Mexicos Solution to the Border Crisis
December 11, 2018
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López Obradors $20 billion development plan gives Washington a chance to
help rectify the historic damage its done to the living conditions of
people in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, writes Patrick Lawrence.
A Latin American Marshall Plan, at a Discount
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
With President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatening to shut down the
government if he doesnt get his wall, someone in a position of authority
finally has a workable solution to the migrant crisis festering on the
Mexican border with the U.S.
The day after Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as Mexicos president
on Dec. 1, his foreign minister flew to Washington to propose a $20 billion
development plan to make Central America a place for people to stay rather
than flee. Three-quarters of the money would help create jobs and fight
poverty. The rest would pay for border control and law enforcement.
Unaccompanied children at Texas border, 2014. (U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol)
The plan would be funded by Mexico, the U.S. and the three Central American
that produce the most refugees and migrants, according to the size of their
economies. The U.S. would pay most, which seems just given the decades of
supportincluding millions in military assistance and police trainingthat
Washington offered corrupt, anti-democratic dictators who oversaw the
impoverishment of Central America. In addition, the U.S. backed the 2009
coup in Honduras that has directly led to an influx of refugees streaming
towards the U.S. border.
At last there is a plan that addresses the causes, and not just the symptoms
of Central Americas migrant and refugee crisis: poverty, unemployment, drug
trafficking, gang violence, police corruption, the worlds highest murder
rates. At last an implicit assertion that the U.S. bears some
responsibilityand arguably the largest sharefor the unlivable conditions
of many Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans appears to be at hand.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexicos new foreign minister, met with Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo in Washington on Dec. 1 as thousands of migrants from Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador were marooned in Tijuana and other locations on the
Mexican side of the border. Ebrard compared Mexicos proposal with the
Marshall Plan, the 194851 program to rebuild Europe. In this case, however,
the U.S. would spend far less. In todays dollars, adjusted for inflation,
the U.S. contributed nearly $100 billion to the Marshall Plan (an investment
in both reconstruction and the advancement of U.S. business interests in
Europe).
The State Department said little in its official response, merely
acknowledging the two nations shared commitment to address our common
challenges and opportunities. Ebrard said only, I thank him [Pompeo] for
his attitude and respect toward the new administration of President López
Obrador.
Translation: Ebrard seems to have gotten nowhere. No surprise since the
Trump administration has threatened to cut aid to Central American nations
that dont stop the flow of migrants northward. But that flow wont stop
until the conditions causing it are alleviated. But Central American
nations need help to do that.
Signal Test
This is a test for Trump, the right-wing populist, who said he could work
with López Obrador, the left-wing populist.
New Mexican President López Obrador. (Wikimedia)
López Obradors commitment to alleviating poverty, crime and
underdevelopment in Central America was the theme that won him the
presidency last year. On his inauguration day he signed a comprehensive
Central American development plan with the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras
and El Salvador. Their document earned U.N. backing.
The U.S. entertained a similar development program not long ago.
In 2000, Vicente Fox proposed an infrastructure development plan for
Central America soon after he was elected Mexican president. George W. Bush
listened: When he was inaugurated a few months later, Bush declared Mexico
Washingtons highest foreign policy and national security priority.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria followed
at a cost of $5.6 trillion, according to a recent study by the Watson
Institute at Brown University. That is 280 times the amount Marcelo Ebrard
put on the table with Pompeo.
Would there be caravans of migrants heading north from Central America today
had Washington partnered with Mexico to make relatively modest investments
in regional development programs a couple of decades ago?
There is indeed a history to U.S. development aid to Latin America, and like
the Marshall Plan, past efforts were centered on promoting U.S. business
interests. President John F. Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress,
which was criticized as being intended mostly to help U.S. business
interests, including in this 1968 NBC News report (at 14:37).
Like the Marshall plan and the Alliance for Progress, any U.S. development
deal today for Central America to keep Central Americans in Central America
will likely have to provide an advantage for U.S. business interests there.
With a businessman in the White House, it would be hard not to assume that
Trump would use his leverage with Obrabor to push for this in any deal, if
he engages Obradors proposal at all.
Global Context
The Mexico proposal has a global context, given that continental Europe and
the U.S. share variants of the same problem. Both face unmanageable waves of
migrants and refugeesfrom their underdeveloped and war-tornperipheries.
Regrettably, both also focus on walls, fences, and other kinds of border
security to the neglect of root causes.
Central American migrants in southern Mexico. (Peter Haden)
U.S.led interventions in Libya and Syria have driven Europes refugee
crisis. Continuing Western exploitation of African resources also
contributes to the migrant crisis.
At a four-sided summit in Istanbul last month, the leaders of Germany,
France, Turkey and Russia presented blueprints to restore Syria to a livable
nation to which refugees and migrants could return. The U.S, the major
foreign contributor to the Syrian tragedy, did not attend.
For those nations that did, the Istanbul gathering can be counted as no more
than a first step. But it suggests how developed Western nations should
respond to crises in underdeveloped and nonWestern nations that they helped
create and now amount to a global security problem. Climate change, which
Trump denies, and two decades of neoliberal economic policies, are also
among the reasons caravans of Central Americans stream northward.
The Wests role in creating many of the planets migration and refugee
crisesmaybe the majorityneeds to be acknowledged and policies should
reflect this responsibility. The attendance by France and Germany at the
Istanbul gathering gives the U.S. an example to follow towards Mexico and
Central America.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the
International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and
lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the
American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is
www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work