MEXICO CITY — He’s been the face of Mexico internationally for practically 5 years and infrequently the nation’s main voice in negotiations with high world leaders — together with unstable ones, like former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Now Overseas Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard is testing whether or not his work on the world stage will translate into votes in Mexico as he competes for the leftist ruling celebration nomination for subsequent yr’s presidential elections.
The 63-year-old is within the thick of a three-way race with different members of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s interior circle, together with Mexico Metropolis Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Inside Minister Adán Augusto López.
López Obrador’s Morena celebration, which he created as a automobile to safe the presidency, stays an extension of the extremely well-liked chief, so his phrases, actions and even physique language are being intently watched for indicators of a favourite.
Among the many hurdles Ebrard should overcome are a notion he would not join with the celebration’s base just like the folksy López Obrador, and criticism that the U.S. authorities imposed its immigration coverage on Mexico, making it do its soiled work on Ebrard’s watch.
Ebrard has responded with humorous TikTok movies geared toward connecting with voters, together with one in all himself in a designer go well with consuming tacos at a avenue stand along with his spouse or turning a stumble right into a repeatedly performed dance transfer to a Unhealthy Bunny music. He just lately revealed an autobiography that frames his immigration negotiations with the Trump administration as a diplomatic victory as a result of Mexico prevented threatened tariffs — and it may have been worse.
In an interview with the AP, Ebrard described himself as a nationalist and a progressive who guarantees to take care of López Obrador’s signature social packages “to create a society the place inequality is shrinking.”
In an administration that insists serving to the poor is the precedence — about 40% of Mexicans dwell in poverty — Ebrard says his goal as president can be to develop the comparatively small center class, if he wins the ruling celebration nomination later this yr.
He has extra middle-class assist than different main contenders, consultants say, however swaying the celebration’s low-income base — the voters most enamored of López Obrador — might be the deciding issue. Ebrard insists he has that assist.
Ebrard narrowly misplaced his first try and be the left’s presidential candidate to López Obrador in 2012. Earlier than that he had varied roles in López Obrador’s Mexico Metropolis mayoral administration and later grew to become mayor himself in 2006.
Whereas some peg Ebrard as a centrist, he factors to passage of legalized abortion and same-sex marriage whereas he was Mexico Metropolis mayor a decade in the past as proof of his assist for progressive insurance policies.
Nonetheless, there are doubts in regards to the extent to which his achievements as the highest diplomat for a president who prioritized all issues home might be current in voters’ minds.
Ebrard led Mexico’s effort to acquire COVID-19 vaccines, working with vaccine producers and pushing multilateral initiatives, however Mexican governors and mayors like Sheinbaum have been those current when the vaccines got out.
“Mexicans aren’t all for overseas coverage past when it has to do with america and goes to influence the value of the greenback,” mentioned Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, a Mexican worldwide analyst now with Finis Terrae College in Chile.
On the nation’s pervasive violence — Mexicans’ high precedence in response to polls — Ebrard has led thus far unsuccessful efforts to sue U.S. gun producers and gun outlets for supplying weapons smuggled into Mexico. However as president, like López Obrador, Ebrard says he would depend on the military-controlled Nationwide Guard to safe communities relatively than rebuilding civilian police capability.
Throughout Ebrard’s tenure, Mexico efficiently negotiated a brand new commerce framework with america and Canada to interchange the outdated North American Free Commerce Settlement. The brand new accord is vital to his pledge to double Mexico’s annual financial development if he’s elected president in June subsequent yr.
Mexico’s proximity to america is its biggest benefit because the world emerges from the availability chain interruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebrard informed the AP. Factories and meeting crops are already starting to maneuver from China to Mexico to be nearer to the U.S. market, he mentioned.
However that lengthy shared border with america has additionally created a few of Ebrard’s biggest challenges.
Shortly after López Obrador took workplace in December 2018, the Trump administration applied the so-called “Stay in Mexico” program that compelled asylum seekers to attend out their U.S. asylum requests in Mexico. Asylum seekers have been concentrated in northern border cities largely managed by organized crime, exposing the migrants to countless kidnappings.
In Might 2019, Trump threatened crippling tariffs on all Mexican imports if Mexico’s authorities didn’t gradual the movement of migrants to the U.S. border.
Ebrard instantly flew to Washington, heading off the tariffs and what he mentioned was the Trump administration’s actual objective: a protected third-country settlement. Underneath such a deal, any asylum seekers crossing Mexico would first must request asylum there relatively than within the U.S.
As a substitute, Mexico provided to deploy its newly created Nationwide Guard in a method to include migrants in southern Mexico, removed from the U.S. border.
The variety of migrants intercepted on the U.S. border dropped within the quick time period, however Mexico confronted criticism from inside and overseas that it had allowed the U.S. authorities to export its immigration coverage south.
“The US received the battle” over immigration coverage, mentioned Silvia Núñez García, a researcher specializing within the bilateral relationship at Mexico’s Nationwide Autonomous College. The tariff menace “was when Mexico determined to simply accept and handle these irregular migrant flows inside our territory.”
Ebrard mentioned the U.S. returning asylum seekers to Mexico beneath a COVID-19 well being rule often called Title 42, set to run out Might 11, was a unilateral transfer that Mexico has by no means permitted.
It leaves Mexico two choices: deport the returnees to their international locations or allow them to enter Mexico, he informed the AP. “We normally do the second and the U.S. is aware of it.”
The Biden administration scrapped Stay in Mexico, however in February introduced that it might typically deny asylum to migrants who present up on the U.S. border with out first searching for safety in a rustic they handed by — a coverage critics say is completely different in name-only from the protected third nation settlement.
If Ebrard “hasn’t been capable of stand out in overseas coverage, which has been his portfolio, then I don’t suppose his prospects are very favorable,” mentioned Núñez, noting that López Obrador’s disinterest in overseas affairs restricted Ebrard’s room to maneuver.
Martha Bárcena, a profession diplomat who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. in the course of the first two years of López Obrador’s presidency, overlapping with Trump, believes Ebrard’s precedence was not overseas coverage both.
“He’s a politician and the one factor he has actually dreamed of all his life is to develop into president,” she mentioned. “There have been many areas by which he may have been far more inventive and superior an agenda that was much more linked to the priorities of the Mexican authorities, which was to struggle poverty, to struggle inequality.”
Ebrard has accused Bárcena of “obsessive rancor” since she left the submit. He says that he’ll struggle poverty and inequality if he’s elected president.
“For any leftist authorities, your goal needs to be that the center class is almost all of the inhabitants,” Ebrard mentioned. “In 10 years we’d like poverty to be a lot lower than it’s at this time. … If not, what can be the purpose of every thing we’re doing?”