Top Mexican diplomat: US elections ‘will fuel the flames of xenophobia and racism’

Mexico’s new top diplomat Alicia Bárcena warned that the upcoming elections in the United States will “fuel the flames of xenophobia and racism.”

Bárcena, who last month was tapped as foreign minister by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, laid out her upcoming challenges in an op-ed in Mexican daily El Universal.

She said Mexico’s diplomats will have to “enhance efforts” to protect Mexican nationals amid incendiary election-year rhetoric in the United States.

“The historical vocation of Mexican diplomacy obliges us to enhance efforts to protect our citizens living abroad, especially in the coming months, when the electoral process in the United States will fuel the flames of xenophobia and racism,” wrote Bárcena, according to an unofficial translation distributed Monday by the Mexican embassy in Washington.

Mexican diplomacy is largely geared around services for its more than 10 million Mexico-born nationals present in the United States; Mexico’s consular network in the United States is the world’s largest, with 52 local representations.

While the two countries have butted heads for decades over migration and the Mexican diaspora, those frictions have intensified over the past decade.

The 2016 presidential campaign in the United States marked a turning point, when former President Trump announced his candidacy in a speech remembered for the phrase, “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.”

Yet López Obrador, who came to power in 2018, established a cordial relationship with Trump and has become a fierce critic of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is seen as Trump’s most competitive rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Bárcena, as the outgoing Mexican ambassador to Chile and longtime executive secretary of the United Nations’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), has focused her diplomatic career on Mexico’s relations with its southern neighbors.

Bárcena, who is awaiting Senate approval to formally take the top job, laid out a long list of Mexican diplomatic priorities beyond U.S.-based consular work.

“Our country is closely linked to the United States and Canada. With our northern neighbors, we share trade and engage in intense and constant dialogue on a variety of topics, but a rich tapestry of family and social relationships also binds us,” wrote Bárcena, in a nod to 30 years of free trade in North America.

Still, Bárcena subtly criticized Mexican governments of the past 30 years for turning their focus toward North America and away from the Caribbean and South and Central America.

“We have an undeniable cultural belonging and a shared future with our brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean,” she wrote.

“But more importantly, Mexico has committed to never turning its back again and looking more earnestly toward the South, which implies consolidating ourselves as a proactive, inclusive, and participatory force in regional affairs, leveraging our membership in the G20.”

That southward vision has earned Bárcena harsh criticism in the United States.

As López Obrador’s candidate to run the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in 2022, Bárcena was labeled a “communist sympathizer” by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

“After the death of mass murderer Fidel Castro, she lamented the passing of a ‘giant’ who spent his life ‘fighting for equality.’ Fidel Castro, in fact, dedicated his life to creating one of the most unequal and totalitarian states ever known to mankind,” wrote Salazar.

“Similarly, she claimed to have been witness to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s ‘indestructible commitment to the dispossessed, the most humble’ and stated he made equality both his ‘lodestar’ and the ‘permanent doctrine’ of his country. Hugo Chavez oversaw the impoverishment and starvation of millions while enriching a small clique of corrupt government insiders.”

Shortly before the IADB election, Bárcena dropped out, citing personal reasons, and López Obrador nominated the deputy governor of Mexico’s central bank, Gerardo Esquivel, for the job, saying that his candidacy had the “possibility to triumph.”

Former Brazilian Central Bank President Ilan Goldfajn was elected as IADB president in 2022, replacing Trump-nominated Mauricio Claver-Carone, who was ousted amid allegations of wrongdoing.

Bárcena will take over the diplomatic portfolio replacing Marcelo Ebrard, who last month quit the job to pursue a presidential run.

This story was updated at 5:27 p.m.