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Excerpts of President Bill Clinton's Remarks -- May 7, 1997

CLINTON: Thank you, Mr. President, for the wisdom of your words, for the warmth of your personal expression, and for the great generosity with which the people of Mexico have received my wife and our delegation, the members of the administration and the members of Congress.

We thank all those who have been a part of that in the Mexican government and throughout the political system, and citizens at large.

I am honored to speak today in the heart of this magnificent capital, where Teotihuacan and Aztec civilizations flourished, where one of the world's greatest cities grew up centuries before the English tents were pitched in Jamestown, Virginia, or Plymouth, Massachusetts.

I'm frankly a little envious that Hillary got to spend an extra day here.

And I want to thank those who were responsible for the wonderful welcome she received in the Yucatan.

Almost 22 years ago now, Hillary and I came to Mexico for our honeymoon. Mexico won our hearts then, but now as then -- Me encanta Mexico.

(APPLAUSE)

I come here today to celebrate the ties that bind the United States and Mexico, and to help set a course to strengthen them for the age of possibility before us as we enter the 21st century.

Our nations and our hemisphere stand at a crossroads as hopeful as the time when Hidalgo and Morelos lit the torch of liberty for Mexico almost two centuries ago.

Democracy has swept every country but one in the Americas, giving people a vote and a voice in their future.

Decades of coups and civil wars have given way to stability, to peace, to free markets, and to the search for social justice and a cleaner environment. The electricity of change is surging throughout our hemisphere, and nowhere more hopefully than Mexico.

I congratulate the Mexican people for carrying forward bold political reforms that will lead in July to the most intensely contested elections in your history. We know from our own 220-year experiment that democracy is hard work. It must be defended every day. But it is worth the effort. For it has produced more opportunity for people to make the most of their own lives than all its rivals.

Four years ago in this very place, we began a grand common effort to secure democracy's gains in our hemisphere for all our people.

On behalf of my administration, Vice President Gore here invited the nations of our hemisphere to the Summit of the Americas in Miami. There we set an ambitious agenda to create free trade throughout the hemisphere, and to cooperate on a host of other issues with the goal of fulfilling the age-old dream of building a truly democratic and prosperous family of the Americas in the 21st century.

Revolutionary forces of integration in technology and trade, and travel and communications are shaping our times and bringing us all closer together. The stroke of a computer key sends ideas, information and money across the planet at lightning speed.

Every day, we use products that are dreamed up in one country, financed in another, manufactured in a third, with parts made in still other countries, and then sold all over the world.

Like it or not, we are becoming more interdependent. And we see that, too, on the negative side, as when a stock market crash, an environmental disaster or a dread disease in one country sends shock waves deeply felt far beyond its borders.

While economic integration is inevitable, its shape and its reach depend upon our response to it. In both our countries, there are some who would throw up walls of protection to ward off the challenge of change. But more and more, people here in the United States and throughout the Americas understand that openness, competition and the flow of ideas and culture can improve the lives of all our people if we ensure that these forces work for and not against all our (OFF- MIKE).

With our long border, rich history and complex challenges, Mexico and the United States have a special responsibility to work together to seize the opportunities and defeat the dangers of this time. Our partnership for freedom and democracy and for prosperity, and our partnership against drugs, organized crime, environmental decay and social injustice is fundamental to the future of the American people and to the future of the Mexican people.

To succeed, this partnership must be rooted in a spirit of mutual respect. Your great leader, Benito Juarez, whose statue stands not far from the White House in Washington, said, "Respect for the rights of others is peace."

Today, I reaffirm to the people of Mexico, we embrace the wisdom of Juarez.

We seek a peaceful, prosperous partnership filled with respect and dignity.

(APPLAUSE)

Four years ago, together, we led the fight for NAFTA. Many people in both our countries painted a dark picture of lost jobs and boarded up factories should NAFTA prevail.

Well, they were wrong. NAFTA is working, working for you and working for the American people. In three short years and despite Mexico's worst recession in this century, trade between our nations has grown nearly 60 percent, as President Zedillo said.

Mexico is our third largest trading partner, just behind Japan, which has an economy 15 times larger.

Our exports to Mexico are 37 percent higher than before NAFTA, an all-time high in spite of the economic difficulties here. But for Mexico, NAFTA's benefits are just as great.

Two-and-a-half years ago, the financial crisis which struck Mexico brought real and profound hardship to your people as jobs vanished and inflation skyrocketed. The storm hit only days after President Zedillo took office.

He might have simply complained that he got a big dose of bad luck. But instead he responded with vision and courage. By keeping to the path of reform and the blueprint of NAFTA, he lessened the impact of the recession.

Though real hardships remain, Mexico has made a remarkable turnaround. Since the crisis, you have created one million new jobs, cut inflation by more than half and regained the confidence of international investors.

Now, compare this with the economic crisis of 1981 and '82, when Mexico sharply raised its tariffs and followed a different course. Then it took seven long years for Mexico to return to the financial markets -- this time only seven months.

Then it took four years for your economy to recover the lost ground. This time, only a year after the crisis, Mexico grew by more than 5 percent, and is expected to grow strongly this year, too.

You have endured punishing setbacks. But America is proud to have worked with you from the very beginning, enlisting international support for a loan package that safeguarded hundreds of thousands of jobs in both our countries, calmed emerging markets throughout Latin America and the world, and when Mexico paid the loan back, earned the respect and admiration of the entire world.

I congratulate you on this course.

(APPLAUSE)

Of course, the ultimate test of our economic partnership is not in big numbers, but in human impact -- the electronics workers of Mexico's Baja peninsula, whose new jobs mean better health care and pensions and more education for their children; the hundreds of thousands of Mexican women who now have mammograms because American- made diagnostic equipment has become more affordable to you; and all the American workers with good, high-wage jobs based on our trade with you.

NAFTA has also become an important tool for improving the environment and the well-being of workers.

Its institutions are working to clean up pollution in the border region, with four treatment plants already under construction and more to come.

Its labor agreements have created a new awareness of workers' rights and labor conditions in both our countries. We must accelerate the pace of these efforts to reach more people in more communities. And we must include more nations in our partnership, so that we can achieve the goal we set out at the Summit of the Americas of a free trade area of the Americas. That is why I'm working with Congress to gain support for fast track authority and why I'm coming back to Latin America twice in the next few months.

As we celebrate these accomplishments, we must also do everything in our power to assure that the benefits and the burdens of change are fairly shared. The most powerful tool for doing that, plainly, is education, giving our people the skills they need to compete and succeed.

At the Miami summit, Mexico took the responsibility of leading a hemispheric education initiative. Working with Brazil, Chile and the United States, you have set our sights on lifting standards and bringing new methods and technologies to classrooms throughout the hemisphere. We can rekindle the passion for education that swept this country after your revolution. You great poet, Alfonso Reyes, described that moment as a grand crusade for learning that electrified the people.

Nothing equal to it has ever been seen in the Americas. Let us see something equal to it and greater. Let us renew this crusade. And let us remember, as my wife has said to citizens on every continent, in distant villages and large cities, this crusade for education must include young women as well as young men on equal terms. And let us resolve to make this crusade a shining light of our next Summit of the Americas next year in Santiago.

In Miami, at the first summit, we also reaffirmed that we cannot be responsible stewards of freedom unless we are also responsible stewards of our natural resources -- our hemisphere's land and air and water, as well as the rich texture of plant and animal life they support. Over the long run, the development of democracy and a prosperous economy requires the sustainable development of our natural resources. That is why we have put the protection of the environment right where it belongs, at the heart of our hemispheric agenda. That is the course we charted together in Rio and Miami and Santa Cruz, and one we must pursue further in Santiago.

Trade, education and the environment are critical pieces of the greater mosaic of our relationship, designed to turn our 2,000-mile border into a vibrant source of growth and jobs and open exchange.

We are also building a bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros, and roads to connect our people -- streamlining cargo

Copyright © 1997 Federal Document Clearing House

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