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Two years ago, Mexican President Felipe Calderon arrived in Montebello, Que., for the Three Amigos summit with then-U.S. President George W. Bush and Stephen Harper. “Buenos Dias, Felipe,” said the Prime Minister as he greeted Mr. Calderon.

Relations between the two were warm. Both are economists by training, with children of similar age. The Calderons spent the weekend prior to the NAFTA summit with the Harpers at the Prime Minister’s official summer residence, Harrington Lake, where Mr. Harper’s wife, Laureen, taught the Mexican President how to drive a motor boat.

Such cosyness is likely to be notable by its absence when the two men reconvene, along with U.S. President Barack Obama, in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Sunday and Monday.

Mr. Calderon is understood to be deeply unhappy at the Canadian government’s decision to demand that Mexican nationals travelling to Canada now require visas — a move aimed at stopping the growing number of fraudulent refugee claims by Mexicans.

Information is only now beginning to emerge that as damaging as the decision itself was the way in which it was communicated to the Mexicans by the Harper government.

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Reuters

President Barack Obama said on Friday that given the weakened state of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies, this is not the time to reopen the NAFTA treaty for negotiations.

Ahead of a summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama said it was important to stabilize each country's economy.

Obama as a presidential candidate last year expressed a desire to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement to include enforceable labor and environmental standards in the pact.

Speaking to Hispanic reporters, Obama said he still believed side agreements on labor and environmental protections should be incorporated into the core of the agreement.

"But I will be honest with you: at a time when the economy has been shrinking drastically and trade has been shrinking around the world, at a time when Mexico has suffered a double-digit blow because not only of a declining economy but because of the effects of H1N1 on tourism, we probably want to make the economy more stabilized in the coming months before we have a long discussion around further trade negotiations."

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Bloomberg

Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s waning political power heightens the urgency of a meeting with President Barack Obama this weekend where drug trafficking and border violence will probably top the agenda.

Obama will meet a Mexican leader who has offered the U.S. unparalleled cooperation on intelligence, extradition, and removing corrupt officials. The U.S., under an aid program called the Merida Initiative, is trying to help Mexico build crime-fighting institutions that will outlast Calderon’s administration, such as a 9,000-member federal police force.

“My concern is that Calderon has three years left,” said Michael Braun, who stepped down last year as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief of operations. “Everyone has to work as hard as we can, to make as much headway as we can, because we don’t know what’s coming next.”

Time may already be running out after Calderon’s party lost its leading role in Congress in mid-term elections in July, said Jorge Chabat, a political science professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.

Should the National Action Party lose the presidency in 2012, Mexico might revert to its traditional nationalism, pulling back on collaboration with the U.S. and halting the bloody war on drug cartels unleashed by Calderon, he said.

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LA Times

When President Obama goes to Guadalajara, Mexico, this weekend for the North American Leaders Summit, he will surely praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the courage he has displayed fighting the war on drugs. The applause is well deserved. Calderon has turned the crackdown on drug traffickers into the centerpiece of his administration and has pursued organized crime with undeniable zeal. But before Obama becomes too effusive and pats Calderon on the back for a job well done, it's important that the U.S. president remember the cost and the consequences of his counterpart's crusade.

In Mexico today, human rights violations committed by the military and the police in this effort are on the rise, yet punishment for the perpetrators remains elusive. So although Obama should recognize Calderon's efforts, he should also insist that drug lawlessness cannot be combated by breaking the law and that the army must be subjected to the kind of scrutiny it has shunned so far.

Today, more than 45,000 soldiers police the roads of Mexico's main cities and drug-producing areas as part of a strategy designed to confront drug traffickers and contain the violence they wreak. Many ring leaders have been captured, many drug shipments have been confiscated and many smugglers have been imprisoned.

But violence remains unabated, and the unintended consequences of Calderon's efforts have become distressingly clear: The number of cases of human rights violations brought before the Mexican Human Rights Commission has risen by 600% over the last two years.

The war on drugs is turning into a war on the civilian population that can't simply be dismissed as collateral damage. Mexico's military is capturing "capos," but it's also raping, extracting confessions through torture and detaining people arbitrarily. Crime is begetting more crime.

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With the production drop in Cantarell, Mexico's largest oil field, and the prediction Mexcio will soon not be able to export oil, the US' dependance on Mexican oil seems moot.

The structural drop in US employemnt means the US not langer wants any more cheap labor. There is a limit on the number of cheap janitors the financial industry can use.

What can Mexico provide the US? Other than drugs.

"Se requiere que las ciudadanos no estén ausentes ante una clase política que, desde el punto de vista ciudadano, no ha respondido y claramente ha fallado," dijo el Presidente de la República. Sociedad civil confronta a los poderes de la Unión El Universal, June 25, 2009

Translation: "It is necessary that the citizens not be seated behind a political class which, from the citizen’s point of view, clearly has failed," said the President of the Republic. (President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon El Universal, June 25, 2009)

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Furthest from him whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme above his equals.