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It is perhaps the most significant potential threat to U.S. national security with regards to our southern neighbor since Poncho Villa raided a U.S. border town in 1916. Mexico will be holding its presidential election on July 2, which will determine whether Mexico, with its nearly 2,000 mile border with the U.S., joins an emerging anti-American Marxist alliance in Latin America. It will decide whether Mexico follows Venezuela's example in becoming a state sponsor of terrorism with a potential pool of 12-20 million illegal immigrant recruits already inside our borders, a couple of million of whom recently conducted mass demonstrations against our country, or continues to be ruled by the much more mainstream PAN party.
Ultra-left Marxist candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, continues to outpoll his more mainstream socialist PRI and center right PAN party opponents in the in the final run-up to the Mexican presidential election scheduled for Sunday. Obrador is a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who is himself a close ally of Communist Cuban President Fidel Castro. Together, Chavez and Castro have been the two principal supporters of Communist and Marxist revolution throughout Latin America.
The PRI's presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, has warned that "there are clear similarities between (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez and Lopez Obrador. … They have very similar attitudes. I see authoritarianism in them both." Madrazo further said that Obrador, like Chavez, does not respect the rule of law and that foreign investors would shun Mexico if Obrador were to come to power. Madrazo also accused Obrador of being in close contact with Chavez aides and suggested that Chavez was trying to sway the Mexican elections towards Obrador, accusations Obrador did not deny. Obrador's populist leftist appeal and his socialist-style handout programs as mayor of Mexico City have fueled the comparison with Chavez. These allegations were strengthened when Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., told several Mexican legislators that he had intelligence reports revealing major financial support from Chavez to Obrador and his political party. These attacks against Obrador by his presidential rivals have succeeded in reducing his lead in the polls to just a few points.
Madrazo's comparison of Obrador to Chavez is chilling given the fact that Chavez is a self-proclaimed Communist who has declared Communist Cuba as his primary model for Venezuela. The People's Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, has staunchly supported Obrador and has noted that his party "was formed in 1989 by left-wing elements of the PRI, the Communist Party of Mexico, and other left and progressive groups." Having a Hugo Chavez-clone elected president of Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000 mile long border with the United States at a time when President Bush has been trying to open the borders with Mexico and grant amnesty to 12-20 million illegal immigrants and allow tens of millions more to enter the country at will would presumably change the administration's preoccupation with the war in Iraq and focus its attention on America's "backyard" where it belongs.
Dick Morris recently reported in a column this past April entitled "Mexico's Hugo Chavez" that "Chavez is a firm ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Lopez Obrador could be the final piece in their grand plan to bring the United States to its knees before the newly resurgent Latin left. Between them, Venezuela and Mexico export about 4 million barrels of oil each day to the United States, more than one-third of our oil imports. With both countries in the hands of leftist leaders, the opportunity to hold the U.S. hostage will be extraordinary. Think we have security problems now, with Vicente Fox leading Mexico? Just wait until we have a 2,000-mile border with a chum of Chavez and Castro. … Lopez Obrador would be part of the Latin America's new, anti-U.S. left. … Mexico, with its vast oil resources and its long border and free-trade agreement with the United States, would be the crown jewel for America's enemies."
A recently published article entitled, "Who Lost Latin America" similarly noted, "Washington confronts the distinct possibility of having an explicitly hostile government in Mexico. The implications of such an outcome could be far-reaching for the integrity of our southern frontier, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, terrorism, trade and the radical 'reconquista' movement (which is intent on 'taking back' at least parts of the United States for Mexico)."
Even under the relatively friendly government of Vicente Fox, as Heather Mac Donald pointed out last November, "Mexican officials here and abroad are involved in a massive and almost daily interference in American sovereignty." Imagine what representatives of an unfriendly Mexican apparat might do. The consequence of all these elections may well be the complete undoing of Ronald Reagan's legacy of successfully countering and, with the notable exception of Castro's Cuba, defeating totalitarianism in our hemisphere.
If Obrador wins this presidential election, it would herald, along with the election of Communist front leader Lula da Silva in Brazil in 2002, the most important victory for Marxist revolutionaries and the biggest defeat for the cause of freedom worldwide since the fall of China to Communism in 1949. The Bush administration should pursue all peaceful avenues available, including covert means, to ensure that Obrador does not succeed in his bid to become the next president of Mexico, or else the national security woes of this administration and this country may increase substantially.
If Obrador wins, President Bush's already badly damaged presidential legacy will likely end up being a much greater terrorist threat to this country than before he became president, and the loss of over 100 million citizens of our southern neighbor to Marxist control nearly two decades after Reagan "won" the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
