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News on U.S. - Mexico Public Diplomacy
Phil Friedman Dailybreeze.com Mexico has been reduced to a single, small, geographical piece of this earth. If there is a murder in Michoacan, then the presumption of the 24-hour news cycle has been that it is too dangerous to travel to Rosarito Beach even though it is thousands of miles away. According to Arturo Martinez from the Mexican Tourism office, no tourists have been killed in the drug war violence throughout Mexico. Still, on a recent CNN news report, U.S. citizens were warned not to travel to Mexico. Well what part of Mexico was CNN referring to? Mexico is a huge country and to say travel to Mexico is dangerous is not only inadequate information but very misleading. FULL STORY
Examiner.com The Mexican tourism industry has taken it in la boca this year thanks to the triple whammy of the H1N1 viral outbreak, warnings over drug violence and the down economy. So for those adventurous enough to vamanos, bargains await and crowds are few, according to reports. An Associated Press dispatch in June details the serendipitous experience of a Seattle resident who, with his friends, decided to head to Mexico and came away delighted to have an entire resort almost to themselves. His friend reported paying a mere $142 a week for a rental car originally booked at $350. Chains such as Real Resorts Mexican promise free vacations a year for three years if a guest comes down with H1N1 within two weeks of the end of their stay. Rooms at many Mexican resort destinations are being offered at steep discounts. As of this writing, the travel booking site Expedia.com is offering flights and stays to Cancun at up to an 70 percent off. In the Los Angeles Times, Mexican journalist Andres Martinez appealed in its editorial pages to, in effect, help a brother out. "Mexico needs the help of all Americans," he writes, "Either by booking a week's holiday on the beaches of Puerto Vallarta or Los Cabos, or visiting Mexico City, or any of the colonial towns in the heart of the country. This is for the common good." So take your pick, you can either be a mercenary and take advantage of a beaten down neighbor, or appeal to your softer side by helping boost a flagging tourist trade of a key local neighbor. Either way, the word from down south makes for quite the call of la sirena.
Austin Business Journal
The Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the governor’s office and the city of Austin to host the 2009 U.S./Mexico Sister Cities International Conference from Aug. 5 through Aug. 9, an event that will bring about 300 attendees from more than 160 U.S. cities and their sister city counterparts in Mexico.
The Sister Cities International (SCI) is a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network, created in 1956 by President Dwight Eisenhower, that aims to create and strengthens partnerships between the United States and international communities.
The conference agenda will include discussions keynoted by: Hope Andrade, Texas secretary of state; Rosalba Ojeda, consul general of Mexico; Lloyd Doggett, U.S. congressman; Daniel Llanes, local Texan artist; and Art Acevedo, city of Austin police chief.
It will take place at the Sheraton Hotel on 701 East 11th Street.
DONALD G. MCNEILNew York TimesContrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human. But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it. There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia. FULL STORY
Greg Flakus VOA News
This past weekend, gun battles between federal forces and drug cartel gunmen in Mexico claimed more than 20 lives. One of the bloodiest incidents occurred in the resort city of Acapulco, where soldiers killed 16 gunmen. But there are signs that the government is making progress in its war against organized crime.
FULL STORY
Andrés Martinez Los Angeles TimesYour neighbor needs your help. Do you have it within you to lend a hand? Will you book yourself a week on the beach in Cabo or Puerto Vallarta, or explore Mexico City or one of the colonial cities in the heart of Mexico? You know, for the common good. This has been a banner decade for empathy tourism -- many Americans flocking to New York after 9/11 and to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did so with a sense of public service. Mexico now needs a similar surge. FULL STORY
DAVID REINBOLD McClatchy Newspapers What kind of person sells all her possessions, hops in a car with a fistful of cash and drives south of the border to make a new life? Meet Barbara Swartz: She's done it twice. "It takes a sense of adventure," said the 78-year-old, whose roots are in California. "I've come here twice, once 25 years ago, and once five years ago after my husband died, and each time I sold everything I owned and left." Or meet Gordon White, a retired software executive who left the snow and ice of Michigan 12 years ago and has never looked back. "The transition was nice," White said. "No more cold, no more snow, no more ice. The only ice I see is in my drinks now. I love it." Swartz and White are among the estimated million American expatriates living in Mexico, the largest community of American expatriates anywhere in the world. They come to Mexico for its sunshine and warm weather, its proximity to home and a cost of living that's far lower than in the United States. FULL STORY
Christine DelsolSFGate.comIt's been two weeks since the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control lifted their travel warnings on travel to Mexico, and the deals are rolling in. The CDC lifted its recommendation against nonessential travel to Mexico on May 15, citing evidence that Mexico's flu outbreak was slowing down, increasing numbers of cases in the United States and other countries were unrelated to Mexico travel, and that the risk of infection appears to be lower than first believed. The State Department quickly followed suit. FULL STORY
By Ruben Navarrette Jr. Globalpost.comSAN DIEGO — Eager to be all things to all people, President Barack Obama tends to say one thing and do another. And so, when Obama said recently that he had no interest in "militarizing" the U.S.-Mexico border, it was only a matter of time before the administration drew up plans to do just that. Sure enough, according to media reports, the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. The specifics have yet to be worked out, but the $350 million initiative would radically expand the role of the U.S. military in the drug war. The proposal does not mention troop deployments, only that the military would receive the funding "for counter-narcotics and other activities" on the border. FULL STORY
LARRY ROHTER
nytimes.com
MEXICO CITY — Just for argument’s sake, let’s compare Mexico’s management of the swine flu epidemic that broke out here last month with China’s handling of SARS in 2002. The Chinese initially tried to deny there was an outbreak, were slow to combat its spread and resisted cooperation with foreign investigators. By the time SARS was brought under control, more than 700 people had died.
Mexico’s conduct has been different. The authorities may have been slow to identify the threat, but once they did, they quickly notified international health agencies, acted efficiently to prevent the epidemic from mushrooming, and began working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. As of Friday, the death toll was 45.
FULL STORY
John Lauerman
bloomberg.com
April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu has sickened at least 257 people in 11 countries, including Mexico, the U.S., New Zealand, Canada and the U.K., according to the World Health Organization.
The organization raised its six-tier pandemic alert to 5 and said the world’s first influenza pandemic since 1968 may soon be declared. Hundreds of more cases are suspected, as health officials around the world check to see whether infections have occurred in their countries and ready measures to prevent its spread.
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about swine flu. The information is drawn from the data released by the World Health Organization in Geneva and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
FULL STORY
APRIL 21, 2009
OBAMA AND CALDERON: THIS IS OUR SHARED PROBLEM
Michael Coe
foreignpolicyblogs.com
American President-elect Barack Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Washington. More detailed analysis to follow, but see coverage here. Significantly, the BBC points out that this will be “Mr Obama's first [meeting] with a foreign leader since his election in November”. Although high-profile issues of the global financial crisis and wars abroad will dominate American policymaking, Obama's meeting with Calderon sends an important signal of solidarity between the two countries. The most pressing issue now is organized crime and the widespread violence that is engulfing Mexico. The US is responsible in large part due to the demand of drugs and lax gun laws which allow traffickers to bring weapons into Mexico. See BBC article here.
However, it is important to remember that when President Bush was first elected, his first meeting with a head of state was with then President Fox of Mexico. The bilateral agenda between the two countries, primarily about trade and immigration at the time, was quickly sidelined after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Pamela Starr
uscpublicdiplomacy.org
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Mexico (March 25-26) demonstrated, once again, the power of public diplomacy. The trip was a tour de force (with only one minor mishap) that opened a window of opportunity in a bilateral relationship that had become badly damaged. Prior to her trip, the mood toward the United States in Mexico was quite sour, the consequence of both Bush administration policies and recent developments.
Mexico still harbors disappointment at have been shunted from the center of the U.S. foreign policy stage during the Bush administration’s first months to the margins of Washington’s concerns... FULL TEXT
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