Calderon’s Latest U.S. Visit: More Macho Mexican Meddling

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has just returned from a trip to the U.S.

Wait a minute! Didn’t Calderon visit the U.S. just two months ago?

Yes, he certainly did. I reported on his February hobnobbing with the American ruling class in this article and this blog entry.

If you keep up with Mexican news, you also know that it’s not like Calderon has nothing to do in Mexico. There’s an ongoing political crisis over the desperately-needed reform of Mexico’s state oil monopoly PEMEX. In fact, filibustering opposition politicians have seized the podiums in both federal legislative chambers, forcing other legislators to meet elsewhere.

But apparently Calderon felt his trip to the U.S. was so important that he had to leave Mexico. After all, he attended the fourth annual summit of the nation-merging SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which is not popular with everybody in Mexico either.

Of course, this year the SPP summit was not officially an SPP summit. It’s been renamed the "North American Leaders’ Summit". President Bush, President Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper converged in New Orleans earlier this week, Monday-Tuesday April 21-22nd.

On the agenda for Bush and Calderon: the re-opening of the New Orleans Mexican Consulate, which had been closed in 2002 for budgetary reasons. It’s now being re-opened due to the growth in the Mexican population there since Hurricane Katrina. i.e. because they are displacing African Americans from construction jobs.

Mexico could save a lot of money by shutting down a lot of consulates. But that’s not in the cards. Consulates are, after all, centers of pro-illegal agitation. Mexican diplomats are never reprimanded by U.S. officials for their political meddling, although it certainly doesn’t fall under the rubric of legitimate diplomatic activity.

In his remarks at the re-opening, with President Bush standing right there, Calderon actually said that, with the consulate back in operation,

"…we can guarantee that Mexicans who live and work in Louisiana and Mississippi have the support of the government of Mexico. My commitment is that wherever there is a Mexican, there also is the backing of the government of Mexico.”