AMLO Goes to Washington July 2020
“Pobre Mexico, tan lejos de Dios, tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.“
Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.
President Porfirio Diaz
The Mexican President must go to Washington if he wants the petroleum contracts that only the Americans can provide. His country’s economy demands submission, which means indulging the whims of a man with “obvious cognitive defects,“ as candidate Lopez Obrador once said of Trump. He also called Trump a racist. AMLO was right then, but now as president, he is a changed man, sucked into the event horizon of a black hole with golden hair.
“I’m using Mexico to protect our border.” This was what the US President said when he pressured AMLO to militarize the southern border with Central America last year, thus creating an immigration crisis for the country. When the gates closed, a flood began south of Frontera Norte, as people poured into a country without social services. Thus, the entire nation becomes a moat—or a “moot“, as Donald Trump calls it—although one full of humans rather than his requested “snakes and alligators.“ AMLO has acquiesced to the northern brute, going so far as to arm the Guatemalan border with a newly organized National Guard. This is effectively Trump’s wall—a two-thousand mile barrier of humanity—and Mexicans are paying the cost.
With the number of COVID19 deaths in Mexico at 30,000, Narco Despensas of food and supplies replace government assistance, especially in the rural districts where it is easier to buy silence. While state coffers dwindle, traficante production skyrockets to meet increased American demand. The Yanquis have become more addicted and poorer, so cocaine profits give way to fentanyl and crystal methamphetamine, which can be locally rendered, cheaply, without the involvement of those crazy Colombians.
Antonio Manuel Lopez Obrador is so far losing the battle he declared against corruption and organized crime, at least in the public mind, as the Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartel repositions itself as Robin Hood, a tradition of ambivalence dating back to the Napoleonic occupation. Gang members deliver medicine to clinics, occasionally with notes of best wishes from the lords themselves, along with rice and milk and soap. Curfews are enforced through ritual executions. Security through terror.
When the President seized a thousand suspicious bank accounts in the capital last week, Jalisco NG responded by trying to assassinate the Police Chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch. Hundreds of shots were fired in a ritzy Chapultepec neighborhood, hitting the Chief in the knee, the arm, and the chest. His two bodyguards died at the scene. Ciudad Mexico (CDMX) is generally considered off-limits for these types of hits, but at least one cartel seems willing to make exceptions.
This is the situation back home as Obrador goes to Washington, a White House visit that Enrique Peña Nieto previously refused and Vicente Fox condemned with expletives. AMLO, on the other hand, is more partial to Abrazos—AMLOve, it is called—but now seems hardly the time for hugging strangers.
“He has completely changed his rhetoric,“ lies the old Tabasco man.
Meanwhile, a private plane crashes on Mexican highway carrying 860 pounds of cocaine, although this should not daunt Lopez Obrador, who is flying commercial to the States, having raffled off the presidential jet. Rumor has it the eventual buyer has Colombian connections, but this is super secret information, like the ransom he paid the Sinaloa Cartel to keep peace in Culiacan.
He dismisses Covid19 reality with his own “secret data,“ expressing surprise that he is not simply believed, and vilifying the press for it. “I told you I already won in 2006,“ he chides the naysayers, referring to his seminal defeat. “And you didn’t believe me then! Fake news!“ It seems like a page from the dark art of the deal. Trump’s meeting has been billed as a celebration of unity, but the Canadian Prime Minister is skipping it. The needy American president gets AMLOve all to himself.