Michelle Obama to visit Mexico
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First Lady Michelle Obama will take her first official solo trip abroad next week, visiting Mexico and meeting with her counterpart, Margarita Zavala.
Obama will arrive Tuesday and leave Thursday for a visit to San Diego, where she will talk about her campaign to fight childhood obesity. While in Mexcio, Obama will visit the Escuela Siete de Enero, a public elementary school that serves local low-income students and is involved in a mentoring program with the American School Foundation.
Obama will also speak to invited university and high school students.
The trip comes as the Obama administration has stepped up its involvement with Mexico and with the key issues of illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Top administration officials have traveled to Mexico to discuss the issues and the president has met with Latino leaders in the United States.
According to a 2009 Gallup poll, more than half of Mexicans surveyed said drug gangs are present in their vicinity and 43% said drug trafficking takes place there. Both figures are higher than what Gallup measured in the early months of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s declared war on drug traffickers in 2007, but were essentially unchanged from 2008.
More than 18,000 Mexicans have reportedly been killed in drug- and gang-related violence since Calderon began the crackdown on the drug cartels in late 2006.
--Michael Muskal
