Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making ready to step down on Oct. 1 after six years in workplace. He leaves with hovering approval rankings and a handpicked successor who’s poised to keep up his legacy. Though López Obrador’s tenure has been polarizing, each his detractors and supporters concede that he has reworked Mexico’s home political scene.
On issues of international coverage, nevertheless, the traditional knowledge holds that López Obrador has been one thing of a nonentity. Critics recommend that he is aware of and cares little concerning the world past Mexico. The president not often traveled overseas, and he routinely skipped vital world summits. An initiative early in López Obrador’s time period to raffle off his presidential airplane was each a denunciation of earlier governments’ excesses and a sign that he deliberate to remain put.
But this isolationist studying of López Obrador’s tenure misses the mark. As an alternative, his international coverage reveals a worldview harking back to former Mexican President Benito Juárez, who served from 1858 to 1872 as his nation was practically torn aside by a international invasion and civil battle. Juárez’s mix of principled management and pragmatic diplomacy seemingly influenced López Obrador’s nationalist strategy to worldwide affairs.
In Mexico, Juárez occupies a stature akin to that of his U.S. modern Abraham Lincoln, revered for his integrity in instances of nationwide disaster. Nevertheless, historians and worldwide relations students have largely ignored Juárez’s world imaginative and prescient.
Juárez rose from humble beginnings as an orphan in rural Oaxaca, finally turning into the primary Indigenous president within the Americas. He led Mexico by profound transformation, guiding the nation by divisions over colonial legacies and position of the Catholic clergy towards its consolidation as a liberal state—all whereas coping with each a civil battle and a international invasion.
Within the early 1860s, then-French chief Napoleon III seen the U.S. civil battle as a chance to revive France’s imperial status whereas difficult the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted U.S. supremacy and declared the Western Hemisphere whereas closing it to European monarchical rule. A French intervention in Mexico culminated with the imposition of Habsburg Archduke Maximilian as emperor. Juárez’s management through the resistance towards and defeat of this usurping turned his defining second. In Mexico in the present day, he’s mentioned to have ushered within the nation’s “second independence.”
López Obrador attracts on this historical past. Visiting Juárez’s birthplace earlier this 12 months, the president referred to as Juárez his “reference and information,” suggesting that he seeks inspiration if not counsel from his Nineteenth-century predecessor. “Juárez continues to be amongst us,” López Obrador mentioned on the time. Portraits of Juárez adorn the president’s non-public places of work in addition to the Nationwide Palace. Echoing the late chief’s rhetoric, López Obrador typically makes use of the adjective “republican” to explain his insurance policies.
López Obrador’s reverence of Juárez has been famous domestically, however observers not often make the connection to his international coverage—maybe as a result of analysts’ dismissal of each males’s worldwide visions. Regardless of his historic significance, Juárez is known extra as a political survivor than a visionary. However his worldview was nuanced and complicated.
Juárez and his coalition possessed a coherent internationalist worldview. Rejecting imperialism and monarchy as inherently intolerant, Juárez and his supporters argued for organizing world politics in accordance with what we now dub “republican internationalist” rules: well-liked sovereignty, equality of states, peaceable settlement of disputes, and a rejection of international intervention legitimated by “civilizing missions.” He prized the “fraternity” of different republics, which was mirrored in his relations with the remainder of Spanish America and his hope for extra constructive ties with america after Lincoln’s 1860 election.
In apply, Juárez’s rules have been tempered by pragmatism. In any case, his Mexican republic was broke and overmatched by Europe’s main land energy. Though they have been briefly victorious towards French expeditionary forces in Puebla on Could 5, 1862, Juárez and his authorities have been quickly chased out of Mexico Metropolis by French reinforcements. The liberal authorities survived by trapsing throughout Mexico’s huge territory, turning into a republic with an itinerant capital.
Though Juárez’s opposition to France and its puppet emperor was unwavering, he struck offers to maintain his ragtag authorities collectively. With Mexico’s standard military outmatched, he fomented a guerrilla insurgency and cultivated respect from america, which had annexed half of Mexico 20 years earlier than. Because of this, Juárez gained U.S. help when Washington emerged from its personal civil battle.
Juárez’s 150-year-old rules solid mild on López Obrador’s international coverage. The outgoing president’s foreign-policy rhetoric revives many elements of republican internationalism. A major instance is his frequent invocation of fraternity, an idea that’s cherished by juaristas—supporters of Juárez and his concepts—and central to republican thought.
López Obrador, like Juárez, has employed the time period most often in relation to different Latin American republics. However López Obrador has additionally mentioned that he sees his authorities as a worldwide “promoter of fraternity.” Throughout Mexico’s flip as a rotating member of the United Nations Safety Council in 2021 and 2022, its signature proposal was the International Fraternity and Welfare Plan, which sought to reinvigorate U.N. efforts towards excessive poverty.
López Obrador additionally favors the time period “well-liked sovereignty”—the cornerstone of the juarista imaginative and prescient, and one which was nonetheless radical for European governments within the mid-1800s—to say Mexico’s worldwide independence and equality.
López Obrador’s sense of worldwide legislation additionally has a distinctly juarista taste. Within the mid-1800s, worldwide legislation referred primarily to the practices of European nice powers and was used to legitimize navy intervention in Latin American international locations, the place the standing of not too long ago shaped republics was ambiguous at finest. Incursions have been authorized when nice powers determined that their nationals or investments have been in danger. These powers turned to methods reminiscent of blockades and interventions to seize customs revenues, together with an earlier French intervention in Mexico in 1838 referred to as the Pastry Conflict.
After Mexico declared a moratorium on repayments, the identical pretext justified France’s 1861 invasion, with the preliminary help of Britain and Spain. Mexico’s international debt had swelled throughout many years of civil conflicts, which undermined the federal government’s potential to generate tax revenues. Boxed in by unpayable sums, Juárez—a lawyer himself—recast worldwide legislation as a software to guard weak states, calling for peaceable arbitration of debt disagreements to switch diplomatic and navy coercion. However for European powers and america, using drive to compel compensation was thought of a respectable software of statecraft.
Earlier this 12 months, when Ecuador’s safety forces breached the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest a former Ecuadoran vp who had sought refuge there from corruption fees, López Obrador echoed certainly one of Juárez most-quoted traces: “Amongst people, as amongst nations, peace is respect for the rights of others.” With out worldwide legislation, López Obrador mentioned, “it’s the rule of the strongest,” including that he deliberate to take the matter to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) as a result of “Mexico have to be revered.”
López Obrador complained that america was “ambiguous” in its preliminary response to the incursion. Shortly afterward, U.S. Nationwide Safety Advisor Jake Sullivan took a stronger stance, condemning the occasion as a blatant breach of the Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Relations, which establishes the sanctity of embassies.
For López Obrador, worldwide legislation should defend sovereign rights towards using drive. When discussing the Ecuador debacle, the Mexican president mentioned, “We’re juaristas; nothing by drive and every thing by cause and legislation.” To achieve this respect from their “Ecuadorian brothers,” in López Obrador’s phrases, Mexico turned to the ICJ to demand full safety of its embassy and diplomatic residences. (In Could, the courtroom rejected emergency measures.)
However Juárez additionally knew that rules can conflict with messy actuality. Mexico’s muddled response to present occasions in Venezuela affords a working example. Since elections extensively believed to be fraudulent have been held on July 28, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s lack of a well-liked mandate has change into simple. Worldwide strain on Maduro has grown, together with from leftist leaders reminiscent of Chilean President Gabriel Boric.
Against this, López Obrador has appeared open to Maduro’s claims of victory. He has averted criticizing Maduro or the vote straight whereas calling U.S. recognition of the opposition’s victory “an imprudence” and dubbing the Group of American States, which additionally rejected the election outcomes, “a humiliation.” The Mexican president’s instinctual rejection of intervention and international tutelage clashes together with his typical evocations of well-liked sovereignty.
Observers have typically learn Mexico’s current relations with america by the lens of López Obrador’s supposed populist sympathies with former U.S. President Donald Trump. Juárez, in distinction, was no populist. But each he and López Obrador ruled alongside a deeply polarized United States—a division that elicited a mixture of precept and pragmatism from each presidents.
Juárez initially discovered himself depending on U.S. President James Buchanan, who championed slavery and territorial growth at Mexico’s expense. Like different advocates of U.S. manifest future, Buchanan hoped to purchase or conquer extra of northern Mexico for doable incorporation as new slave states. Juárez was a resolute opponent of slavery however nonetheless made a deal to safeguard his republic, granting america in depth transit rights in Mexico in change for funds and naval help.
Maybe winkingly, López Obrador has invoked Juárez in his dealings with america. He appeared in entrance of portraits of Juárez at key moments, together with his first assembly with Trump administration officers in 2018. In a separate go to to the Trump White Home, López Obrador donned a juarista tie.
However like Juárez, López Obrador’s nationalist impulses have additionally been tempered by Machiavellian pragmatism. He could chafe at U.S. presumptions and worldwide hierarchies, however he has reduce asymmetrical bargains when the chips are down. This intuition was clear in negotiations to change the North American Free Commerce Settlement, and in López Obrador’s typically calculating use of migration to achieve leverage with U.S. authorities on points starting from commerce to counternarcotics operations.
When circumstances permit, juarista instincts resurface. López Obrador transformed his reputation right into a landslide victory for his chosen successor, Claudia Sheinbaum. The election additionally gave him a short window with an expanded legislative majority, which he has used to advance a controversial reform of Mexico’s judiciary. López Obrador invoked Juárez and denounced judges as an unjustly protected caste. Juárez himself was the top of the Supreme Court docket earlier than acceding to the presidency; his identify is related to a reform that strengthened the Mexican justice system by eliminating the authorized privileges of the church and the navy.
López Obrador’s newest transfer—which dangers undermining the rule of legislation that Juárez cherished by putting in elected, possible pro-government judges—drew statements of concern from the United States and Canada. In response to those perceived incursions into home affairs, López Obrador “paused” relations with them.
This response echoes what the late historian Daniel Cosío Villegas termed the Juárez Doctrine: Diplomatic relations can be maintained solely when Mexican sovereignty was honored. Till his demise, Juárez refused to reestablish diplomatic ties with the European powers that had acknowledged Maximilian—except it was on Mexico’s phrases.
Whilst he leaves workplace, López Obrador’s republican internationalist disposition will possible proceed in Mexico. Rules of well-liked sovereignty, equality, and nonintervention resonate with an extended Mexican custom that’s embodied by Juárez. López Obrador proved remarkably efficient at aligning various actors underneath his political banner and garnering public help. His international coverage has been an vital, if misunderstood, element of that.
