Diplomatic foolishness
A day before President Enrique Peña Nieto’s visit to Washington, the Mexican Undersecretary for North America Affairs Sergio Alcocer told the Mexican press he didn’t think the disappearance of students in Iguala would be mentioned at the presidential meeting.
He went on to explain that there are cases of violence “in different parts of the world,” adding: “Within the United States we know there has been this kind of violence in the area of Missouri, to mention just one case.”
Can we really compare the disappearance of students with political complicity, or the killing of civilians by the Army, with a police incident that provoked serious racial tensions?
There is no possible comparison. If this is how the person in charge of U.S. affairs sees it, he does not understand what’s going on in this country even less in Mexico.
We tend to believe that the comment is not a matter of personal incompetence. We worry that this is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ vision.
Certainly, ever since Peña Nieto took office there has been an effort to downplay the issue of violence. Last May, when anarchy took over in Michoacán, Foreign Secretary José Antonio Meade Kuribreña made, during a meeting with La Opinión, a comparison between the situation in Michoacán and violence in Brazil’s poor neighborhoods.
That was also not the right comparison. Even if diplomacy allows for rhetorical flourishes, after the latest developments, Alcocer’s comment sound maliciously misleading.
The Mexican government has not really grasped the magnitude of the popular outrage caused by such events as those involving the students, the Army, the discovery of more mass graves in Guerrero, and the complicity between politicians, drug lords and enforcement authorities.
Peña Nieto has recognized this pivotal moment and the need to move past these events. Comments like those made by Alcocer cannot go unnoticed because they seek to diminish the importance of the massacres, thus moving Mexico back. They show that he is unable to recognize the barbarism, the popular weariness, that he thinks that everything is so normal he can make foolish remarks to Mexican journalists
