Arturo smells blackmail

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

A few days ago, Jorge Ramos of Univision interviewed former Mexican ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan. His analysis of how President Andres Lopez-Obrador greeted the Biden delegation is sound:

AMBASSADOR ARTURO SARUKHAN: President Biden fundamentally needs Mexican support and López Obrador knows it and on the one hand he is taking advantage of it to carry out what I would call diplomatic blackmail...

RAMOS: Why… what…

SARUKHAN: …by asking President Biden to…

RAMOS: What do you mean by blackmail?

SARUKHAN: Yes. To suspend, as López Obrador says, the United States' "blockade" of Cuba, forgetting that this is not an (American) executive power, but a Congressional power. Second, calling for sanctions on Venezuela to be removed, asking for billions of dollars in support for Central America. And deep down it is also a kind of blackmail, because I believe that what we are seeing, Jorge, what we have seen in recent months is the Mexican government opening and closing the valve of migratory flows to the border. That is, they close, open, close and open to create pressure on the Biden administration and thereby do a very important thing: obtain diplomatic capital so that when the Mexican presidential campaign begins to take shape, as it begins to gain speed, López Obrador can use that capital of “I am helping you” in order to prevent the United States from raising its voice and saying, “what’s going on with the election in Mexico?”

The former ambassador may be right. However, I don't think that Lopez-Obrador is trying to help his party's candidate. I think that this is all about a post presidency Lopez-Obrador. In other words, AMLO knows that there are no votes in the U.S. Congress to legalize millions of migrants. It would be stupid for Biden to cancel the Cuban embargo and lose Florida for sure.

So this is about AMLO positioning himself as the "el presidente" of the migrants. He wants to use whatever forum he has to became a voice for the Third World and migrant issues are huge in that corner.

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