Remarks: Gold Insigne Award Dinner - Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico

SUSAN SEGAL: Good evening. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the Americas Society/Council of the Americas Gold Insigne dinner in honor of His Excellency Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, president of Mexico. I want to give a very special welcome to President Calderón and to his distinguished family including the first lady, Margarita Zavala de Calderón. (Applause.)

I would also like to give a very special welcome to Patricia Espinosa, secretary of foreign affairs – (applause) – Juan Elvira, secretary of the environment – (applause) – who’s out here someplace – Bruno Ferrari, minister of economy – (applause) – Solomon Chertovoski (ph), secretary of health, Solomon (ph) – (applause) – Gloria Guevara, secretary of tourism – (applause) – Arturo Sarukhan, ambassador to Mexico – of Mexico to the United States – (applause) – Enrique Iglesias, secretary general of Iberoamericana – (applause) – Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States – (applause) – Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development – (applause) – Roberta Jacobson, acting assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs – (applause) – and last, but not least, Gregory Meeks, U.S. congressman and member of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere. (Applause.)

And of course I want to welcome all of the other members of the delegation as well as members of the Americas Society of the Council of the Americas and all of our very special guests. Thank you for all being here with us tonight on such a festive evening. I also want to thank our sponsors, the AES Corporation, Barrick Gold Corporation, CitiCorp, Corporación America, NEC, Fox International Channels, Karcsi Global, MetLife, Microsoft and Telefónica. Finally, I want to thank Randy Melzi and her marvelous team for all their hard work in making this happen this evening.

Now, it is my great honor to present a distinguished member of our board and a dear friend, Mack McLarty, who will introduce and present the Gold Insigne to President Calderón. (Applause.)

MACK MCLARTY: Good evening. Susan, thank you very much. This is truly a special evening with a tremendous gathering here, not only distinguished members, Mr. President, of your cabinet but so many other people of distinction and accomplishment and so many good friends of long standing. I’m afraid if I say secretary general, minister or ambassador a number of heads will start to nod in acknowledgement of those titles. We have a number of truly great people here tonight.

It is my genuine pleasure and, indeed, high honor to be part of this program to present the highest award of the Council of the Americas, the Gold Insigne, to the president of Mexico, His Excellency Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. (Applause.) This is the society’s highest honor and is awarded only to democratically elected heads of state from the Western hemisphere who have made truly significant, meaningful contributions to their own country, the region and to society.

President Calderón, many of us in this room have known and admired you and your wonderful wife, Margarita, for many years. You have shown courage, vision and leadership on behalf of your country and your fellow citizens; truly driving your economy forward and in the process lifting the lives of millions of your fellow citizens. The president’s accomplishments, frankly, are far too many to list tonight. So I will only underscore and affirm those that I think have had the most impact during his time as president.

Tremendous strides on education and health that go to the very heart of the people’s well-being in his country and to the economy where he has achieved a remarkable degree of stability and renewal in the Mexican economy – today there is universal education in Mexico for the first time in the country’s history. Under his administration, 24 million education grants have been awarded to students from elementary to post-graduate school; there have been 96 new institutes of higher education – most oriented toward science and technology – a competitive workforce for Mexico in the years to come.

And whereas only a decade ago only half of the population had health coverage, today more than 100 million Mexicans have access to public health services, and universal health coverage is expected to be fully realized within the next year. (Applause.) Mr. President, we may need to seek your advice, and soon, in our country on some of these initiatives. In addition, his sound economic leadership has helped steer his country through perhaps the most turbulent period that we have seen in modern history. He has expanded his government’s assistance program, the safety net, which has more than halved the number of people living in poverty.

He has worked to increase competition in his country and to diversify Mexico’s trading partners – we hope not too much on that last score. And as a result, the middle class is vibrant in Mexico – it is growing. Home ownership is significantly on the rise. Last year there were 850,000 jobs created in Mexico with a GDP expansion of 5 1/2 percent. That is the fastest pace within a decade in Mexico – truly impressive. (Applause.)

Now, the record I described would be tremendously impressive for any leader under any circumstances, but it is especially striking against the backdrop of Mexico’s security challenges. President Calderón’s unyielding stance against narco-traffickers has resulted in great gains in national security. This is a formidable challenge against an evil force and enemy. He has been firmly resolute in the fight while remaining focused on reform, which I think proves – and history will judge – that he has been the right person at the right time to lead Mexico. (Applause.)

So, Señor Presidente, you are forging a legacy, a vision, commitment and courage, and it’s my privilege now to help present you with the Americas Society Gold Insigne. I would ask Susan Segal, our president and chief executive, to come forward to accompany the president to the podium and the pinning of the Gold Insigne. And I will follow Susan’s lead in that regard. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERÓN HINOJOSA: Thank you, Mrs. Susan Segal, president and chief executive officer of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Mr. Thomas McLarty, thank you for your words. Dear friends, Enrique Iglesias, secretary general of Iberoamericana, Mr. Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, Mr. José Gurría, secretary general of OECD, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your work, my friends.

It is indeed an honor to be here tonight and receive on behalf of the Mexican people the Gold Insigne award from the Council of the Americas, especially because this is an organization that champions the ideals of free enterprise, democracy, liberty and the rule of law in which I believe. A recent article by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal talks about the Mexican paradox. How is it possible, the author asked, that a country that is often portrayed in the media as a nation in the middle of violence is actually achieving remarkable advances in so many areas of its economy and society?

And the answer was very clear for him. What most people consider a paradox is simply the crash of reality against our own unexamined clichés and preconceptions. That is why the role of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society is more important than ever in providing a balanced analysis about the issues and challenges in the region. We all share a common vision: building a safer, more democratic and prosperous hemisphere. And this is especially important today as the world is going through difficult times.

We are witnessing how economic instability in Europe and concerns about the U.S. economy are affecting financial markets worldwide. But in this context of turbulence, Mexico is emerging as a stronger and better partner in the construction of a more competitive North America. And let me tell you why. First, in economic terms, Mexico’s looking to the future with renewed confidence. Fifteen years of sound political and monetary policies have paid off. Unlike other nations, Mexico now looks in good shape.

The total debt of the federal government is less than one-third of our GDP and our foreign reserves are equivalent to 2.3 times government’s foreign debt. Our fiscal deficit is less than 0.4 percent of GDP and our economy, as Mr. McLarty said, grew last year at 5.4 percent. We generated more than 800,000 new jobs. And today the inflation is 3 percent. We have a stable platform that can resist the storms ahead.

And we have been working hard to increase the competitiveness of Mexican economy. For instance, we are investing heavily in human capital – in the people. During the last five years almost 100 new public universities, more oriented towards technology, were built in Mexico as well as almost 1,000 public high schools. And today more than 100,000 new engineers and technicians graduate every year in Mexico – more than in Canada or Brazil or Germany. And additionally, we are investing in infrastructure like never before to turn Mexico into a global hub for logistics and trade. We now spend more than 5 percent of GDP on infrastructure a year, well above the 3.5 percent average in OECD nations.

Second, in terms of social development, Mexico is undergoing tremendous changes. Census data show that in the past 10 years the gap between rural and urban centers has been shrinking. This is because more families than ever before have access to better public services, more families are having their own home, more families are having access to credit, more families are having access to better quality of life.

One example of that is that by the end of this year we will reach universal health coverage. And in order to do that in less than five years we have built more than 1,000 new hospitals and clinics in Mexico and rebuilt 2,000 hospitals or clinics additionally. So we are going to reach an achievement that will guarantee that every single Mexican will have a doctor, medicine, treatment and a hospital.

This effort is yielding results. Figures show that despite the 6 percent drop in our GDP in 2009, during the crisis as a result of this international crisis, we were able to prevent an increase in extreme poverty and we even saw a small reduction in the percentage of people living in extreme poverty. The other way around that – what happened in several countries, including the United States, in which we saw an increase in the official poverty rate. And slowly, but surely, the middle class are expanding in Mexico, according to several indicators.

Why is all this important for the United States? Consider, for instance, one very sensitive issue for the American people – immigration. The combined effect of demographic and socioeconomic changes in Mexico has meant, according to Douglas Massey of Princeton University – and I quote – that “the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.” No one wants to hear, but the flow has already stopped.

Does this mean that immigration to the U.S. will stop? Of course not, but what it means is that Mexicans coming to U.S. are much less in number, have more education and better skills. It means that the Mexican workforce is more productive and better prepared to contribute to the competitiveness of North America as a whole, as a region, both at home and abroad. And that’s why I think that what our governments should do is to grasp this opportunity and remove the remaining obstacles to integration.

The name of the game in the world today in the economy is competitiveness. And North America – and I mean – I mean by that not only United States but also Canada and Mexico – we need to look for the opportunities to increase together our competitiveness, and that is possible if we are able to mix our capabilities; if we are able to play together and combine, transform this region – the more competitive one in the world.

NAFTA was a very important step to economic integration, but we must work to deepen our ties in order to increase our region’s competitiveness. The global economy is divided up into regions, and so we must make North America the most integrated and competitive region of all – that is possible, but we are missing the opportunity.

The jobs that the American people are looking for are absolutely correlated with the integration, not with isolation. It is possible to generate jobs for American people and jobs for Mexican people and Canadian people if we are able to understand that in the trade there are profits for everybody. It is possible to increase competitiveness, productions and opportunities if we can play together the name of the game in this century.

The world is not going to wait for us. And other regions are surpassing North America in terms of productivity, and that is clear. And every day that’s passing, that means that there are American people losing opportunities. We have to take bold steps to recover the place that our region deserves. Integration also means working together to solve common problems – common challenges. We must increase our cooperation on critical issues such as security.

As you know, Mexico is in the process of strengthening security and justice institutions in order to consolidate the rule of law. Our strategy has three parts: First, face and confront the criminals; second, to build new law enforcement institutions; and third, to rebuild the social fabric in Mexico. So we are working hard to guarantee the security of Mexican families who are under threat from the vicious acts of the criminals.

Our approach is comprehensive. We are fighting criminal gangs with the full might of the state. At the same time, we are building from scratch new law enforcement institutions and reforming our judicial system – long overdue tasks that we decided to take on. And of course, we are tackling the social cultures of crime. We have set up programs to prevent young people from turning to crime, including scholarships, job training as well as prevention and treatment for addictions. Last year – only last year 6 million kids received the scholarship from the federal government and this year there are even more.

Criminal organization represents a regional challenge and as such they must be confronted with regional and international strategies. My government has been working with President Obama’s administration with increased cooperation. However, it is necessary as a part of a wider debate to address a key issue: the American demand for drugs.

This is the main source of power to the criminals. The incredible flow of money going to the hands of the criminals is a very important part of the problem. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2011 shows that the abuse of several major illicit drugs is increasing in this country, especially among the young people. More than 20 percent of the young people use drugs in this country. The higher rate of consumption is providing criminal organization with exorbitant earnings which, in turn, allow them to corrupt governments and societies and arm themselves with powerful weapons that threaten societies.

Part of the problem of violence we are experiencing in Mexico and in many other Latin American countries and especially in Central America is directly linked to the fact that we are next to the largest illegal drug market in the world. We are living in the same building and our neighbor is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. And everybody wants to sell him drugs through our door and our window.

And my reflection tonight is in this part: We must do anything in order to reduce the demand for drugs. But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions, including market alternatives, in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations. Meanwhile, the strategy must be a comprehensive one – dealing on fighting the criminals, building new law enforcement institutions and rebuilding the social fabric.

At the same time, the sales of assault weapons to criminals must be stopped. The increase in drug related violence coincides with the year in which the assault weapons ban expired here in the United States in 2004. In less than five years my government has seized more than 110,000 weapons from the criminals. Eight-five percent of them were sold here in the United States. And there are more than 80,000 gun shops in the American territory, only in the border with Mexico. As you can see, we need to increase our cooperation and devise much more effective regional responses to this threat to our democracies and our societies.

Dear friends, I want to thank you again for this Gold Insigne award which symbolizes the spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding among the nations of our hemisphere that the Council of the Americas embodies. We need to work together in order to establish the values we stand for. We need to work together in order to establish full democracy in America, in order to preserve liberty, in order to preserve the respect of human rights.

And I will finish by quoting and agreeing with the famous words of President Kennedy during his ’62 visit to Mexico when he said, “Geography has made us neighbors. Tradition (sic) has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.” Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. MCLARTY: Mr. President, thank you for that particularly thoughtful, serious commentary that I think really outlined the future – the future for our progress and well-being here in this hemisphere and more broadly.

If you will, before we begin our dinner, I would ask you to join me and join Susan Segal and all of our Council of the Americas team and all of our distinguished guests who are here in a toast to President Calderón, to the wonderful country of Mexico and its people, and to the United States-Mexico relationship and partnership. Salud!

AUDIENCE: Salud!