By Juan Hernandez
María Soria Martínez, originally from San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, lost her migrant husband on December 31, 2022. Although no government program will be able to cover the absence of her loved one, being with her in these difficult times is the least we can do. As diplomatic bickering between the United States and Mexico continues, I had the opportunity to present Maria with a Safe Path grant. “Beyond the financial help they are giving us, the most important thing is that we are not alone,” María told me. When our governor, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, created the Secretariat for Migrants and International Liaison, he did so precisely to have humanitarian programs available to Guanajuatenses when they most needed them. Perhaps this spirit of solidarity is what should prevail whenever there is a disagreement between the rulers of the United States and Mexico, and not tweets as a form of negotiation.
The arena of political struggle continues to be encouraged by the disagreements between the two nations. Now, the contention is over fentanyl trafficking. Last week, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador received Democratic and Republican legislators in charge of monitoring the Treaty between Mexico-United States-Canada (T-MEC). Although the agenda was to vent commercial issues, the U.S. ambassador, Ken Salazar, hinted that other issues were also addressed. «Sometimes there are concerns and disagreements, but we know that we are united,» he said when saying goodbye to the Mexican president. Salazar, by the way, has visited him three times in the last week alone to smooth things over and calm things down. Let us not forget that in politics nothing is a coincidence and that the following year both countries will risk their respective presidencies, so each meeting or disagreement can impact the interests of these two nations that love each other like brothers, but who fight with the same intensity.
At the same time that AMLO and the North American legislators agreed on economic matters, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, fulfilled an equally important and strategic task in the United States. He met with the 52 Mexican consuls to launch a campaign to defend Mexico, as the federal government itself defines it. “We will not allow them to run over us,” Ebrard commented when explaining that the campaign is to counterbalance the statements that some Republicans have made in recent days, in which they blame our country for the crisis that the United States is experiencing for the consumption of fentanyl. Such has been the escalation of this problem that some Republican legislators are even demanding the intervention of their army in Mexico. Political analysts are still arguing about who wins or loses more with this polarization between the two nations that has been growing in recent weeks. It has defined a common objective in both countries: not to lose an iota of ground in the next electoral contests of 2024.
Beyond the diplomatic disagreements caused by various issues such as insecurity, the fight against drug trafficking, or migration, specialists see that the nationalist flag that both countries have adopted could be defining in the presidential elections, not only in the United States, but also in Mexico. For example, the approval in our country of the electoral reform, called Plan B, allows voting abroad to be carried out by post, electronically, and in person at consulates with INE credentials, consular registration, or passport. Close to 12 million first-generation Mexicans live in the U.S. The constitutional reform of 2021 (with which there are already more than 38 million Mexicans abroad, of second and third generation), means the vote beyond our borders could decide everything.
Now, if we focus on the electoral race in the U.S., things are on fire with the return to the political scene of Donald Trump and his entire hate campaign against immigrants. For this reason, the controversies that have arisen between the U.S. and Mexico in recent weeks have become more relevant. Let us not forget that Mike Pompeo shook the Mexican foreign minister himself by assuring in his book that the Stay in Mexico program was negotiated behind the scenes. Or what can we say about the call that the president of Mexico himself would make to our countrymen who live in our neighbor to the north not to vote for the Republicans, who have taken advantage of the situation to rekindle anti-Mexican sentiment?
The arena of political struggle is still on. Meanwhile, at the National Coordination of Migrant Service Offices, CONOFAM, we agree to put political interests aside to continue fulfilling our mission: to help María, Guadalupe, José, or any migrant who needs us.
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Juan Hernández is currently the secretary of migration and international liaison of the government of Guanajuato and collaborates for the newspaper El Sol del Bajío. This column was published with permission.
