Mexican foreign policy and Latin America: a shifting relation

The paper focuses on the evolution Mexican foreign policy has undergone between the beginning of the Nineties and 2008. It will consider the role played by ideas and political paradigms in Mexican foreign policy and their influence in Mexican relation with Latin America.During the Cold War the revolutionary and nationalist policy paradigm and its affirmation of Mexican revolution principles created a strong tie between Mexico and the other Latin American Countries. The evolution of the idea of “hermandad latinoamericana” (Latin American brotherhood) and the contrasting feelings towards the US transformed relations with Latin America in the “best choice” to implement Mexican revolutionary goals. The political and economic change, started in the Nineties after a large period of authoritarianism, and the democratization of the country in 2000, allows to identify the transition from a traditional conception of foreign policy to a new idea of international policy. With the acquirement of a new economical and political status Mexico addressed its energies towards United States instead of dealing with Latin America, abandoning the possibility to have an important role in the area and storing away the project of a new and equal international order, placing itself closer to the economic security provided by North America.According with a general trend, Mexican dialogue and activism in Latin America decreased and the idea of “Latin American brotherhood” lost the support of intellectual elites and politicians, surviving only among the civil society and being substituted with the idea that “Mexico belongs to North”.