With A Friend Like Fox

AN END TO ISOLATION

This past April, Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) -- long Mexico's fiercest critic and a man not known for his internationalist credentials -- took an unusual trip. Helms went to Mexico City with colleagues in tow, where he convened the first-ever meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on foreign soil. The death of one-party rule in Mexico, Helms declared, had initiated "a new era of cooperation [with the United States] on matters such as immigration, drugs, trade, and the promotion of human rights in Cuba."

The senators' visit and the language that accompanied it would have been inconceivable barely a year ago -- as would have Helms' fast friendship with Mexico's new foreign minister, a self-proclaimed "man of the left" named Jorge Castaneda. For decades, the U.S.-Mexico relationship was a wary one, characterized by mutual distrust and only reluctant cooperation. But that is now changing. With the advent of democratic government, Mexico is turning its back on its history of isolationism and its fiercely noninterventionist foreign policy. The country has begun to look beyond its borders, trying to spur development and help resolve problems throughout Latin America while pursuing a robust partnership with the United States -- a neighbor with which Mexico was once at odds on nearly every issue.

The opportunities this turnaround presents have not been lost on Washington. President George W. Bush, comfortable with Mexico from his days as Texas governor and eager to court the burgeoning Latino vote, has declared his desire for a "special relationship" between the two countries. To this end, shortly after taking office Bush broke with tradition by choosing Mexico for his first foreign visit. In his first months as president, Bush met with a string of Latin American leaders and traveled to Quebec City to promote hemispheric free trade. While there, he also announced that Mexican President Vicente Fox would be the first foreign leader to make a state visit to the Bush White House.

When they met in February at Fox's ranch in San Cristobal, Mexico, the two men created an unprecedented top-level working group on migration headed by Castaneda and Minister of Government Santiago Creel along with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Bush also uttered words that were music to Mexican ears, acknowledging that the two countries' mutual drug problem derived from U.S. demand.