Did the friendly facade of this week’s “Tres Amigos” summit among the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada hide underlying tensions behind the scenes?
As customary, most of the official bulletins released during the 24-hour confab were couched in diplomatic hot air, with the end-of-summit written communique unsurprisingly reflecting the leaders’ “common vision for the future” and “shared values.”
The only exception during the gathering was when President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—who at one point congratulated Joe Biden for “not building one meter of (border) wall”—seemed to touch on a raw nerve when he accused the United States of historically showing contempt for Latin America.
In his pre-meeting statement, speaking of his push for the further economic and social integration and greater public/private investment from the United States in Central and South America, Mexico’s often long-winded chief executive—and the least “diplomatic” of the three leaders—said: “I hold that this is the moment for us to determine to do away with this abandonment, this disdain, and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean, which is opposed to the policy of the ‘good neighborhood’ of the titan of freedom and liberty, FDR—Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
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