AMLO champions cheap gasoline ... for Americans!
Mexico's populist president, fresh from inaugurating a new refinery, publicized his pro-oil preferences while visiting Washington, which wants him to embrace renewable energy
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made an unusual boast, while meeting with President Joe Biden on July 12. AMLO, as the Mexican leader is known, boasted that gasoline costs less in Mexico. He even encouraged Americans to cross the border to take advantage of the lower prices. AMLO told Biden during a lengthy soliloquy in the oval office:
“Pemex could immediately increase its inventories, that’s to say, guarantee double the supply of regular gasoline at service stations in border cities, which would supply U.S. motorists since as of today a gallon costs $4.78 on average in that country and $3.12 in Mexico.”
Likewise, we decided to allow, while the price of gasoline in the United States falls … that Americans who live near our border can fill up for less on the Mexican side.
Even better, according to AMLO, the gasoline sold in the border region largely comes from the Pemex-owned refinery in Deer Park, Texas. It’s a facility, “which you allowed us to buy,” AMLO said, referring to Pemex purchasing its share in the refinery from its former partner Shell.
The topic touched on one Biden’s biggest political vulnerabilities: high gasoline prices. And it drew the terse response from Biden, who retorted, “It has gone down for 30 days in a row.” It also made headlines.
AMLO failed to mention that Mexico slashes gasoline taxes in the borderlands so motorists fill up on the Mexican side – even though stations in Mexico are notorious for shortchanging customers by dispatching incomplete litres through crooked gas pumps and selling adulterated and watered-down fuel. He also said nothing about Mexico subsidizing gasoline prices to the tune of 601 billion pesos ($30 billion) over the past two years, according to journalist Juan Ortiz of Lupa Legislativa.
‘WE IGNORED THE SIREN SONGS,’ WHICH PREDICTED THE END OF OIL
The promotion of cheaper gas prices in Mexico – and awkwardness it caused Biden – highlighted the lack of affinity between the two presidents, along with their diverging agendas. While Biden has pushed for a clean energy transition – and sent climate envoy John Kerry to Mexico on multiple occasions to lobby AMLO – the Mexican president has bet big on fossil fuels, while seeming to show antipathy for renewables.
His bet on fossil fuels has been so big that he inaugurated a behemoth refinery less than two weeks before traveling to Washington. AMLO so prioritized “rescuing” Pemex and building the refinery that he never stopped pumping money into them – even during the pandemic, when Mexico’s economy cratered and its response amounted to roughly 1% of GDP. (AMLO’s official pandemic response was “austerity.”)
He also pushed back at critics during the July 1 inauguration, saying at the ceremony:
“We ignored the siren songs, the voices which prognosticated, perhaps in good faith, the end of oil and the massive arrival of electric cars and renewable energy.”
In the same speech, AMLO would clarify that clean energy and electric vehicles would eventually come to be widespread, but he said, “it’s going to take some time to get there.”
AMLO’s seeming fondness for petroleum projects reflect an idiosyncratic vision of state-driven petroleum-development more than an antipathy toward fossil fuels, according to analysts – though he often sounds unenthused on the rare occasions renewables is raised. Others in his administration have also raised doubts, including Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle.
AMLO grew up in oil-rich Tabasco state during the 1960s and early 1970s, when oil production and processing – put firmly under state control – promised to pull Mexico out of underdevelopment. Mexico’s 1938 oil expropriation is still celebrated as a singular act of sovereignty and self-respect. AMLO draws on those themes often in his discourse, saying the building of the new refinery and even buying the Deer Park refinery guaranteed “energy sovereignty” and Mexican supplies of gasoline – unlike the current situation with much of Mexico’s crude being refined in Texas.
“There’s an energy crisis that we’re suffering at the moment, but we have our gasoline and diesel and we can maintain prices to benefit Mexicans.”
(Read more on AMLO’s visit to Washington further down in the newsletter.)
AMLO INAUGURATES NEW REFINERY
López Obrador inaugurated the Refinería Olmeca in Tabasco on July 1, the fourth anniversary of his 2018 election landslide. The refinery is projected to produce 340,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel once put in to production – which could take awhile. AMLO followed his predecessors in the Mexican political practice of inaugurating incomplete public works projects. The president anticipates the refinery will start production in 2023, though analysts express doubts.
The doubts stem from a dearth of details, starting with the price. Pemex predicted the project would be built for $8 billion, but later acknowledged it would cost $11 billion or $12 billion. Bloomberg cited Pemex sources putting the price tag closer to $18 billion.
BAD BUSINESS?
The business case is also dubious. Analysts site multiple factors, starting with its location in swampy Tabasco – seemingly chosen because it was AMLO’s home state and presidents have a history of showing a preference for their birthplaces. Refineries are usually built near sources of oil or near markets. Dos Bocas – name of the refinery’s site at a Pemex shipping port – fails to fit either prerequisite. “Refineries historically in many places are built because there’s an increasing source of oil being produced,” said David Shields, energy analyst in Mexico City. But oil production is declining in Mexico’s southeast – coming in at around 1.5 million barrels per day – after peaking at more than 3 million barrels per day in 2004, then dropping precipitously as the monstrous Cantarell field was depleted, Shields says.
Additionally, there’s no sign the refinery was needed. It adds to Pemex’s six existing refineries – all underperforming – and the Deer Park refinery. But Shields points to an abundance of refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast with refining capacity to spare – some of which have agreements to take Pemex crude, such as the ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown, Texas. Pemex also bought Deer Park, which it already had access to through its partnership with Shell.
“Historically, refining margins in the U.S. Gulf Coast have been very low – right now is an exception because of the war in Ukraine,” Shields said. “Refining margins in Pemex (meanwhile) have been non-existent and Pemex has been making major losses at its refineries.”
Pablo Zárate of FTI Consulting added:
“The challenge of Dos Bocas is that it has to compete with the U.S. Gulf Coast refining system if it’s going to provide any real benefits in terms of cost reductions. … That is a real challenge as a standalone refinery.
WAS AMLO AN ENERGY VISIONARY?
The world has changed since AMLO announced plans for Dos Bocas while running for president in 2018. Refining margins have fattened as the war in Ukraine causes shortages of crude and companies decommission or repurpose refineries. Whether that means Mexico will make money on Dos Bocas remains uncertain. Analysts point to the cost of building Dos Bocas. They also question AMLO’s obsession with the downstream parts of the business, when Pemex has traditionally been focused on the upstream. Zárate said of the business case for Dos Bocas:
“(It’s) a project which is getting increasingly costly and a project that will not be able to benefit from international price dynamics, even as refining margins are through the roof. If you look at it through that context, there is no business case for Dos Bocas.”
REFINERY EXPLOSIONS
The Dos Bocas refinery still has to enter production. There’s also the matter of operations – something Pemex hasn’t proved very proficient at over the years. López Obrador acknowledged Pemex refineries operated at 30% capacity prior to his taking power – something he attributed to corruption and, alleging conspiratorially, a desire to damage Pemex in order to privatize it.
Analysts describe a more complex situation in which Pemex is operating refineries built for light oil, but increasingly producing heavier oil (which Pemex now produces and is ideal for U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.)
Its aging refineries also have lacked maintenance and upgrades, leading to mishaps. “We’ve been seeing explosions at Pemex refineries every other week,” Shields said, pointing to Cadereyta near Monterrey, where two fires have broken out since May. He explained:
“In the Peña Nieto government they decided to operate the refineries at very low levels because they were old, because they were in bad conditions and that it was risky to operate them at a higher level. Now they’re just as old and they’re very much in the same state, but they’re putting more oil through them. They’re forcing the infrastructure.”
FUEL OIL PREFERENCE?
The push to produce more gasoline in Mexico results in an increased amount of fuel oil as a byproduct, according to analysts. Fuel oil is increasingly unattractive as an export as ships are no longer allowed to burn it. It’s also high in sulphur. Pemex is building a coking plant in Hidalgo state, just north of Mexico City, to use up some of the fuel oil. In the meantime, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is burning fuel oil in its thermoelectric plants – causing poor air quality in places such as Mexico City and La Paz, Baja California Sur, according to analyst.
“They were drowning in fuel oil because they wanted to increase refining capacity so they looked at the natural outlet for that … that would be the thermal unit of CFE,” Monserrat Ramiro, former head of Mexico’s Energy Regulatory Commission, told The Globe and Mail in October 2021.
But an energy reform from the 2012 - 2018 Peña Nieto administration imposed rules discouraging the use of fuel oil and other fossil fuels such as coal. The reform opened the petroleum sector to private investment, breaking the Pemex monopoly and prompting AMLO to brand it “treason” and even write a letter to then-ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, telling him that investing in Mexican energy assets would be akin to purchasing stolen property. The reform also opened the electricity sector, which had been a little less closed than the petroleum sector.
ENERGY REFORM – AND COUNTER ENERGY REFORM
The reform allowed private investment in renewable energy. To encourage such investments in wind and solar, the reform set up auctions for clean energy producers. It also ordered the power grid operator – made independent from the CFE – to dispatch energy based on price. Renewables were consistently less expensive than electricity produced by the CFE – whether it be hydroelectric, natural gas, fuel oil or coal – according to industry players.
But López Obrador has effectively reversed that, freezing clean energy investments, according to analysts and investors. Regulators have issued few clean energy permits. Bloomberg reported recently,
“At least a dozen photovoltaic and wind-energy projects totalling more than 1,500 megawatts have been constructed and are ready to operate in Mexico, but there’s a hitch. The (regulator) has yet to approve modifications to their permits that would allow them to conduct operations.”
Mexico’s environment ministry denied permission for Audi to operate a solar park in the state of Puebla for a massive new manufacturing plant, saying in a July 1 decision that it didn’t take into account the entire region (rather than just the plant.)
López Obrador previously presented a law to Congress, which would required the electricity grid operator to first dispatch CFE-produced electricity – regardless of price – meaning wind and solar electricity would not receive priority. The Supreme Court upheld the law.
The president also presented a reform, which would have limited private-sector participation in the electricity sector to 46% of the market. The reform failed to receive the two-thirds support necessary in Congress in a rowdy Easter Sunday vote. But analysts say clean energy is being thwarted through regulatory means, prompting a spate of litigation and complaints under the USMCA trade deal (an agreement AMLO insists doesn’t include energy, though lawyers for investors say it does.)
AN ANTIPATHY TO CLEAN ENERGY?
López Obrador has spoken suspiciously of clean energy since becoming president. He’s also showed little interest in climate change, putting an undersecretary from the foreign affairs ministry in charge of the delegation to the COP 26 conference and recycling a tree-planting program as Mexico’s main climate commitment. He reactivated the big coal-fired plants in Nava, Coahuila – just south of Eagle Pass, Texas – to produce electricity, telling workers at the plant in 2020 that clean energy was a “sophism” to allow private energy investments. While travelling through Baja California he stopped at a windy mountain pass called La Rumorosa, where he complained wind turbines were causing visual contamination.
He’s promised to refurbish the CFE’s hydroelectric projects as a clean energy compromise, but analysts say much of Mexico suffers water shortages and human and agricultural needs remain priorities. Shields told The Globe and Mail:
“They don’t like private operators and never have. Their bias is basically against private operators, not against clean energy. But private operators are basically a synonym for clean energy.”
GASOLINE SUBSIDIES
Gasoline subsidies are nothing new in Mexico or Latin America. The finance ministry used to set the price in past decades and gradually increase the price in a pre-determined fashion – arguing it curbed inflation. The predictable price increases insulated Mexicans from knowing the world price.
By raising gasoline prices with Biden – something the Mexican government said was part of AMLO’s proposed anti-inflation plan – AMLO returned to one of the longest running themes of his presidency and his twelve years of campaigning for the presidency: cheap petrol.
But rather than speak of subsidies, AMLO has often spoken of building refineries – with his 2012 campaign platform proposing five new refineries. It tapped a sense in Mexico that if the country was rich in petroleum – a decreasingly feasible claim – it should benefit the people in form of cheap gasoline rather than floating the federal budget (as occurred in past decades.) It’s even popular among people who don’t own vehicles. Houston-based Pemex observer George Baker has described the thinking as Mexicans receiving some sort of “shareholder benefit” for Pemex being a public company.
López Obrador often speaks of “rescuing” Pemex and achieving “energy sovereignty” through nationalistic petroleum policies. Baker describes those slogans as Mexican versions of “Make America Great Again.”
“It’s a kind of meme, or a trope or a slogan for state-control, statist-control of the energy sector (and) the subtext is ‘make Pemex and the CFE great again.’”
AMLO TO WASHINGTON
Not surprisingly, AMLO raised gasoline prices on his July 12 trip to Washington. But his body language – slumped in his seat and reading a 30-plus minute soliloquy, raising historical figures such as FDR and past initiatives such as the Bracero Program – belied an awkward relationship, lacking warmth or any sense of personal affinity (certainly less than AMLO shared with former president Donald Trump.)
AMLO raised parochial talking-points, but also made a defense of North American integration – while mixing it with his own domestic discourse of self-sufficiency, which involves building and refurbishing refineries, thwarting private energy investments (in renewables and non-renewables) and price supports for small corn farmers. He told Biden:
“We live in now makes it necessary and indispensable for us to produce everything we consume in our countries and regions.
“Without reaching an extremist position of closing our economies, we should remember that the development of our nations depends fundamentally on their productive capacity.”
IMMIGRATION REFORM?
The Mexican president made a pro forma pitch for immigration reform, too – while poking “conservatives” in the process – the word he applies to his political opponents, which draws for the 1860s, when AMLO’s political hero, then-president Benito Juárez led “liberals” resisting the installation of emperor Macmillan (backed by conservatives.) AMLO himself has showed signs of traditional conservatism, starting with austere public finances and extending into his lack of enthusiasm for issues such as abortion decriminalization and marijuana legalization.)
“It is indispensable for us to regularize and give certainty to migrants that have for years lived and worked in a very honest manner, and who are also contributing to the development of this great nation.
“I know that your adversaries — the conservatives — are going to be screaming all over the place, even to Heaven. They’re going to be yelling at Heaven. But without a daring, a bold program of development and wellbeing, it will not be possible to solve problems. It will not be possible to get the people’s support.
“In the face of this crisis, the way out is not through conservatism. The way out is through transformation. We have to be bold in our actions. Transform not maintain the status quo.”
Prior to AMLO’s trip, Mexican interior minister Adán Augusto López said the U.S. government had agreed to issue 300,000 visas – “150,000 of which will be for Mexicans or foreigners who are in Mexico today waiting for the possibility of migrating north.” No such announcement was made during AMLO’s time in Washington.
López Obrador has raised the prospect of pushing for a vaguely defined immigration reform in the United States – not unlike his predecessors. He’s accompanied his calls for an immigration reform with threats of jawboning opponents of such as deal in the United States and branding them “conservatives.” He warned in a May press conference:
“If a party, candidates, thinking that if speaking badly of Mexicans will get them votes, we’re going to denounce theses acts from here so that our compatriots know who is who.”
AMLO has done little to win support for an immigration reform, however. He’s failed to meet with potential allies on Capitol Hill and largely alienated the progressive parts of the Democratic Party, who were outraged by AMLO’s 2020 trip to Washington, where he appeared with Trump, telling him he had showed “respect” for Mexico. A source also said AMLO had burned bridges in Washington with a letter to Trump after his 2018 election, in which he described how both men “managed to put our voters and citizens at the center and displace the political establishment.”
The letter and AMLO’s attempt at finding common ground with Trump through their mutual disdain for old elites raised eyebrows in Democratic circles, according to a source. One prominent Democrat “hit the roof” after seeing the letter, the source said.
The joint document after the White House visit spoke vaguely of immigration spoke somewhat vaguely of immigration. It spoke of the countries “(reaffirming) our commitment to launch a bilateral working group on labor migration pathways and worker protections.” It also pledged to build on the regional immigration agenda from the Summit of the Americas held in June – which AMLO boycotted – curbing human trafficking and tackling the root causes of migration.
BIDEN BUCKLED AMLO ON BEEFING UP THE BORDER?
The joint statement said Mexico pledged to spend $1.5 billion on border infrastructure between 2022 and 2024. The announcement came with few details, though it raised eyebrows. The foreign ministry said 12 projects would be completed, including some by the Defense Secretariat (SEDENA). The projects would include refurbishing and expanding the Reynosa-Pharr bridge, which connects Tamaulipas state with Pharr, Texas, and is plied principally by trucks.
News of the announcement buoyed pro-Biden voices, who noted that the U.S. president apparently did what his predecessor couldn’t do: get Mexico to pay for some sort of border barrier.
For his part, Trump has boasted at recent rallies of how AMLO was forced to “fold” to his demands, while he was president, by quickly deploying national guard forces to stop migrants transiting the country. “I’ve never seen anybody fold like that; they said it would be an honor to have 28,000 free soldiers, and for two years we did,” Trump said while campaigning in Ohio. Trump insisted, however, that the liked AMLO, even though he’s a “socialist.”
Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard attributed the comments to U.S. political campaigns, though he said Mexico stood up to Trump’s demand that Mexico become a safe-third country – as happened with Guatemala.
AMLO TAKES AIM AT ABBOTT
López Obrador refused to engage with Trump’s claims – as he always did, showing deference for Trump to the point his supporters voice support for Trump and his claims of election fraud. But he did respond to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s July 7 executive order, authorizing the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to apprehend migrants crossing illegally between ports of entry and return them to a port of entry.
In his morning press conference July 8, AMLO said of Abbott:
“(It’s) to get votes. It’s extremely vulgar to do that and doesn’t have any legal basis because it doesn’t correspond to him.
“This man is not serious. He’s not serious. With all due respect for his authority, don’t let this happen.”
The outburst toward the governor followed the tragedy of 53 migrants dying in a trailer June 28 near San Antonio. More than half the migrants were Mexican, leading to suggestions Mexican immigration toward the United States is on the upswing again after collapsing with the 2008 economic crisis.
A VISIT MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?
Mexico observers questioned the value of AMLO’s trip to Washington, which was announced the same day as AMLO decided to skip the June Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. (AMLO said all countries in the hemisphere should have been invited, including Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.)
Martha Barcena, ambassador in Washington during the first two years of the López Obrador administration outlined a litany of issues with the trip in an interview with the newspaper Reforma. The first issue, she said, was the date: why meet when Biden was on the eve of heading for Middle East – a visit drawing much more press attention in the United States? AMLO also misread the U.S. political picture: no one is going to advance migration reform so close to the midterm elections, even if AMLO was correct to say the U.S. needs more manpower to address low unemployment. “Was the purpose advancing the bilateral relationship or attending to the Mexican public?” Bárcena asked.
Then there was the pro forma nature of the visit. Biden didn’t host a lunch for AMLO (who had breakfast with Vice President Kamala Harris.) The oval office visit lacked the pomp and importance of Trump hosting AMLO in the Rose Garden in July 2020.
“There was no lunch between the presidents, they didn’t meet together with the private sector [as AMLO and Trump did] so there were a series of issues, which for me as someone who has worked as a professional diplomat for 43 years, only leave me surprised and saying: what happened? Why wasn’t the president protected?
The final document outlined good intentions – such as working human trafficking and regional migration issues – but served up little beyond some commitments from Mexico to purchase milk and fertilizer from the United States and Mexico improving its border infrastructure.
A RELATIONSHIP BUILT ON EXTORTION?
That AMLO and Biden have a frosty relationship comes as a surprise to no one. AMLO set the tone early on, when he became one of the last world leaders to recognize Biden’s election, saying he would wait until all of Trump’s appeals were exhausted. (He cited his own experience in 2006, when he cried “fraud,” but world leaders quickly congratulated Felipe Calderón as the election winner. A source says López Obrador still holds a grudge against Democrats for not championing his claims.)
“It’s an awkward relationship. It’s based on extortion on the Mexican side and forbearance on the U.S. side,” Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, told USA Today.
The “extortion” is Mexico responding to U.S. administration’s wanting Mexico to play the role of migration enforcer by slowing the stream of migrants transiting the country. Biden isn’t the first U.S. president to put immigration demands on Mexico – both Presidents Trump and Obama achieved agreements with Mexico to act as an enforcer. But analysts say AMLO understood what Trump wanted: action on immigration – and little else. Trump, meanwhile, understood Mexico’s main vulnerability, according to veteran political science professor Federico Estévez: trade – and knowing Mexico would “do whatever was necessary” to keep some version of the NAFTA treaty and the maintain the border open to commercial traffic.
Biden has pursued a more ambitious agenda on Mexico, involving not just immigration, but security, climate change and human rights. The latter issues have proven thorny as AMLO has bitterly complained of USAID funding an anti-graft group, Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), which he considers a political opponent. He also has showed scant interest in climate change as it clashes with his nationalistic energy policies. He’s also accused outsiders calling for better protection of journalists – 12 of whom have been killed in Mexico this year – of wanting to undermine his administration.
DELIBERATE DISCOURTESIES
AMLO has seemingly never missed an opportunity to poke Biden, dealing him one discourtesy after another. AMLO’s boycotting the Summit of the Americas provided cover for countries such as Argentina, Honduras and Caribbean states – among others – to parrot his discourse that all countries should be invited, including non-democratic ones.
Ahead of the trip to Washington, AMLO sent an inauspicious Fourth of July message. He raised the case of Julian Assange, saying that if the U.S. justice criminally convicts the Wikileaks founder, “They should start a campaign to dismantle the Statue of Liberty.” (He said Monday that he left a letter for Biden pleading Assange’s case and saying Mexico would offer him asylum.)
Also Monday, AMLO invited U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to the National Palace for the 150th anniversary of the death of Benito Juárez. He also invited the ambassador to France – which imposed Emperor Maximilian on Mexico in the 1860s – but also the ambassador to Cuba. His tweet read: “With respect for sovereignties, it’s time for reconciliation and unity.”
KEN SALAZAR: AN AMBASSADOR TOO COZY WITH AMLO?
Salazar, a former minister of the interior and senator from Colorado, has been a frequent visitor to the National Palace. AMLO himself has referred to Salazar as a “friend.” But analysts have raised uncomfortable questions about Salazar’s cozy relationship with López Obrador and wonder aloud if his efforts at getting into AMLO’s good graces are serving U.S. interests – or even if he’s gone native.
The ambassador’s comments to The New York Times on his relationship with AMLO suggested he had taken the president’s side on several issues of intense interest to AMLO – including AMLO relitigating the close 2006 election he lost and disputing the work of MCCI. (The organization exposed corruption in the Peña Nieto administration, according to observers, and later showed AMLO’s eldest son enjoying a luxury home in the Woodlands, a Houston suburb, which was owned by an executive with a Pemex contractor. The son and his partner deny any wrongdoing.)
“It appears he’s made AMLO’s enemies his own enemies. So he’s gone all in with AMLO and that’s a risky bet,” a former Mexican diplomat said of Salazar. “AMLO is picking fights with legislators left and right in the United States. He’s someone who will never have Ken Salazar’s back.”
The criticism comes as commercial disputes between Mexico and the United States simmer. Alabama-based company Vulcan Materials had a quarry near Playa del Carmen closed by the Environment Secretariat in May for having quarried below the water table, according to the Associated Press. AMLO had previously pressured the company, which has operated in the area for more than 30 years, wanting Vulcan to build a cruise ship terminal at its freight port, the AP reported.
There are disputes over clean energy contracts, too. U.S. Trade Representative Catherine Tai’s office said in a statement prior to AMLO’s visit to Washington: “(She) raised ongoing concerns about the investment climate in Mexico, including Mexico’s energy policies that continue to threaten U.S. investment and damage Mexico’s efforts to address climate change.”
A lawyer representing U.S. clean energy firms in Mexico – whose projects have been frozen by regulators – said of Salazar pursuing a close relationship with AMLO:
“He’s not seen firmly defending (U.S.) interests, rather trying to stop the conflict from boiling over. … Discrimination against foreign firms continues and this [approach] doesn’t resolve anything.”
WHITE HOUSE AND STATE DIVIDED?
The Times story on Salazar seemed to confirm the scuttlebutt about discontent over his performance as ambassador in the U.S. government. A diplomatic source described the conflict as the White House backing Salazar and the State Department disagreeing deeply with his approach. Salazar also has a “remit” from the White House to get along with AMLO, the source said.
Well-sourced Mexican journalist and columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio first wrote in early June on the divisions in the U.S. government over Salazar. He described the State Department, Justice Department, trade representative’s office, national security adviser for Latin America, the FBI and DEA, “requesting a hard line against the López Obrador government for its actions on security and bilateral cooperation.” But Biden had Salazar’s back, according to Riva Palacio, who wrote July 6, “(Salazar seems to be suffering Stockholm syndrome … and has become dysfunctional in the eyes of many in Washington.”
AMBASSADOR OR PROCONSUL?
Reactions to Salazar in Mexico seemingly break down along party lines: those supporting AMLO view him favorably, while AMLO’s opponents – “cosmopolitans,” in the words of Estévez, the political scientist – express disdain for the ambassador. Estévez described U.S. ambassadors in Mexico traditionally prodding the country to move on issues such free trade, democracy and human rights. He described the old elites – displaced by AMLO, who brands them “fifís” – as seeking such intervention again. Estévez said:
“Should the D.C. and Mexican establishments succeed in derailing Salazar, just what do they want as a replacement? Obviously, a proconsul … but not one to dictate anti-drug policy as before. The next ambassador would be charged with forcing U.S. (and thus fifí) preferences on institutional reform, energy policy and other issue areas and seeking compliance not from AMLO … but his potential successors inside MORENA.”
SALAZAR SPEAKS
Salazar (sort of) addressed the issues swirling around him during a July 14 speech at the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington. Salazar held up the joint statement between the presidents as “blueprint” for action. But he also alluded to a supposedly poor relationship under his predecessors, stating:
“No two neighbors can really resolve their challenges or define their future unless there’s communication. For many years the dialogues have died - on security, on migration, on economics. We’ve resurrected those under the leadership of President Biden and his team.”
Salazar also claimed that upon being asked to be ambassador, “everyone", including the most recent ambassadors there” told him “there was no way we could have a dialogue with Andrés Manuel López Obrador” because AMLO was not going to deal with with the United States over “happened in the past.”
“My job is to understand him and advance the interests of the United States.”
Success, Salazar said, was AMLO, presenting a 10-point plan on climate change and clean energy, which included a commitment to address Pemex’s methane emissions. “Things have changed. Significant progress has been made,” Salazar said.
“Some people say, ten months ago, the word climate had not been uttered in three years in Mexico.”