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 News from Around Banderas Bay | April 2006 
He Vows to Look U.S. in the Eye
 Sean Mattson - Express-News
| | Supporters of Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderon, cheer during a campaign rally at Guadalajara City's Liberacion Plaza. The three main candidates in Mexico's presidential election all agree on one point: Young voters will play a crucial role in determining the nation's new leader. (P/Guillermo Arias) |
Puerto Vallarta — As night fell over a cramped working class neighborhood in this city that thrives on American and foreign tourism, presidential candidate Felipe Calderon might have caught even his supporters off guard describing the country he envisions.
"It won't be a Mexico bent before the United States or anyone else," Calderon forcefully told some 1,000 supporters.
Was Calderon promising a hard-nosed stance with Washington, should he become president? Or was he just pandering to a public that deeply believes its governments are subservient to the United States?
Calderon, 43, belongs to the National Action Party, or PAN, the conservative, pro-business party that ended seven decades of single party rule in 2000. Both party and candidate are considered highly compatible with Washington's free-market agenda.
But he still needs to win votes at home.
"I'm going to have a dignified relationship for Mexico with the United States," Calderon said in an interview before the Puerto Vallarta rally.
"I'll be a president who does not bow his head or lower his gaze."
Calderon takes a pragmatic approach on the estimated 400,000 Mexicans who emigrate to the United States every year.
"Immigration is not solved by a wall," he said, having joked two days earlier with students at the University of Colima about the proposed border barrier that "we'll jump over it anyway."
Sipping herbal tea on his campaign bus, Calderon hinted he would take the North American Free Trade Agreement, in effect since 1994, to the next logical step.
"In the coming two decades, I envision the whole North American region ... as a single region with a free market, not just in goods and services and investments, but also a free labor market," he said. "The region could be like the European Union."
In the battle against the illicit drug war that has littered Mexico with an estimated 1,500 corpses over the past two years, Calderon promises to purge Mexico's police forces and create a central police command for the whole country.
But he wants the United States to take greater responsibility for its role as the world's leading consumer of illicit drugs.
"I'm going to work on the side of the offer but the United States has to work more on the side of the demand," the candidate said.
Calderon, a strong second place in the polls, might be talking tough to keep up with front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-of-center ex-mayor of Mexico City.
Lopez Obrador is vaguely antagonistic toward economic globalization and is popularly perceived as someone who would get tough with the United States.
Calderon "would definitely be the one that's the easiest to work with from the United States' perspective," said Jorge Gonzalez, economics department dean with Trinity University.
"He shares the same values that most people in the U.S. have, in terms of the role of the government in the economy, and he would be much more likely to work closely with the U.S. on many bilateral issues."
Style, it seems, might be the key to improving Mexico-U.S. relations, which are still on the mend after a post-9-11 freeze.
Lopez Obrador, too, wants a European Union-style labor market but his prickliness could get in the way.
"Unfortunately, if you talk about Lopez Obrador, you're most likely to get somebody that, if a bilateral meeting takes place, he's simply going to come and say, 'It is all your fault,'" Gonzalez said. "And that is not a good starting point for any kind of negotiation." |
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