MEXICO CITY, MEXICO — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday he plans to travel to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump, an announcement that was met with a storm of criticism in Mexico.
López
Obrador said he wants to make his first trip abroad in the first week of July
to mark the start of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade accord, which was
negotiated with the Trump administration.
Trump is
deeply unpopular in Mexico because of his remarks about the country. And
Mexicans remember former President Enrique Peña Nieto’s ill-starred meeting
with Trump that many feel strengthened Trump as a candidate in the 2016
election. Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department then issued a statement saying
López Obrador’s administration wants to steer clear of the U.S. elections.
The two
leaders have displayed surprisingly cordial relations despite ideological
differences. Trump said of López Obrador on Tuesday: “He’s really a great guy.
I think he’ll be coming into Washington pretty soon.” López Obrador has called
Trump a friend and said his administration has shown respect for Mexico
Roberto
Velasco Álvarez, the Foreign Relations Department’s director of North American
affairs, wrote in his Twitter account that “Mexican diplomacy is based on
building bridges with all people.”
“The
main objective of the meeting proposed by President López Obrador is promoting
our interests, and is not related to internal (U.S.) political processes,”
Velasco Alvarez wrote.
The
critics were out in force, though.
Mexico’s
former ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhán, called the trip “a colossal
political, electoral, diplomatic and long-term strategic error.”
“Trump
is only interested in using the Mexican president as a theatrical prop for the
elections,” wrote Sarukhán. “For broad sectors of U.S. society, visiting Trump
now, when the country is experiencing its deepest social and ideological crisis
in 50 years … will be interpreted by many here as a show of support for the
most polarizing president in modern U.S. history.”
Though
he is famous in Mexico for declining international travel, López Obrador said
early Wednesday that he wants to go to Washington. He said he hopes Canada will
participate in the meeting as well, “but at any rate we will go because it is
very important to participate at the launch of an agreement that I consider
historic.”
The
president has studiously avoided conflict with Mexico’s much larger neighbor,
even after Trump threatened to put crippling tariffs on Mexican goods imported
into the U.S. unless Mexico did more to stop migrant caravans. Mexico
effectively blocked the caravans.
Trump
angered many Mexicans when as a candidate in 2016, he said Mexicans crossing
the border brought drugs, crime and “tremendous infectious disease” to the
U.S.. At the time, critics said Peña Nieto gave him a pulpit when he invited
both U.S. candidates to Mexico City in 2016, but only Trump accepted. After
taking office, Trump continued to promise to build a border wall and make
Mexico pay for it.
In a
recent piece for the Washington Post, Mexican columnist León Krauze wrote about
the 2016 meeting, “Why would López Obrador, who was so critical of Peña Nieto’s
decision to prop up Trump during a contentious election, risk international
opprobrium and condemnation at home over the exact same mistake?”
Krauze
noted López Obrador hasn’t yet discussed meeting with Democratic Party
candidate Joe Biden.
“It
could simply be another step in the Mexican president’s strange appeasement of
the American president, a plan that has led him to embrace controversial
immigration measures far from the humanitarian approach he promised as a
candidate,” Krauze wrote.
https://wtop.com/latin-america/2020/06/mexican-presidents-plan-to-meet-trump-meets-with-criticism/