AMLO Meets with Trump in D.C.

Note: It’s beyond the purview of this diary to speculate as the many possible reasons AMLO’s election had been celebrated so widely as the ‘Great New Hope for Mexico’.

‘Lopez Obrador’s Visit to Trump is a Betrayal of the U.S. and Mexican People’, Laura Carlsen, July 8, 2020

“To praise a tyrant is to insult a people. López Obrador’s proposed visit to Washington is an insult to the American people, and especially to the 37 million Mexican migrants who live in the United States.  The purpose of the state visit with Donald Trump on July 8 is to celebrate the entry into force of the Mexico-United States-Canada Treaty (T-MEC) on July 1. It comes at the worst possible time.

First, AMLO is traveling to the United States at the height of the pandemic in both countries. In the U.S., a new outbreak concentrated in the southern states has secured its position as the world leader in deaths from COVID-19, largely attributed to the lack of measures and strategies by the federal government and the disregard for scientific knowledge that President Trump and his supporters publicly express.” […]

“If the health context is serious, the political context is even more serious. The main purpose of López Obrador’s first trip abroad, his first since taking office a year and a half ago, is to display the good relationship he has with Donald Trump. Appeasement has always been AMLO’s strategy, ignoring Trump’s racist, authoritarian and often illegal actions, and accommodating aggressions against Mexico and the cruel treatment of the migrant community. Now he plans to pat Trump on the back at a critical moment for Trump’s reelection campaign. With only four months to go until the presidential elections, everything Trump does is thought out in electoral terms. He’s losing in the polls. Trump needs at least part of the Latino vote, and the praise of the Mexican president will serve to dress him up as a statesman and friend of Mexico, despite the constant attacks.

The Mexican president’s show of political support for Donald Trump will also come at a time of massive protests in the United States against racism, and the growth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This movement is profoundly radical – anti-capitalist, feminist and pro-human rights–the antithesis of Trump-ism. With broad support from many sectors of U.S. society that are fed up with a repressive government of the 1%, the movement has made remarkable progress in defending human life and proposing new visions for society.”

I admit I’m uncomfortable that she calls the Black Lives Movement ‘feminist’, but it may be that she’s imagining the three founders: Garza, Cullors, and Tometi who have indeed been funded by the Ford Foundation to essentially sheep-dog for the Democratic Party, according to Glen Ford at BAR, but travel under the flag of LGBT as well.

But clearly the movement has spread globally, often under the BLM banner, with different nations protesting police assassinations of their own George Floyds.

‘Mr. López Obrador goes to Washington: Mexican president kowtows to his “friend” Donald Trump’, Eric London, 9 July 2020, wsws.org

“Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s appearance with Donald Trump yesterday will rank in history as among the most demeaning and sycophantic visits to Washington by any Latin American head of state.

López Obrador, known in Mexico as AMLO, won a landslide election in 2018 by pledging that he could unite Mexican workers, peasants and the “progressive” sections of the capitalist class to end austerity and stand up to decades of exploitation by American corporations. AMLO’s visit to Washington confirms that all such promises are fraudulent, as the interests of all sections of Mexico’s ruling class are entirely antagonistic to those of the country’s working masses.

During his visit, AMLO allowed his government to be used as a prop in Trump’s efforts to distract the American population from his administration’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The goal of the Mexican ruling class and its American handlers is to protect the profits of American and Mexican corporations, secure a swift and deadly return to work, and stymie the growing influence of China across Latin America.” […]

“This exchange shows why the Mexican president’s visit is so unpopular in Mexico. AMLO’s poll numbers are sinking as Mexico climbs in the global rankings of coronavirus deaths.

“You have treated us as we are, a country and a people that are dignified, free, democratic and sovereign,” AMLO said to the man who referred to Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals,” deployed thousands of soldiers to the US-Mexico border and threatened to impose massive tariffs on imports from Mexico to extract concessions in trade negotiations. This is the man, moreover, whose immigration agencies are terrorizing immigrants—including millions from Mexico—on a daily basis throughout the US.

During his remarks in the Rose Garden, AMLO justified his relationship with his “friend” Trump by referencing Benito Juárez, Mexico’s president from 1858 to 1872, who led Mexico’s war against the Franco-Habsburg occupation of Mexico and who collaborated with US President Abraham Lincoln in opposing French involvement on the continent.

AMLO’s analogy is an insult to the legacy of both Juárez and Lincoln. While Juárez took up arms against the French, AMLO took a delegation of Mexican billionaires and millionaires by the arm to dine with the fascistic Trump. At a corporate dinner last night, Carlos Slim and various bankers represented Mexico. CNBC reported that the American attendees included “FedEx Chairman and CEO Fred Smith, UPS Executive Chairman David Abney, Intel CEO Bob Swan and Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet, according to a partial list obtained by CNBC.” The business cable channel added that executives from Sempra, Shell, Ford, Nucor and other corporations were also slated to attend.” […]

File under: ‘Comprador Grifter meets with his Counterpart’.

“AMLO was called to Washington by corporate America to pledge that Mexican workers will be forced to keep supply chains running, no matter the death toll, making possible the full “reopening” of the United States. Doctors and health officials in northern Mexican cities, home to many maquiladora sweatshops that produce parts for export to the US, have warned that morgues are filling with the dead bodies of workers killed after contracting the virus on the job.

Beyond the pandemic, the USMCA’s overall purpose is to integrate supply chains across North America at the expense of China. In a Wall Street Journal article published July 6, former Trump National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster praised AMLO and Trump, noting that “the reduction of trade barriers among the USMCA’s parties will strengthen US, Mexican and Canadian supply chains, returning manufacturing jobs to North America from China.” […]

“AMLO referenced these geostrategic interests when he stated that the purpose of the USMCA was to seek “a better integration of our economies and a better functioning of the productive channels, to recuperate the economic presence that North America has lost in the last five decades.”

I’m guessing this must be the correct video (25 mins.);  I haven’t watched it.

London then quotes  Jacobin op-ed that claims that AMLO is inspired by ‘liberation theology’ and lives it himself, and links to four other wsws titles on AMLO below.

I will say that the Zapatistas sure never trusted him, even though he’d “Reached out to them”.  For instance:  ‘We won’t back AMLO’s projects’ [nor his ‘non-militarization’ hypocrisy] at globaljusticeecology.org, Jan. 3, 2019.  One outtake:

“The Maya Train is a large-scale infrastructure project proposed by Lopez Obrador to connect the whole Yucatan Peninsula for tourism, transportation and economic purposes.

To mark the start of the project, Lopez Obrador held a traditional ceremony “to ask Mother Earth for permission” with sympathizing local Indigenous leaders and organizations, a move that was criticized by many because “Mother Earth couldn’t give him an answer.”

The EZLN called Lopez Obrador a trickster. “The one in power is treacherous,” said Moises. “He says he’s with the people of Mexico and keeps tricking the Indigenous people, bowing to Earth asking it for permission and saying that all Indigenous peoples believe him, but we tell him we don’t believe him.”

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)