Mexico is a mystery to most Americans — and not
unjustifiably. Millions of Mexican citizens have fled north to
the United States to escape poverty, crime, and all the akin
problems associated with such deprivation. That’s about all their
hosts know about the land to the south that produces such misery.
The image of Mexico that both countries prefer to emphasize
focuses on the luxury of its multi-billion dollar resort industry
— a nation of blue tequila and bronzed beauties. Convenient but
false.
Part of the reason for this pervasive ignorance is the
diplomatic pretense to neighborliness. Whether Democrat or
Republican, politicians have been loath to characterize North
America’s third world neighbor as anything but an important
developing nation and ultimately a U.S. ally. New presidents
meet, pledge to commit all energies to assist whatever matter is
politically appropriate at the moment, and go home announcing a
new day has arrived in U.S.-Mexican relations.
This ritual having been accomplished, the Mexican leader
implies in his national report of the meeting that he
successfully went chest-to-chest with the American president and
made clear the needs and desires of his great country of Spanish
heritage. After that is completed, Mexico continues on its
traditional way where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer,
and the drug-financed economy becomes even more
criminalized.
President Felipe Calderon added to this usual line his view
that Mexico’s problems with crime and violence were due primarily
to the ready presence of the American market for illicit drugs.
Interestingly, no one in the White House made any effort to
object to the Mexican president’s blame-shifting.
An excellent example of the contradictory nature of the
official U.S. approach to Mexico is contained in two sentences in
a State Department travel warning of May 5, 2010: “…Resort areas
and tourist destinations do not see the levels of drug-related
violence and crime reported in the border region and in areas
along major drug trafficking routes. Nevertheless, crime and
violence are serious problems … the security situation poses
serious risks for U.S. citizens…”
What exactly is the State Department trying to say? Tourist
areas are sort of less dangerous, but that Americans are
nonetheless at “serious risk”? Not a very good recommendation for
tourist travel, one would think. Why don’t they say that?
Meanwhile the influx of Mexican refugees is characterized
as “immigration” even though the entire process is a result of
repeated Mexican governments’ inability and unwillingness to
provide for the welfare of their own people. What originated as a
migrant labor issue was converted into population relocation. To
use President Calderon’s own logic, the so-called need for
American immigration reform is really a demand that the United
States solve the economic and social problems of Mexico by
allowing millions of his countrymen to reside in and be cared for
by the U.S.
The reality is that the northern provinces of Mexico are
only nominally under the authority of the central government. The
provincial officials and administration at best have a working
relationship with the criminal cartels. At worst the provincial
governments are the criminal cartels. Efforts by honest
politicians to bring about change are met with intimidation and
— as in the recent case of Dr. Rodolfo Torre, gubernatorial
reform candidate in Tamaulipas — assassination.
The issue of cartel connections with Mexico’s two principal
political parties has now become a staple of electoral rhetoric.
The growing strength of the earlier dominant PRI party has
brought charges from Calderon’s PAN of close relations between
some PRI members and the Gulf cartel. The Sinaloa cartel
supposedly influences politics of both parties in the province of
that name. The current elections for governors, mayors and local
officials in 12 states will further escalate drug family
involvement and controls at all political levels.
Presidential statements to the contrary, the job of
bringing peace and prosperity to the northern provinces is beyond
the capability of the federal government. This has been the case
for generations — and always those who control Mexico City have
found a way of blaming the “Anglos.” Mexican history says that
the politically ambitious gangster, Pancho Villa, was a “Robin
Hood” figure. When he raided across the border into the United
States, he was simply standing up against American “imperialism.”
The fact that he robbed and killed innocent people is
ignored.
As the Mexican president Porfirio Diaz famously lamented
more than a century ago, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so
close to the United States.” This view is as fresh in Mexican
political minds today as it was back then. It explains nothing
and everything at the same time.
