In this Issue of Voices of Mexico
Content

Our Voice

Do We Celebrate or Only Commemorate
Eighty Years of Mexican-Canadian
Diplomatic Relations?
Oliver Santín Peña

It has been eighty years since diplomatic relations were established between Mexico and Canada, fifty years since the start of the Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), thirty years since the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect —now known as the USMCA—, and twenty years since the Mexico-Canada Alliance began operating. We might now suppose there is a lot to celebrate in the bilateral sphere. But, actually, what would we be celebrating in 2024?

Chiaroscuros in the
Celebration of Eighty Years
Of Mexico-Canada Relations
Elizabeth Gutiérrez Romero

The commemoration of another decade of Mexico-Canada relations is transcendental, with many reasons for celebration. Mutual interest in sharing and moving ahead on important issues for both countries is evident. However, it occurs amidst an atmosphere that is a far cry from the promising mood of only a few years ago, when the idea of a more integrated and competitive North America still prevailed. There is no doubt that the Trump administration’s unilateral, protectionist position rarified U.S. bilateral and regional relations with its neighbors. It also affected relations between Mexico and Canada because both adopted measures to protect themselves from Trump’s onslaught, shunting to the background the deepening of the links we are now celebrating.

Creating a Shared Space for the
Mexico-Canada Relationship
Within North America
María Teresa Gutiérrez Haces

Although the diplomatic relationship between Mex­ico and Canada has existed for 80 years, it is important to note that it underwent a radical change with the negotiation and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Brief Review of the Canadian
Economy’s Financialization
Claudia Maya

Introduction
The Canadian economy’s trade and financial opening, plus its increasingly radical pro-free-market policies rooted in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, sped up the country’s integration into the U.S. economy’s logic of financialization. Financialization requires growing deregulation, particularly of the financial system, supported by economic policies completely committed to macroeconomic equilibrium, the free market, and continual budget cuts. The heterodoxic literature states that all this restricts economic and employment growth and promotes social inequality and the indebtedness of economic sectors, including households, to favor the free flow of foreign investment capital.

Mexico-Quebec Paradiplomatic Relations
Roberto Zepeda

Introduction
International relations between sub-national states and countries play a fundamental role in the configuration of contemporary global politics in different spheres. In this context, relations between the province of Quebec and Mexico are a noteworthy example of decentralized, paradiplo-matic international cooperation that has deepened with agreements between institutions of higher education, characterized by student and academic mobility and the promotion of intercultural dialogue.

Being Neighbors with a Colossus
The Case of the Arctic:
Climate Change and Geopolitics
Edit Antal

Canada and Mexico are both neighbors with a colos­sus, the United States, in one case to the south and in the other to the north. This always creates a certain ambiguity, more pronounced in Mexico’s case, given the history of interventions and cultural differences, whose enormous complexity, though widely analyzed, will not be the subject of this article. Here, we will center on the fact that being neighbors with a colossus is also Ca­na­da’s reality. This has consequences, which manifest themselves in the constant need to reaffirm its identity, to attempt to differentiate itself, thus underlining its right to exist and its sovereignty at the same time that it more or less supports or trusts its neighbor’s strength.

Art and Culture

Anthropocene Effects
Revisiting Land and Water
In Canadian and Mexican Art Histories
Johanne Sloan

Today’s Anthropocene forces us to look skeptically at the water, clouds, soil, plants, animals, and other natural phenomena that surround us, because the damage inflicted on environments, ecosystems, and living organisms is not always visible. Extending this critical gaze into the realm of art history, this essay considers how the non-human world of nature appears in historical works of art.