ReconsiDer Tidbits

 

 

By CARLOS FUENTES

THE new presidents of Mexico and the United States are simultaneously
beginning their administrations. It is worth noting that Mexican President
Vicente Fox has a clear, popular mandate, while George W. Bush occupies the
White House under a cloud of suspicion, having lost the popular vote but
having won the election, thanks to five U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Yet, the real news lies elsewhere: Never has the relationship between Mexico
and the United States been closer. After a century and a half of often
regrettable confrontations, Presidents Lazaro Cardenas and Franklin D.
Roosevelt took a new path. When Cardenas' government nationalized U.S. oil
companies in Mexico in 1938, Roosevelt did not send in the Marines. Instead,
he negotiated, and Mexico agreed to compensate the oil companies. There have
been other problems between Mexico and the United States since then, but it
will always be possible to resolve them through negotiation. In general,
this principle has predominated, and it is one that suits both countries.
Canny, old Don Luis Cabrera, an early 20th-century agrarian theorist, stated
it well when he said: "On the battlefield, the gringos will always defeat
us; at the negotiating table, we always have the advantage."

Four principal items define the Mexico-U.S. agenda. All four will come up
when Fox and Bush meet Friday in Guanajuato, Mexico.

·Drugs.
~~~~~
The elimination of the insulting U.S. annual process of certification and
decertification is the first step toward better antidrug collaboration with
Mexico. It is impossible for the United States and its estimated 14.8
million illicit-drug users to judge or condemn countries like Colombia and
Mexico that are only responding ("Long live the free market!") to North
American demand.

Beyond this unbearable Manicheism lies a proposal by Jorge G. Castañeda,
Fox's foreign minister: Evaluate what has worked and what has not worked in
current strategies; consider how the markets can be influenced and price
mechanisms juggled to make narco-traffic less lucrative, and thus lessen
both profits and corruption. On the other hand, U.S. demands against capos
and their mafias in Mexico should be matched by U.S. action against drug
lords and their mafias in the United States.

At the end of the road, there is only one solution to this terrible scourge
that affects us all: Legalize, or decriminalize, the use of drugs. The
problem is, this would have to be a global decision, without exception. The
benefit is that even though drug addicts would continue to exist, no one
would become rich through their sufferings. That is what happened when
Prohibition was repealed in the United States in 1933. There continued to be
drunks, but there were no more Al Capones.