SOME NOTES ON MEXICO’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY
By Manuel Vega Zúñiga
Pedro Castillo, Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicolás Maduro met on Saturday in Mexico, together with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the latter also being host of the 2021 Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac). In coming years, there could also be a high level representation from Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil.
Andrés Manuel’s powerful speech in his capacity as President pro tempore of CELAC a month ago in the framework of the 238th anniversary of the birth of Simón Bolívar was neither by chance nor for ornamental purposes. It involves a political praxis with a strategic vision and geopolitical horizon.
The electoral victory of AMLO and Morena has enabled the resumption of the annual CELAC Summits, after they were suspended with the return of right-wing governments in countries where anti-neoliberal political experiences had previously emerged.
Resuming and consolidating international regional integration institutions such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and CELAC would not only make it possible to confront the multilateral political-business oriented organization of ultra-right-wing blocs such as the Lima Group, but also to generate new regional conditions for commercial, political, economic, and diplomatic interaction with Europe, Asia, and North America. Such relations would be on less unequal terms, based on national sovereignty and dignity, defending the self-determination of the peoples, promoting cooperation for development and mutual aid to combat inequality and discrimination, fighting not only with moral firmness but also with material strength against imperialism, interventionism and even the coup d’états encouraged by the world powers and transnational corporations, which have placed our countries under the yoke of current imperial international law.
Without left-wing internationalism no process of global transformation is possible beyond the isolated attempts at resistance condemned to failure due to the right is might of the most powerful. With this in mind, we must struggle while at the same time thinking about the strategic modification of the correlation of forces and place not only immediate survival on the agenda, but also the possibility putting the emancipation of the peoples at center stage.
Mexico is currently experiencing a unique historical process, which we must consider from the vantage point of interpreting and rewriting the present reality, with all its limitations and contradictions, with its varied composition, which is nothing more than a reflection of the real power today in command. But we must also be aware that the plebeian powers of this historical process can be generated and expanded not from the comfortable position of the passive role of citizen-voter and/or critic in social networks, but from the vantage point of an active and mobilized population linked to concrete social organizations and struggles.
Left-wing internationalism confronts us with the challenge of strengthening society and reproducing its experiences in another way, and for this to occur it is necessary to overcome the narrow horizon of the liberal democracy of the OAS at the service of the neoliberal economy. Mexico and the long popular struggle have now, on a regional level, inaugurated the second period of progressive governments in Latin America.