Overheard: ¨La Gringa¨

When Hillary Clinton visited Mexico City this week she stayed in the, currently unoccupied, US Ambassador´s mansion on Paseo de La Reforma. The security was so overwhelming that people driving home from work moved at a crawl, adding an hour or more to their commute. Later, Reforma heading east toward the city Centro, was closed altogether. A friend, as he was being diverted from Reforma to the much less pleasant artery, Constituyentes, leaned out his car window to ask a cop what was happening. The cop made a desultory jab over his shoulder with his thumb, pointing down the road: ¨Es por La Gringa, jefe.¨ It is because of The Gringa, boss. In other word, Hillary.

Insidemex.com report on Hillary´s Visit

Mexico City - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sat center stage at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, flanked by five Mexican scholarship winners to the US, attired in the indigenous garb of their home regions.
"We share a common future," she said of the United States and Mexico, before an audience in an intimate auditorium. "There is no more critical aspect to that future than the young people in both countries."
Clinton's first visit to Latin America as Secretary of State is weighted by tensions caused by the drug war, trucking restrictions on Mexican fleets, and a retaliatory tariff placed on imported American goods to Mexico. Today she concludes the two-day tour in Monterrey; during her Mexico City rounds yesterday, the visit to the white marble palace of fine arts served to stress Clinton's message that Mexico and the United States are "more like a family than two countries."

Click to read more:

http://www.insidemex.com/news-opinion/hillary-clinton-in-mexico-the-us-and-mexico-are-¨like-family¨

Hillary Clinton Arrives in Mexico

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton arrived in Mexico today and appears to be saying the right things. She acknowledged the US demand for drugs and the fact that the US is not stopping arms from crossing the border illegally into the hands of the narcotraffikers. See the New York Times story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/americas/26mexico.html

To my mind, she now needs to acknowledge that there is more to Mexico than a drug war and a border. That would have an impact on her talks with the Mexican government, the impressions of millions of Mexicans, and on the US public that is getted the message that all of Mexico is in chaos and at war.

More later after Sec. Clinton´s next public appearance this afternoon.

Enrique Krauze on how the US perspective on Mexico is distorted

Op-Ed Contributor
The Mexican Evolution
By ENRIQUE KRAUZE
Published: March 24, 2009
While we bear responsibility for our problems, the caricature of Mexico being propagated in the United States only increases the despair on both sides of the Rio Grande.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/opinion/24krauze.html

Getting Started Again

I am going to get this blog started again. Well, started. There wasn´t much happening here when I launched it originally to support my book, The Americano: Fighting with Castro for Cuba´s Freedom. But, now I have lived in Mexico for three-and-a-half years and want to extend the scope.