With a commitment to strengthen strategies to combat organized crime, fentanyl transfers and arms trafficking, the presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the United States, Joe Biden, held their fourth bilateral meeting in San Francisco.
The challenges on the 3,100 kilometer long border that both countries share dominated the hour-long conversation. “I couldn’t have had a better partner than you,” said Biden, with whom López Obrador also discussed the situation in Venezuela and Cuba, countries to which Washington has resumed deportation flights this year despite diplomatic tensions.
It was the fourth time they met (previously there were two at the White House and one at the National Palace), this time as part of the summit of the countries that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Mechanism (APEC). The leaders agreed to move forward with regulating migration flows, an area in which the Mexican president welcomed the U.S. decision to explore legal options and cancel border wall construction.
As part of two public activities, the Mexican head of state held two fundamental meetings in the country’s international perspective: on Thursday in successive interviews with Chinese President Xi Jinping and on Friday with Biden. In both cases, interests focused on the economy and drug trafficking.
Regarding the war on drugs, Mexico pledged to remain committed to preventing the entry of chemicals and fentanyl into the United States. “We are acutely aware of the harm it is causing to young people in the United States. It is a theme that has to do with our humanism and is an act of solidarity. “We are sincerely committed to continuing to contribute in every way to preventing drug trafficking and, in particular, the infiltration of fentanyl and other chemicals,” López Obrador said.
In previous messages, Biden argued that there is no unattainable goal on the bilateral agenda if joint work is maintained: We have seen this in our security cooperation, we work side by side to combat arms trafficking, to combat organized crime combat and combat and address the opioid epidemic, he said.
The Mexican government has insisted that the U.S. must invest more in development cooperation programs in sending countries and take measures to address the structural causes of migration that go beyond finding short-term solutions focused on containment. “We must help each other so that migration becomes optional and not forced,” stressed López Obrador.
Migration, which has broken records over the past 12 months, has become the Biden administration’s Achilles heel and the Republican Party’s main source of criticism ahead of next year’s elections. Eliminating this front was one of the United States’ priorities at the last APEC summit.
This theme was also one of the central concerns of the meeting with Biden, where the Mexican president presented the conclusions of the recent summit he sponsored in Palenque, Chiapas, in the presence of several heads of state from the region.
The expansion of the border fence by just over 30 kilometers, announced during a visit by a delegation of high-ranking officials to Mexico City last month, was not well received by Mexican authorities. Mexico responded with a summit in Palenque (Chiapas) with ten other Latin American countries at the end of October on the issue of migration, which led to a critical stance on the US sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela as the trigger for the migration crisis.
The White House reported that both leaders agreed on the options available to them to expand law enforcement cooperation to combat human trafficking, illicit drug and arms trafficking, and violent transnational criminal organizations to dismantle these smuggling networks that are terrorizing our communities.
In his public message, López Obrador praised current US policies, emphasizing the lifting of the construction of walls that do not act as a strategy to combat irregular transit and the opening of a legal path through temporary permits administered from the countries of origin that migrants do not have to cross the whole of Mexico through suffering and with a variety of risks. “It is a very humane way to address the migration phenomenon,” López Obrador said.
Biden emphasized López Obrador’s leadership in finding other options to solve this problem. He assured that the United States is pursuing a balanced approach enshrined in the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, signed by 20 nations. This includes enforcing US borders and opening a number of legal routes for migrants.
On the economic front, Biden claimed that policies in both countries are designed to grow their economies from the bottom up and from the center out, so that not only the rich benefit, but all of our citizens.
The Mexican president confirmed the relationship that, at the economic level, has led to bilateral exchanges becoming the most important trading partners in the world: “This is something extraordinary and they have celebrated that the pursuit of economic integration has made it possible.” “Mexico will become the United States’ most important trading partner.”
López Obrador took the time in his official meeting to address a message to his compatriots, arguing that the residence of 40 million Mexicans in the United States is an expression of brotherhood between peoples.
The Mexican delegation consisted of Foreign Ministers Alicia Bárcena; of National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval; from the Navy, Rafael Ojeda, and from the Economy, Raquel Buenrostro, as well as from Roberto Velasco, Director for North America at the State Department.
Both leaders came to the meeting after holding separate meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. The United States and China agreed to step up cooperation in the fight against trafficking in chemical precursors, which are crucial to the synthetic drug trade chain from Asia to North America.
Mexico, considered only a transit area, followed the lines of this agreement and called on Beijing to increase information sharing in the joint fight against drug trafficking and to support the control of substances used to produce fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, which have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States.
On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping met and congratulated López Obrador on the “path of progress and reform that he has set for Mexico since he came to power five years ago.” He also offered to help Mexico after the hurricane’s devastating effects and expressed his willingness to work with López Obrador to take bilateral relations “to a new level.”
President Porfirio Díaz had already said it at the end of the 19th century: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” But López Obrador corrected her a few years ago by pointing out: “Blessed Mexico, so close to God and not so far from the United States.”
*Mexican anthropologist associated with the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE, www.estrategia.la)
Source: https://estrategia.la/2023/11/18/biden-y-lopez-obrador-migracion-frontera-trafico-de-drogas-y-armas/