Voices of Mexico no. 77

Our Voice

In these times, when the superpower is indifferent, it is not a bad thing that someone from the northern part of the hemisphere pays attention to the southern part of the Americas. This should perhaps, however, be done with all due caution and reservation because the United States’ emphasis on its hemispheric agenda’s security issues since 2001 —a return to the warrior mentality— has gravely distracted from topics fundamental to the area. Mexico has also fallen into the trap of this “distraction,” not without the influence of vested interests. Economic progress and democracy have been sacrificed, and today they must be dealt with in a new way if we want to make sure that the twenty-first century does not bring our nations new cycles of crises.

Recently there has been a heated debate about the routes to be followed to deal with issues pending in the hemisphere. The road has not been easy and the climate of the debate has had its ups and downs, caused largely by the United States’ confusing policies in the region. For better or worse, we find ourselves in a region that has been part of the U.S. sphere of influence. From that perspective, our region —mainly Mexico and Central America— has been treated like the “American Mediterranean.” This analogy, conceived by Alfred Mahan, the first U.S. geo-politician, established a strong parallel between the strategic importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the great nineteenth-century European powers and that of the Caribbean Sea and Central America for the United States in the early twentieth century. Certainly, a country’s geographical position favors the concentration of its power and gives it a greater possible strategic advantage vis-à-vis its rivals. This is the basis for Washington’s persistent quest for hegemony, its reiterated blindness and its permanent tendency to intervene in other countries’ affairs even if it is not justified, which has caused a lasting paralysis in the formulation of U.S. policy toward its southern neighbors, let alone those placed in other distant regions of the world.