The balances of international politics, so prone to metaphors about strategy games, are often interpreted, for example, as a game of billiards. Each move, each hit on a ball precipitates another play, changing the order of the rest of the balls on the table. The reading of the sudden announcement of Claudia Sheinbaum’s trip to Spain follows that pattern. With the first hit, she seals diplomatic peace with Spain and, by extension, aligns Mexico with the axis of progressive countries on the turbulent international stage, sending in turn a signal of firmness to Donald Trump, who is going through one of his most delicate moments. And as a defensive move, she deactivates the internal opposition’s response, in favor of peace with Spain and increasingly critical of Trump. These are the caroms of the president of Mexico with her lightning attendance at this weekend’s Defense of Democracy Summit in Barcelona.
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Everything has been very fast. The president announced the visit last Friday in her morning conference. This week she already notified the Senate and this Thursday she will be flying to Spain, to attend the summit on Saturday and return on Sunday. The brief agenda communicated by the Presidency highlights “bilateral meetings,” besides ruling out a meeting with King Felipe VI. The president has spoken of “messages of peace” upon accepting the invitation of the host of the meeting, Spanish president Pedro Sánchez. The usual measured tone of Sheinbaum behind a move loaded with symbolism.
It not only signifies the thaw with Spain after years of diplomatic tension revolving around the colonial legacy and a trail of rapprochement gestures by Spanish authorities, including the king. It is the first trip of a Mexican president to Spain since 2018 and, even more, the first trip of a Morena president to Europe, with the added symbolism that it is to Spain. The Barcelona summit has already had three editions. Sheinbaum was not present at any, sending her foreign minister instead. Now she says yes to the one organized by Sánchez, the rising nemesis of Trump in recent weeks after his opposition to the Iran war. A meeting where ideological allies in the sights of the U.S. president will also be present: the leaders of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; Colombia, Gustavo Petro; and Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi.
“The president is very careful, her style is not bombastic and she understands well the value of signals, especially in international politics,” says internationalist Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, who also points to recent changes in the Foreign Ministry, with the rise of Roberto Velasco as the new foreign minister, a specialist in relations with the United States and Canada. The academic highlights, for example, that in her call last week with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “the issue of drug trafficking did not come up. With a Trump focused on the Iran war, it is the right moment to send a signal that Mexico is back on the international stage seeking alliances and political spaces.” The war is taking a toll on the Trump Administration, with polls showing the decline of his popularity months before the midterm elections. And with the economy heating up – inflation, oil – as a conflict that is approaching two months in duration drags on.
A war that has already served to measure the first moves of that kind of regional progressive axis formed by Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, all present at the Barcelona summit. The three signed a joint statement a month ago calling for an “immediate ceasefire.” Last year, Sheinbaum, Lula, and Petro sought greater Latin American unity during the Celac summit held in Honduras, marked at that time by Trump’s trade war. But no concrete agreement was reached, apart from a possible Latin American candidacy by consensus, promoted by Brazil, for the UN Secretary-General, which is renewed this year.
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The so-called Defense of Democracy Summit is a partisan event, but last year it received the backing of the UN General Assembly to “combat extremism and promote cooperation against disinformation and inequality.” UNAM political scientist Mariana Aparicio Ramírez believes that “Sheinbaum also seeks international support for her own policy, very focused on fighting inequality, as the 4T motto says, ‘the poor first,’ at a time when the Free Trade Agreement (USMCA) with the United States and Canada is already being negotiated. The outcome of those negotiations will be decisive for Mexico’s trade and economic policy.”
The summit to be held this weekend in Barcelona also comes almost as a response to another summit, promoted a month ago by Trump at one of his golf courses in Miami. The so-called Shield of the Americas brought together 12 ultra-right Latin American governments, ideologically aligned with Trumpism. A new twist in the White House strategy, which has dusted off an old late 19th-century doctrine that justifies interventionism over the rest of the continent. “Against this meeting sponsored by Trump stands the democratic endorsement of the governments of Mexico or Brazil, which are also the two demographic and economic powers. If you add to this Trump’s recent attacks on the Pope, which have been criticized even by the Mexican right, you manage to defuse much of the possible opposition criticism of Sheinbaum’s move,” points out internationalist Guerra Castellanos.
The formula of taking advantage of the international context to tighten ranks at home recalls the phrase with which former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador explained his proverbial reserve: “The best foreign policy is good domestic policy.” During his first two years, the former president did not leave Mexico, and when he did, it was to travel to Washington or Central America. Sheinbaum has not yet reached her first two years and has already gone to the G20 summit in Brazil, to the United States, Canada, Honduras, and Guatemala. The president is marking her own line, moving away from the legacy of her predecessor and political godfather. “Every day, the president gains a millimeter more space in front of her predecessor,” adds the internationalist. “Power is not transferred by magic, it is won little by little with decisive decisions. The trip to the summit in Spain is one of those moments.”
