In Spanish, we say that someone will pay for the broken dishes, i.e. “pagar los platos rotos.” It’s sort of like saying that someone will get blame for a bad idea.
We just learned that the person paying “los platos rotos” in Mexico is Luis Videgaray, Mexico’s finance minister. He will pay the political price, especially now that Mrs. Clinton has left President Pena-Nieto without a Democrat to share the stage with. My guess is that President Pena-Nieto had hoped to use Mrs. Clinton and gang up on Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton is not travelling to Mexico and the plan has backfired.
Here is the news from Mexico:
The resignation comes a week after the meeting between Mr. Peña Nieto and Donald J. Trump, which engendered widespread dismay and anger among Mexicans and reportedly divided Mr. Peña Nieto’s cabinet. It was Mr. Videgaray’s idea to invite Mr. Trump, according to several Mexican news media reports, though Mr. Peña Nieto later claimed it was his own.Mr. Peña Nieto was scheduled to make a statement at 11 a.m. Mexico City time (noon Eastern), and is expected to name José Antonio Meade, Mexico’s social development minister, to replace Mr. Videgaray as finance minister.
So much for reading recently that Mr. Videgaray was a strong ally of President Pena-Nieto!
Mexico’s reaction was hysterical and totally silly. As Allan Wall reminded us, maybe President Pena-Nieto is hedging his bets and looking ahead to a very different future:
There are signs that the Mexican presidential administration realizes that, and is hedging its bets.One is the promotion of the Somos Mexicanos program designed to help Mexicans returning to Mexico from the United States. I last visited Mexico this past June and July. When entering Mexico, I noticed the Mexican immigration station had been remodeled to include a section for Repatriaciones (repatriations).Does that mean the Mexican government is expecting larger numbers of Mexicans to return to Mexico?
Allan Wall has a point. I would add a couple of things.
Illegal immigration looks different today than it did years ago. In other words, most of the people reaching the US are not Mexicans. They are Central Americans using Mexico as a pathway to the US. This is creating serious challenges for Mexico, from police resources to immigration court dates. Frankly, Mexico now faces the difficulty of not knowing who is in the country.
Border lawlessness has infected the Mexican political system. Cartels are going north and south of the border without consequences. They bring dollars into Mexico that corrupt the politicians, specially in smaller towns run by cartels.
Trump’s language could have been more polite a year ago. However, his message of a lawless border is one that the Mexican political class hears and understands quite well. After all, as Allan Wall wrote in the aforementioned article, have we not heard talk of Mexico building a wall in its southern border?
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
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