Bush aims to build ties with Mexico

President Bush has promised to improve relations

By Stephen Cviic

President Bush will make his first foreign trip since becoming president on Friday when he visits Mexico.

The choice of Mexico over Europe or Canada for his first trip builds on his promises to make relations with Latin America a foreign policy priority.

Mr Bush said before the election: "Should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment to my presidency."

And now that he is president, it is possible that relations between the United States and its southern neighbours are entering a new, productive phase.

Latin influence

According to Richard Lapper, Latin American editor of the Financial Times, Latino culture is becoming more and more important in the United States.

"I think this is part of a longer-term secular trend, where we're seeing phenomenal migration from Latin America to the US and the Hispanisisation of certain regions and Mr Bush is clearly aware of it."

President Fox is enthusiastic about his US counterpart

Mr Bush also has personal and political links with Latin America.

His brother Jeb worked in Caracas for two years and is married to a Mexican-American.

And when he was governor of Texas, Mr Bush had plenty of dealings with Mexican politicians.

One of them was Vicente Fox, now president of Mexico.

Migrant problems

Mr Fox wants a new relationship with the United States, and is enthusiastic about Mr Bush.

He said: "This relationship that has been excellent up to now between the United States and Mexico is going to improve, because President Bush understands migrants' problems."

When the two presidents meet they have serious issues to discuss.

Mr Lapper said: "President Fox would like to see an increase in the percentage of legal migration and in turn Mexico will try to do more to control illegal migration."

The Mexicans would like to see more legal migration

The other challenge, to which Mr Bush has indicated that he might respond, is the issue of development.

Mexico would clearly like to see large amounts of US and Canadian money channelled towards infrastructure developments in Mexico.

Mexico and the United States have been drawing closer for some time.

Free trade

In 1993, Congress voted in favour of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But former President Bill Clinton's subsequent plans for a free trade area stretching right across the Americas - from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego - got nowhere.

Now Mr Bush wants to revive the idea.

He is due to discuss the scheme at a regional summit in the Canadian city of Quebec.

US hegemony

But the anti-capitalist protestors who disrupted trade talks in Seattle in 1999 will probably try to do something similar in Quebec.

And their view - that free trade is a cloak for US hegemony - is shared by parts of the Latin American left.

It is startling to reflect how much relations between the United States and Latin America have changed in the past 20 years.

There is still a huge imbalance of power of course, but these days it is hard to imagine Washington plotting to overthrow a democratically elected president, as happened in Chile in 1973.