Obama’s Visit to Central America & Mexico

Pete Souza / White House

Precisely one year after President Obama traveled to Latin America to attend the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, he sets his sights south once again, visiting Mexico and Costa Rica on May 2-4, 2013. Days before the visit, Inter-American Dialogue experts held a press briefing to discuss what will be on the agenda for the visit and what US, Mexican, and Central American leaders hoped to achieve.

The latest trip marks President Obama’s fourth time in the region, having visited Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador during his first term, in addition to his appearances at two Summits of the Americas. But this visit so early in his second term struck panelists as peculiar, given the scant attention Latin America has received relative to global hotspots like the Middle East.

According to Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary of political affairs at the OAS and former vice president of Costa Rica, the visit could have much to do with “drumming up support for immigration reform,” which will no doubt be a topic of discussion in both Mexico and Costa Rica, where he will meet with all of the Central American heads of state.

Comprehensive immigration reform has taken center stage on the US political scene, with the expansive, bipartisan Senate plan serving as the basis of legislation that lawmakers hope to enact before the August recess. Structural changes on both sides of the border, including decreased birth rates and sound macroeconomic principles in Mexico along with tougher border enforcement in the United States, have brought net migration flows to a standstill, creating “a different calculus and political space” for reform, noted Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and former director of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).

Though the substance of the reform will be more concretely defined in the coming months, the president will be able to tout the progress to date as a positive development for US-Mexican relations.

But more than migration, the White House and US Department of State have emphasized economic ties as the top item on the agenda. Trade between the United States and Central America now totals $60 billion, equal to that between the United States and India. In Mexico, NAFTA has created unprecedented opportunities for trade integration. According to Dialogue president emeritus Peter Hakim, these ties can be deepened should Mexico succeed in pushing through a long-awaited reform to its energy sector.

Meanwhile in Central America, the outlook is bleaker with stagnating growth in many countries, particularly El Salvador. Casas-Zamora contended that Central American leaders may seize the visit as an opportunity to encourage greater foreign direct investment from the United States. However, Dialogue senior associate Manuel Orozco explained the need for a more long-term US assistance strategy that prizes education and social inclusion as the engines of growth.

Though the all-important issue of crime and violence has been downplayed in the lead up to Obama’s visit, panelists had little doubt it would be a prominent item on the agenda in both countries. Though the trip “might be cloaked in business and economics, it is going to be dominated by security,” argued Hakim. In Mexico, the Peña Nieto administration’s security policy remains murky, although many expect the emphasis on reducing violence as opposed to interdicting narcotics and taking down kingpins could disrupt the unprecedented bilateral cooperation established under previous president Felipe Calderón.

In Central America, the challenges to security collaboration are similar. US assistance through the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), which is merely one-eighth of what the United States dedicated to assisting Colombia in the fight against drug trafficking, has had a minimal impact on stemming soaring violence. Several Central American leaders, particularly Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina and Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla, have voiced the need to explore alternative drug policies. While Obama remained open but responded coolly to these calls at the Summit of the Americas a year ago, as Central America’s woes grow “this time sitting back and saying he’ll listen probably won’t be enough,” concluded Dialogue president Michael Shifter.