From Miami Herald's opinion page
By Joseph Contreras, author of
In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Modern Mexico
4/16/09
Four of the nation's last five presidents obtained graduate degrees at Harvard and Yale. The economy's largest private sector employer is WalMart, its biggest bank belongs to Citigroup and the United States accounts for about 90 per cent of all international trade.
The national congress enacted a Freedom of Information Act seven years ago modeled on the pioneering legislation passed on Capitol Hill in 1966, and recent judicial reforms have introduced U.S.-styled oral trials in a growing number of courtrooms. Its most famous beach resorts cater to sun-starved gringos, it is home to hundreds of thousands of American expatriates -- and the hamburger is overtaking the homegrown torta as the midday sandwich of choice among its legions of white-collar office workers.
The country under discussion is, of course, Mexico. Our southern neighbor has undergone a profound
degree of Americanization in the 15 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, and the economic, political, social and cultural ties linking the United States and Mexico have never been stronger. But mention the country's name to many Americans today, and a host of lurid images and comparisons will spring to mind. The world's next failed state. The Colombia of North America. A cesspool of corruption and lawlessness that threatens to wash onto our side of the border at any minute.
Periodic tensions
The mounting body count and gory footage of drug-fueled violence that dominate news coverage of Mexico will provide much of the backdrop to President Obama's first south-of-the-border trip on Thursday. And the timing of his visit is not particularly auspicious. He infuriated the government of President Felipe Calderón earlier this year when he signed an omnibus spending bill that included a provision scrapping a pilot program that allowed a small number of Mexican truckers to carry freight into the United States. Mexico responded to that violation of the NAFTA accords by slapping tariffs on 89 American exports ranging from grapes to dishwashers.
Obama's national intelligence director Dennis Blair raised hackles among Mexican officials when he told the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February that drug cartels were impeding ''Mexico City's ability to govern parts of its territory.'' For his part, President Calderón pointedly ruled out joint
U.S.-Mexican counter-narcotics operations during a state visit to Britain two weeks ago.
Periodic tensions are nothing new to the bilateral relationship. But as I point out in my book In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Modern Mexico, long-term trends in U.S.-Mexican ties have been overwhelmingly positive in the NAFTA era. Presidents Obama and Calderón should seize the moment of this week's meetings to build on considerable gains achieved by their predecessors.
Free-trade commitment
Cooperation between the two countries in the war on drugs has never been better, according to former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow. Under Calderón's predecessor Vicente Fox, Mexico ditched the chummy ties it had long cultivated with Fidel Castro in favor of a more even-handed approach that openly acknowledges Havana's systematic human-rights abuses but also urges an end to the failed U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Successive Mexican presidents have deepened their country's commitment to free trade and globalization, and the proliferation of familiar American corporate logos like McDonald's, Costco and Holiday Inn in the country's major cities bear witness to the opening of what had been one of Latin America's most closed economies.
America's once distant neighbors about whom journalist Alan Riding wrote so eloquently a quarter-century ago feel a much closer bond to El Norte today. The conflicted love-hate feelings that so many Mexicans harbor towards the United States live on, but the favorable elements in their outlook are on the ascendancy. A poll conducted around the dawn of the NAFTA era asked Mexicans which country they would like their nation to resemble most, and the United States topped the list.
''Poor Mexico,'' the dictator Porfirio Diaz supposedly said during his long reign in power before the Mexican Revolution toppled him in 1911. ''So far from God, so close to the United States.'' But this is no longer a bad thing in the modern era, and Mexican yuppies who sprinkle their coffee break chatter with American slang terms and covet a master's degree from Stanford Business School understand that.
The temptation to erect more physical as well as symbolic barriers will be hard to resist in the United States at a time of recession and rising protectionist sentiment. Which is all the more reason for a new administration in Washington to set the tone and embrace our Mexican neighbors even more tightly and respectfully over the next four years.
Joseph Contreras is a former Mexico City bureau chief for Newsweek and author of In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Modern Mexico.
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