By Armando García
Editor and Founder of Nuestra América Magazine
This week is a historic moment, the visit to the White House of the first Mexican president, considered a leftist, nationalist, humanist and not surrender to the interests or designs of the American empire.
However, the visit of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to meet his counterpart, the cataloged anti-Mexican nefarious, Donald Trump, is for the entry into force of the USMCA, and to thank Trump for his support for Mexico by sending COVID-19 supplies to fight the pandemic and for compromising the reduction of US production of barrels of crude oil, favoring the Aztec country who could not meet the worldwide reduction ordered by the world organization of oil producers.
Obrador on the eve of his visit, said that so far in his government, the United States government has behaved up to Mexico, without confrontation, and has maintained a friendly relationship of cooperation and respect.
The visit to Washington, without a doubt, sends conflicting signals since many of his opponents consider it as a submission to Trump, who is considered a racist and because of his public statements towards Mexicans and also on the immigration controls imposed on the southern border.
Critics of the Mexican president, classify him as obedient to what Trump tells him, like when Obrador sent the National Guard to prevent the crossing of Central Americans to Mexico avoiding them not to continue on their way to the United States. With that action, many says that Obrador became the Trump Wall, south of the Mexican border.
Obrador’s supporters consider that having good, non-conflictive relations with their neighbor to the north, benefits Mexico in all economic, social, and commercial senses, echoing the words of Benito Juárez that Obrador always repeats: “all by reasonable understanding and nothing by force ”.
Although Obrador says that on this trip he will not have the opportunity to meet with organizations of Mexicans living in the United States, he will have them in his mind during his talk with Trump. Obrador does not want, at the time of US elections, to have activities, beyond those celebrating USMCA getting into effect, following the protocol of a State visit, and nothing else.
But that statement is not enough for Mexicans abroad, for those who contribute enormously to the United States economy, for those who contribute millions of dollars in remittances to Mexico, who Obrador considers them as «living heroes.» Obrador is indebted to his country people who left his country in search of opportunities that they never found in Mexico due to inequality and exploitation, which, despite the policy of the so-called Fourth Transformation, still prevails in the country of our parents and grandparents.
