By Will Grant
BBC News, Mexico City
No sooner had losing US candidate Mitt Romney uttered the words "I have just called President Obama" than Mexico's president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto took to Twitter congratulate his soon-to-be counterpart.
He was looking forward to working together, he wrote, on common issues for their two nations.
But beyond the obvious diplomatic platitudes, some might question how much the continuation of an Obama administration will really benefit Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
Certainly President Obama's victory was met with relief in the Americas.
Merely on a practical level, four more years of an incumbent president is far more attractive to most governments in the region than having to get to know a new leader who would need time to learn the ropes of international diplomacy.
Deportation
However, the satisfaction, if not actual celebration, felt in Latin America over President Obama's victory is based much more on his political and ideological position rather than mere practicalities.
Immigration reform is a key issue
It is clear that the immigration debate was crucial in returning President Obama to the White House.
Yet ironically, as has been pointed out by English- and Spanish-speaking commentators alike, more undocumented immigrants were deported in President Obama's first term than under any other president since the 1950s. Read more.
The MexicoBlog of the Americas Program, a fiscally sponsored program of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is written by Laura Carlsen. I monitor and analyze international press on Mexico, with a focus on security, immigration, human rights and social movements for peace and justice, from a feminist perspective. And sometimes I simply muse.
Showing posts with label U.S. Elections 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Elections 2012. Show all posts
Nov 4, 2012
Are Obama, Romney ignoring Mexico's drug war?
By Susana Seijas, Special to CNN
Thu November 1, 2012
Mexico City (CNN) -- "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States," is something I heard a lot growing up in Mexico in the 1980s. How that saying, first coined by President Porfirio Diaz around the turn of the 20th century, resonates today.
With the U.S. election next door, Mexico seems not only far from God, but forgotten. In the past six years, 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence. Some say the death toll could be as high as 100,000. Yet the violence here didn't make it into the last U.S. presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
We may share a 2,000 mile border, but the view from here -- notwithstanding our trade relationship and the hunger for drugs in the U.S. that is fueling the bloodshed and flooding my country with weapons -- is that we're truly off the radar. Read more.
Thu November 1, 2012
Mexico City (CNN) -- "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States," is something I heard a lot growing up in Mexico in the 1980s. How that saying, first coined by President Porfirio Diaz around the turn of the 20th century, resonates today.
With the U.S. election next door, Mexico seems not only far from God, but forgotten. In the past six years, 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence. Some say the death toll could be as high as 100,000. Yet the violence here didn't make it into the last U.S. presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
We may share a 2,000 mile border, but the view from here -- notwithstanding our trade relationship and the hunger for drugs in the U.S. that is fueling the bloodshed and flooding my country with weapons -- is that we're truly off the radar. Read more.
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