{"id":3403,"date":"2017-02-06T18:25:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T17:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=3403"},"modified":"2017-03-13T10:02:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T09:02:56","slug":"trump-and-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2017\/02\/06\/trump-and-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Enrique<\/a>
Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In an apparently offhand comment about “Bad Hombres” \u00a0during a telephone call with Mexican President,\u00a0Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, Donald Trump repo<\/a>rtedly said he would send in U.S. troops\u00a0to control the situation if the Mexican military did not.<\/p>\n

As in other diplomatic issues that the current occupant of the White House has managed to stir up, Trump may not be aware of the history of the United States with respect to Mexico and the consternation his comments would provoke.<\/p>\n

Although the border with Mexico has been peaceful for 100 years, it was not always this way and Mexican’s do know their own history even if the American people, or at least some of them, have elected a person\u00a0who obviously does not.<\/p>\n

Some History<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mexico, or New Spain declared its independence in 1821 after a long and complex conflict that began with a declaration of war made by Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 against the\u00a0colonial government. At that time Napoleon had occupied Spain and thus inherited its\u00a0possessions in the New World.<\/span><\/p>\n

Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836 in a war fought between U.S. backed colonists on one side and the Mexican army on the other. Sam Houston, a former governor of Tennessee led the “revolutionary” forces and \u00a0became the first President of the new republic.<\/p>\n

James Polk had become the 11th\u00a0U.S. president and his campaign centered around the idea that the United States had a “Manifest Destiny” to occupy the North American continent from coast to coast. Polk had, by most accounts, provoked the start of the war by Annexing Texas and then sending US. soldiers\u00a0into territory along the Rio Grande that was in dispute.<\/p>\n

\"images\"<\/a>After the two year war and payment of $ 15 million, the United States secured about one third of Mexican territory including \u00a0modern California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.<\/p>\n

The United States also intervened directly in the Mexican revolution and occupied the Port of Vera Cruz for 7 months in 1914. The intervention apparently helped\u00a0Venustiano Carranza\u00a0defeat\u00a0Victoriano Huerta, who had staged a coup against the government, and eventually make temporary peace with the revolutionaries such as Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa and their allies.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army’s last intervention in Mexico was in 1917 when thousands of troops crossed the border in an attempt to capture Villa, who had broken with Carranza, and had raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Some More History<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his annual speech to the Congress in 1823, U.S. President James Monroe made explicit reference to the newly independent states of South America and the role that France played in restoring the deposed Ferdinand VII to power in Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Making reference to the European system of monarchies and alliances he emphatically stated that \u201cwe should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety<\/span>\u201d. This idea became known as the Monroe Doctrine and has been a fundamental tenant of American foreign policy ever since. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was later extended by Teddy Roosevelt to embrace the idea that the Unites States would intervene in the internal affairs of countries in the Hemisphere in \u201cflagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence<\/span>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mexican Concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"U.S.<\/a>
U.S. Forces in Vera Cruz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the years, the United States has intervened militarily in virtually every country in Latin America at one time or another and has often invoked Roosevelt’s\u00a0Corollary, as it is known, to justify such invasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

By questioning the Mexican’s governments ability to control the drug gangs that operate in its northern provinces, Trump, appears to be opening\u00a0the door to another military intervention.<\/p>\n

He may not have meant to do that but imagine the reaction of the Mexicans who do know their own history as well as that of the United\u00a0States. They have heard Trump call Mexican immigrants “rapists and criminals”, \u00a0talk about building a wall, repealing\u00a0NAFTA, and threatening American companies which operate\u00a0factories\u00a0over the border.<\/p>\n

Publicly, the Mexican foreign office has said the the tone of the conversation was “constructive<\/a>” and the report about the phone call was wrong. The White house said the comments were “lighthearted”. As the\u00a0Associated Press is\u00a0normally a pretty reliable source my guess is that the transcript is real and Mexico is deeply worried about what the current U.S. President will do next.<\/p>\n

What Trump does not seem to understand is that the office he holds comes with responsibility and that the things he says has an impact on the lives of real people and the fortunes of the business interests he says he supports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an apparently offhand comment about “Bad Hombres” during a telephone call with Mexican President, Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto, Donald Trump implicitly threatens another U.S. invasion of its Southern Neighbor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26749],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3403"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3411,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions\/3411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}