|
Venezuela,
Cuba rooting for Mexico City mayor
Andres
Oppenheimer. Posted on Thu, May. 27,
2004 in The Miami Herald.
Venezuela and Cuba seem to be openly campaigning
for Mexico City's leftist mayor, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, the front-runner
in Mexico's 2006 presidential race. Yet
Mexican nationalists who normally jump in
anger when other countries interfere in
Mexico's internal affairs are notoriously
mute on this occasion.
Amazingly, the Venezuelan ambassador to
Mexico, Lino Martínez, has made some
of the most intrusive statements on Mexico's
internal affairs in recent history, yet
there was hardly an outburst of rage in
the Mexican Congress, or among Mexico's
leading intellectuals.
Martínez was quoted by the daily
Crónica on Friday as saying that
López Obrador was ''a ray of light''
in Mexican politics. He said "a man
like López Obrador could help the
Mexican people organize themselves, improve
themselves, become stronger and prepare
for the big struggles that lay in front
of us.''
The Venezuelan ambassador explained that
there were high expectations in Mexico when
President Vicente Fox was elected, "but,
no, they really haven't materialized.''
After the story appeared and Martínez
was summoned to the Mexican Foreign Ministry
for explanations, the Venezuelan diplomat
denied he had made such comments. When Crónica
put the taped interview on its website,
Martínez said he could not recognize
his voice in parts of the tape.
Crónica's managing editor, Pablo
Hiriart, says, ''It's absolutely him [on
tape]. Do you think we found another Venezuelan
who would speak like the ambassador?'' Added
Hiriart: ''Unless the ambassador apologizes,
we will sue him. We are ready to do a voice
analysis. It's very simple.'' Mexican Foreign
Ministry officials say they believe the
Crónica tape is authentic.
In a telephone interview from Washington,
President Bush's outgoing special envoy
for Western Hemisphere affairs, Otto Reich,
reacted with a mixture of amusement and
perplexity.
''Can you imagine if an American ambassador
had made such statements in any Latin American
country?'' Reich asked. "There would
have been a torrent of criticism, and dozens
of columns condemning the American ambassador
for interfering in internal affairs. And
they would have been right.''
Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey
Davidow says the United States was especially
careful not to make any statement supporting
any candidate in Mexico's 2000 election.
''That's taboo. But, obviously, the Venezuelans
don't think so,'' he says.
A FREE RIDE
But in part because of the U.S. fiasco
in Iraq and the resulting wave of anti-American
sentiment, Venezuela's increasingly authoritarian
President Hugo Chávez and Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro seem to be getting a free ride.
According to U.S. officials, Venezuela's
oil money is allowing the Venezuelan and
Cuban embassies in the region to jointly
support violent social movements in Bolivia,
Ecuador and other countries, as well as
leftist FARC guerrillas in Colombia.
In an open interference in other countries'
affairs, Chávez said recently that
Chile should give land-locked Bolivia a
piece of its coastal territory. ''I'm very
sorry for Chile, but I keep dreaming about
bathing in a Bolivian beach,'' Chávez
said Jan. 12, fueling a nationalist crusade
in Bolivia to recover the territory it lost
in a 1879-83 war with Chile.
TAPE SCANDAL
Cuba, in turn, earlier this month called
a press conference in Havana to suggest
that the Fox government and the United States
had plotted to discredit López Obrador,
whose top aides were caught on tape getting
bribes and playing huge sums in a U.S. casino
in a major corruption scandal.
When the Mexican government recalled its
ambassador from Havana, much of the Mexican
Congress -- including many of the 132 legislators
who spent a six-day working vacation in
Cuba with all expenses paid by the Cuban
regime in January 2002 -- lashed out against
Fox for downgrading ties with Cuba, rather
than protesting Castro's overt intervention
in Mexican politics.
My conclusion: I'm not a big fan of keeping
foreign diplomats from saying whatever they
wish, because the alleged protection against
foreign interference has long been used
by authoritarian and corrupt regimes to
protect themselves against well-deserved
outside criticism.
But if Mexico is serious about protecting
itself against foreign interference, it
better not only look north. Venezuela's
oil money may be supporting a new kind of
interventionism, or reviving one from the
1960s.
|
