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From
the October 2001 issue of World Press Review
Jorge Castañeda
Mexico’s Foreign Minister
Tekla Szymanski
World Press Review Associate Editor
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| Mexico's
Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda (L) meets with U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (R) in Washington on Sept. 4,
2001 (Photo: AFP). |
When
he was elected president in July 2000, Vicente Fox promised voters
el cambio—fundamental change. Among Fox’s first appointments
was his choice for foreign minister: Jorge Castañeda, 48, an
internationally renowned scholar and progressive political analyst.
Castañeda, who has taught political science at universities
in Mexico and the United States, has written 12 books, including a
biography of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Now Castañeda is leading high-level negotiations between Mexico
and the United States to open the border and resolve the status of
millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants. He exemplifies Mexico’s
new face: ambitious, pragmatic, and media savvy. He once said, “Newspapers
don’t matter and speeches don’t matter—nothing matters
but TV.” In his aggressive lobbying in the United States on the
touchy issue of illegal immigration, he has replaced “victimization
with activism,” political analyst Denise Dresser wrote in the
Mexican newsmagazine Proceso.
Castañeda pledges that the introduction of immigration reforms
as well as an integrated Mexican-U.S. labor market will have to take
into account the rights and living standards of all Mexicans. He favors
a policy modeled on Europe’s guest-worker arrangements, but only
if it includes measures to “regularize” the status of the
estimated 3-4 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States.
“It’s the whole enchilada or nothing,” Castañeda
said, speaking in July at the National Association of Hispanic
Journalists conference in Phoenix. 
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