Inter-Parliamentary Union - British Group - PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION TO MEXICO 20 TO 25 MAY 2007


	Print this page

Delegation Reports

PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION TO MEXICO FROM 20-25 MAY 2007

Outward Delegation to Mexico

20 to 25 May 2007
Report by Rt Hon Dr Denis MacShane

Delegation

Rt Hon Denis MacShane MP
Leader Labour

Stephen Hepburn MP
Labour

John Robertson MP
Labour

Lord Brennan QC
Labour

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP Conservative

David Tredinnick MP Conservative

A strong IPU delegation of three government MPs (ex-FCO Latin American minister, Denis MacShane MP, Stephen Hepburn MP and John Robertson MP), two Conservative MPs, including a front-bencher (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP and David Tredinnick MP) and the human rights QC, Lord Brennan (Labour and fluent in Spanish) visited Mexico in May 2007.
Despite the heroic efforts of Bob Blizzard MP and Lord David Montgomery who have been carrying the Latin American flag for decades in Parliament, the United Kingdom does not enjoy the same intensity of relations with Latin America and with Mexico, in particular, as do some other EU member states and of course, the United States.
Mexico has the 12th biggest economy in the world. Under British leadership, Mexico was invited to join the G8 plus 5 group so that the Mexican president is now seen as a world leader.
But there is a price to pay. Mexico does not accept the primacy of Brazil as the other big-population Latin American nation to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Nor is Mexico willing to sign international treaties on the environment which do not accept the right of Mexico to develop its economy to serve its people’s needs.
The global movement against global warming is seen as the rich, white north dictating terms to a south that still wants the right to air conditioning and adequate transport networks. The environmental and other lobbies which are so sure of the righteousness of their arguments as they worship Bob Geldoff, Bono and Al Gore might be well advised to come to Mexico and see that combating poverty may in many parts of the world be a greater priority than listening to Madonna as she carbon footprints from one concert to the next to save the world.
Tony Blair was the first serving prime minister to visit Latin America in British history. He visited Brazil, Argentina and Mexico when the leader of the IPU delegation was an FCO minister. No British Foreign Secretary has set foot in Latin America on purely FCO foreign policy business though when Mexico and Latin America have hosted global conferences or summits then UK cabinet ministers have attended.
Yet, as the delegation discovered there is almost a yearning amongst Mexican parliamentarians and minister for closer links with the UK. Britain is seen as the English-speaking hub of Europe. The old cliché about Mexico - “So far from God, so close to the United States” – remains pertinent.
President George W Bush entered office in 2001 pledging to make Mexico and US relations with Latin America a priority. The 9/11 attacks and the consequent military, foreign policy and homeland security response from the US meant that Mexico felt herself sidelined by her dominant northern partner.
Although linked in the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico and the US do not share the same relationship as do the members of the European Union. Mexican lorry drivers have to stop and unload their goods onto American trucks as trade union protectionism does not allow cross-border traffic and trade such as is taken from granted in Europe.
Much of Mexican industry remains under full state control or quasi state monopolies with the ubiquitous ending of MEX – thus PEMEX for the state petrol company, TELMEX for the parastatal telecommunications company and CEMEX for the cement company which is now operating in Britain.
There were polite suggestions from the delegation to their opposite numbers that a wider spread of ownership and more small enterprises would help to create a broader middle class and properly waged employees in place of the continuing concentration of ownership and wealth in a small number of hands and the absence of adequately waged employment for the mass of Mexicans.
Moreover, as the Mexican oil industry needs to find new investment to discover new and more difficult off-shore oils fields, the constitutional ban on anything other than state ownership of the oil business no longer makes economic or national sense.
Millions of Mexican head north to find work, as legal or illegal (documented or undocumented in American jargon workers) workers. Their remittances amount to billions of dollars and earn more in hard currency from Mexico than oil revenue.
But the rupture to family life, the misery of many Mexican migrants as they seek to enter the US and their often miserable treatment there at the hands of unscrupulous employers, or the affluent middle class professionals who want cheap-cost nannies, cooks, gardeners and domestic servants is not something that either Mexico or the US can be proud of.
American trade unions remain hopelessly protectionist and the Mexican labour confederation was merged in with the corporate state structures. Too many Mexican workers and citizens miss out on basic social justice measures especially as few in private employment pays income tax and state revenues are wholly inadequate to the needs of the Mexican people.
Mexico is going through its own slow-burn democratic modernisation. For seventy years, just one party ruled. The interestingly named Institutionalised Revolutionary Party held power from the 1930s to 2000 when the centre-right PAN party took over.
The Mexican constitution limits to one six-year term the right of anyone to be President but a younger PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon, narrowly won power in 2006. Although a right-winger, Sr Calderon entered into an electoral alliance with the one million strong ultra-left teachers’ union which blocks all reform of Mexico’s school system which is a major weakness of the country.
Mexico is a country through which drugs travel north and guns travel south. The insatiable demand in the United States for cocaine and its use by film and rock stars as a recreational drug much as in Notting Hill, defies all efforts at interdiction.
Equally, the uncontrolled US small arms industry pumps weapons of mass and individual murder into the hands of the narcotrafficantes, criminals and kidnappers in Mexico and other Latin American states.
President Calderon has called in the army to launch its own war against the drugs traffickers, and there have been pitched battles in northern Mexico between drugs gangs and the military. But as long as overwhelming demand from the US sucks cocaine northwards it is hard to see what will stop the lucrative drugs business with its millions to pay off officials, police officers, judge and politicians from flourishing.
Some 350,000 British tourists go to Mexico every year and the holiday coastal regions in Yucatan has one of the most energetic Honorary Consuls in the business. Three members of the delegation inspected the work done to help UK tourists under the overall supervision of Ambassador Giles Paxman.
Mexico has a cultural heritage which can match – with its splendour of pyramids, giant cities, mummies, and beautiful art – almost anything Europe and its Mediterranean civilisations can offer. It is a shame that Easyjet or other low cost airlines cannot yet do serious long haul flights at accessible prices as the culture, sights, and genuine pro-British friendliness of the Mexicans makes the country a vast potential delight for visitors, or for those wanting to brush up their Spanish and understand that there is more to North America than the lost colonies of the Crown.
The Mexican Senate was the principal host for the visit as Senators in Mexico are as central as deputies in the legislative process. Both houses limit the number of terms one can serve and full-time politicians move in and out of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies and in and out of regional positions as elected or executive office-holders.
The British Council is a key UK stake-holder in maintaining a strong British presence in Mexico. The Chevening Scholarship scheme remains one of the hidden jewels in the networks of making friends and influencing future leaders in overseas countries and the young Mexicans who studied under Chevening met the delegation.
Back home much is written about the right to demonstrate outside Parliament. Outside the Senate, the delegation experienced the most unusual political demonstration anyone had seen. A group of campesinos – peasants and small farmers – were protesting that their land had been taken away from them by a senior politician.
To make their protest they all stripped completely naked with every part of womanly charm on full bouncing display and the men holding a picture of the politician they did not like in front of their private parts.
As we entered the Senate or walked or drove down the Mexico City equivalents of Whitehall or the Mall there was a profusion of breasts, pubic hair and naked flesh such is never seen outside a nudist colony. Perhaps the rules should be changed to allow demonstrations outside Parliament - but on condition the protestors are naked.