Mexico’s Foreign Policy towards Central America and the Caribbean in the Fourth Transformation Era

Abstract

The article aims to empirically test the hypothesis that the gap between Mexico’s declared regional ambitions and its resource and instrumental capacity in Central America and the Caribbean is systemic rather than circumstantial, focusing on the era of the Fourth Transformation (2018–2026). The methodological framework combines constructivism, middle-power theory and role theory; systemic and comparative methods, case studies and a quantitative analysis of secondary data with budget figures converted into constant prices are applied. It is established that, while ranking thirteenth worldwide by gross domestic product, Mexico maintains 80 embassies against 71 consulates, a ratio of 1.1:1 compared with an average of 2.3:1 for the top twenty states in the Index; 53 of the 71 consulates are located in the United States, whereas the entire African continent is covered by eight embassies. Funding of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs amounts to 0.38 per cent of the aggregate budget of executive bodies and has fallen by 47 per cent in constant prices over a decade, while the Foreign Service declined from 1,487 officers in 2018 to 1,077 in 2024. Presidential foreign visits fell from 94 under E. Peña Nieto to seven under A. M. López Obrador. The gap between rhetoric and instruments is shown to reproduce itself consistently across four dimensions of regional policy - political-diplomatic, security, economic-humanitarian and energy - which allows it to be qualified as a structural feature of Mexican foreign policy rather than a shortcoming of a single administration. It is argued that Mexico’s behavioural pattern in the region corresponds to the status quo middle power type: the state reacts to external challenges rather than shaping the regional agenda and does not act as a systemic provider of regional public goods.