Voices of Mexico no. 81

Our Voice

The election campaign in the United States has forced many actors close to and partners of that coun- try to express their preferences more directly than at other times in the recent past. Aside from the issue of the Iraq war —which seems to have resuscitated after Senator Hillary Clinton's criticisms of President Bush on the fifth anniversary of that unfortunate bellicose adventure that has Washington turned upside down— central domestic issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and migration have had a decided effect on the debate. This has forced the three contenders still occupying the polit- ical arena to take what turned out to be contradictory positions on them on several occasions.
This is mainly the case of the Democrats. Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have criticized NAFTA and offered their constituencies the possibility of renewing or even canceling it. Obama himself had to reconsider his position after it leaked that his campaign staff had offered the Canadians assur- ances that he had no plans to negatively affect the treaty, and that it was just a matter for domestic con- sumption, for which it was a good idea to have a double discourse. This caused some resentment in Mexican circles and a big fuss among Democrats, to the point that Senator Clinton took advantage of the moment to launch harsh criticisms against her adversary. These certainly did great damage and probably were the cause of Obama's losing Ohio and Texas, two states sensitive to the issue of regional integration and free trade.