Mexico’s Seven Deadly Questions by Roger Pardo-Maurer

Yesterday we held our monthly International Thursday event, and one of our speakers made a comment that got myroger-pardo-maurer attention.   When talking about the shift towards populism, and the erosion of capitalism and democracy in Latin America, he said that their is nothing more worrisome than the longevity of liberal democracy being in the hands of Mexico and Brazil.  Since the speaker himself was Brazilian, this drew a few laughs, however, the statement was fairly accurate…particularly in the case of Mexico.

During a paper commissioned by our SFS program, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere – Roger Pardo-Maurer (also an Army Special Forces veteran), described our worst nightmare in Latin America as being “a country with the desperation of Haiti, the hostility of Cuba, the case of Venezuela, the capabilities of Brazil, and the proximity of Mexico…and that country is Mexico.” His piece has received some media attention as of late, when it was mentioned in the online version of Foreign Policy magazine.

Roger’s point in the paper is that when we think about Mexico we should focus on their connection to the changing face of America, a face that includes Latino’s as the largest minority group in the U.S.  (many of which have ethnic ties to Mexico).  Pardo categorizes the focus areas into “7 Deadly Questions”:

  1. What will Mexico do when it runs out of water?
  2. What will Mexico do when it runs out of oil?
  3. Does Mexico have a viable strategy to remain competitive in global markets?
  4. How will Mexico manage the widening gap between it impoverished, youthful, and heavily-indigenous southern states and the rest of the country?
  5. Has Mexico really found the formula to satisfy the dignity and aspirations of its indigenous peoples?
  6. How will Mexico support its rapidly aging population?
  7. Where will Mexico’s youth go if “exporting” them to the US is no longer an option?

With Latin America long being reputed as the forgotten region in foreign policy, particularly in the defense community.  It’s great to see such a timely piece get its well deserved attention.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 2:00 PM. It is filed under Latin America, Secure Free Society and tagged with , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Comments are closed.