U.N. Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser should have been congratulated, not kicked out of his post, for saying that the United States treats Mexico as its "back yard," analysts and leaders of the diplomat's former political party said Tuesday. Aguilar Zinser was only echoing what most Mexicans believe, they said. By letting him go, President Vicente Fox and Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez merely kowtowed to the interests of their powerful northern neighbor in short, acted as the United States' "back yard."
"It seems to me that the motive for removing him was to placate the U.S. Secretary of State (Colin Powell)," Pablo Gomez, congressional leader of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), told the media late Monday. A transcript of his remarks was issued Tuesday.
The PRD's defense of Aguilar Zinser came despite wide sentiment that he betrayed the party when he switched allegiances to the more conservative Fox.
Derbez said Aguilar Zinser would resign effective Jan. 1. Gomez said the ambassador was forced to step down for "making a statement that any other Mexican would have made at any given time."
Aguilar Zinser remarked to a university audience in Mexico City last week that "unfortunately, the understanding that the political and intellectual class of the United States has of Mexico is a country whose position is that of a back yard."
The remarks came on the eve of sensitive U.S.-Mexico talks, infuriating U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and provoking immediate rebuttals from Derbez and Fox. The president said the statement did "not correspond with reality."
"Was it really an erroneous statement?" author Guadalupe Loaeza wrote in Tuesday's edition of a Mexican daily. "What was the sin his enemies say he committed having uttered a phrase ... that describes perfectly the reality between our two countries, one very poor and the other very rich?"
