covers ATF’s hands, the Times quotes John Dodson, an agent with the ATF who worked on Operation Fast and Furious, and recently spoke with the DC-based Center for Public Integrity:
“With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed. There is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.”
The killing of an Arizona of Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry in December is perhaps the most high-profile murder which can be linked backed to the failed operation.
· The Wall Street Journal reports on an economic battle raging between three of Mexico’s richest men and telecom moguls – Carlos Slim, Emilio Azcárraga, and Ricardo Salinas – over how to slice up ownership of the country’s $35 billion-a-year media market.
· The Financial Times with an interesting report on how some in Washington see congressional worries about spending and the budget deficit being a potential opening to discuss seriously a new US drug policy.
· And the AP on the arrest of eight Mexican soldiers Thursday, caught transporting almost one ton of cocaine through Tijuana. The AP says “while corruption is widespread among Mexican police, the military has rarely been accused of colluding with drug cartels.” The arrest comes on the same day the State Department released its 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report – a report whose numbers seem fraught with problems, as both Adam Isacson (here and here) and Boz demonstrate quite clearly. H/T to the latter who notes the difficulty in believing yesterday’s seizure of coke in Tijuana could have possibly equaled 10% of all the cocaine seized last year in Mexico. But that’s what it would have been if you believe the new State Dept. numbers.
· Beyond Mexico, a significant follow-up on our headline yesterday. With labor protests looming in Venezuela, trade unionist Ruben Gonzalez was granted “conditional freedom” Thursday, just days after being sentenced to over seven years in prison for organizing a 2009 work stoppage at an iron-ore plant in Ciudad Guyana. Provea has a statement on Gonzalez’s release, calling the decision by the Criminal Chamber of the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia a major victory. Worries about trade union freedom continue, however. As Provea notes, 125 trade unionists are still facing similar charges around Venezuela. And Aporrea today reports on new threats made by a group of unidentified men against the family of union activist José Melendez, the man quoted in our coverage of the Gonzalez case yesterday.
· In Colombia, the New York Times with the latest report on the struggle between left wing rebels and right wing paramilitary groups over gold and the rising value it holds. “These groups are metamorphosing to take advantage of the opportunities they see,” says Jeremy McDermott, a director of In Sight, based in Medellín. “They know there’s a huge new revenue stream within their grasp, and they’re grabbing it.”
· Also, in Colombia, IPS interviews rights activist Patricia Guerrero of the Displaced Women’s League about the on-going threat of paramilitary groups.
· In Peru, the BBC says a government-launched security operation aimed at dislodging wildcat gold miners in the Amazon has been called off after at least two miners were killed by security forces this week.
· Meanwhile, in the Brazilian Amazon, a court has reversed a judge’s decision to block the construction of the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric dam project in the state of Pará – a project which the BBC calls the “cornerstone” of Dilma Rousseff’s attempt to modernize the country’s infrastructure. TIME suggests China may offer Brazil some lessons for how to build (or how not to build) its proposed “mega-dam.”
· The trial of Alan Gross is set to begin today in Havana. The AP has coverage while Larry Wilkerson and Arturo Lopez-Levy comment on how the Gross case might be resolved, at Steve Clemons’s Washington Note.
· In El Salvador, El Faro reports that the country’s Legislative Assembly has at last granted final approval to a Transparency and Access to Information Law which will go into effect one year after being published in the official registry. The issue of how long the government should be granted to implement the law had been the subject of significant debate in recent weeks. But in the end, legislators appear to have granted the Funes government the one year it requested. Again, more of the specifics from El Faro.
· More economic news from Brazil in the Wall Street Journal which continues to highlight fears of economic “overheating.”
· Contrasting interpretations of recent protests against Evo Morales in Bolivia from the Economist and Benjamin Dangl at The Guardian. More on the matter from NACLA earlier in the week.
· The Economist also looks this week at the arrival of Venezuela’s fiber-optic cable to Cuba last month – specifically what increased Cuban access to the blogosphere might mean for the country’s politics.
· Finally, on Chavez’s offer to mediate the Libyan crisis. The New York Times reports Venezuelan officials are saying Col. Muammar Gaddafi accepted Venezuelan mediation yesterday. Gaddafi’s son, Saif al Islam, says that’s not the case and is not interested in any sort of “foreign intervention” – Venezuelan or otherwise. Al-Jazeera adds this morning that the US and France have dismissed Venezuela’s attempt at mediation. As an aside, geography is not Saif al Islam’s strong suit. Reuters quotes Gadaffi’s son referring to Venezuela as part of Central America Thursday.
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