While it may be a refreshing novelty to see the ambitious and energetic Nice Young Man From Chicago acknowledge that his Agenda of Transformation might have been a tad overreaching in its breadth, this is no way has changed the view of governments from Mexico City on to the south. In the Central American region, there are few (if any) matters of greater importance than the Great Gringo of the North opening its borders.
It might be argued that there are other, far more pressing issues than what the CentAm politicos and opinion molders call "migration," such as rampant crime, increasing poverty, and severe fraying of the social compact. However, a review of the region's media quickly shows the facility with which each and every one of these is linked to the unwillingness of the US to open its borders to all comers.
Mexican governmental officials in common with their colleagues in most Central American countries agree that the economic and social problems currently faced are monumental. But, almost without exception, the next sentence pushes responsibility onto the US for its "failure" to "reform" its "migration" laws and policies.
There is no arguing against the contention that immigration both legal and illegal has been and is critical to the social and economic stability of Mexico and other countries in the region. Not only does the aggregate of remittances from "migrants" provide highly significant revenues, the border serves as a social and political safety valve of great value to regime stability.
With the decrease in the number of "migrants" as well as the total value of repatriated remittances, the money available in the lands south of the border has decreased. At the same time the direct and indirect costs of higher unemployment and its attendant factors have increased. From public assistance to the internal drug war, the expenses have gone fast boost right on through the stratosphere.
By focusing on the Great Gringo Conspiracy To Fence US Out, the Mexican government and its elite supporters have sought to avoid responsibility for the well-being of all Mexicans. While the same may be said of other regional countries, Mexico is the local seven hundred pound gorilla as well as being the number one source of both "migrants" and complaints about American policies on "migrants."
So, it deserves the pride of place.
Mexico has large economic problems. No one would dispute this. It is also a country of vast resources, an energetic and able population, and tolerably well developed essentials such as education and public health. Again, few, if any would dispute this.
The answer to Mexico's economic difficulties does not reside in outsourcing Mexican workers to the Land of the Gringos. It rests with the development of Mexico's indigenous resources, both material and human. This, of course, costs money. A lot of money.
Mexico has a lot of exploitable minerals. It also has a whole lot of oil. Additionally, the country has very large and unexploited agricultural potential. It deserves mentioning that the minerals and oil as well as much of the agriculture was initially developed (some would say mercilessly exploited) by foreign, particularly American, money and interests.
That reality constitutes one of the two dinosaurs at the dinner table that the highly nationalistic Mexicans do not want to admit. (The other is the Mexican responsibility for the Mexican-American War in the mid-1840's. More of that in a few minutes.)
Porfirio Diaz was an autocrat. A dictator who overstayed his welcome by quite a few years. A century and more ago, after having left seminary to join the war against the US, Diaz went into politics. He became president. A sort of an early form of president-for-life. As such he oriented himself to the economic development of Mexico. In the process he sold most of the country to foreigners, particularly Americans.
During his thirty-one years in office, foreigners, specifically the gringos, came to own the vast majority of the aggregate wealth of Mexico. Concentrating at first in agriculture including ranching, the outsiders shifted to the extraction industries, including the first development of Mexico's oilfields and then transportation and industry. While the foreigners, led by Americans, did exploit Mexican labor, they did not do so to an extent significantly greater than did the Mexican elite.
Along with abusing labor, the outsiders did create the infrastructure which supported Mexico--or at least those dining at the head of the table--for generations following the overthrow of Diaz and the decades of internal war which ensued. The impoverishment of Mexicans would have been orders of magnitude worse in the wake of the bloody and highly destructive internal wars had it not been for the fruits of the (nationalized post-Diaz) industrial, extraction, and agricultural infrastructure created by the Americans and others.
Even in the diminished form, these existed after stability was restored in the late 1920s. The artifacts of the gringo "robber barons" provided a sound basis for the continued development of Mexico during the years of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Not all Mexicans benefited from the structures left behind by the expropriated foreign investments. Not by a long way.
The government, dominated by PRI for more than three quarters of a century, benefited. So did those members of the elite which supported the continuation of the one party state. The mutual back scratching of PRI and the elite assured that prosperity would be ever more mal-distributed, and that proper investment in infrastructure and human resources would be neglected.
The consequences of this inequitable distribution of wealth and lack of investment in both infrastructure and human resource development were delayed through the 1950s, '60s, and '70s by the availability of Gringoland. Under assorted "guest worker" programs as well as illegal immigration, surplus workers were siphoned off to the north and the wages, at least in part, went south.
This approach was assisted by the growth of the co-production facilities established in ever growing numbers along the border. Mexicans got good jobs at rates of pay greater than deeper in the interior of the country and American (as well as other foreign owned) companies got a decreased cost of production. NAFTA was supposed to build upon and greatly expand this avenue of economic development.
This road paved with good intentions ran into the cross-traffic of globalization. One important result of the opening of China under President Clinton was the introduction of lower cost competition to Mexico. Not even the transportation costs offset the advantages of producing goods in China or elsewhere in Asia with the result that NAFTA never has reached its full potential for Mexican development.
A major answer to the economic problems which have become increasingly acute in Mexico over the past decade is found in the oilfields, particularly the offshore fields. The proper development of these will require money far beyond the capacity of the Mexican state-owned oil company to generate. It also demands expertise which is lacked by Pemex. To put it bluntly, the proper development of the nascent oil resources under the Gulf of Mexico as well as the repair and upgrading of the old fields requires outside investment and expertise.
Privately, few, if any, Mexicans would disagree that the best, fastest, overall economic development would result from opening the new fields as well as the old to co-production schemes involving US companies. Publicly, the embracing of this position would be political suicide.
Nationalism!
Mexico is so exuberantly, so joyously nationalistic, one would be forgiven in thinking it had been independent for only a handful of years rather than the two centuries which is the case. In its adamant, almost irredentist nationalism, Mexico more closely resembles a polity in the freshness of infancy than one which has attained a respectable maturity.
In its genuine infancy, Mexico made a few critical mistakes. First, it invited Americans to settle in the province of Tejas. Second, the Mexican commander sent to squash the rebellious Texicans was better at politics than at fighting a real, shooting war. Third, the revanchist minded Mexicans sought (successfully) a war with the US.
The Mexicans had a good war plan for fighting the gringos. They were so proud of it that it was even published in the newspapers of the day. They were also proud of their army, which Mexicans assured one another would speedily defeat the Americans and reclaim Texas and the honor lost at San Jacinto. The French and British governments both concurred with the Mexicans in this belief.
All were wrong.
The US actually let the Mexicans off easily with the peace treaty, given the military and political realities. Uncle Sam kept Texas, took California (which the Polk administration wanted very much as Polk saw the US as a Pacific Ocean power) and the land lines of communication between Texas and California, which meant what is now New Mexico and Arizona. The "large Mexico" faction prevailed in Congress for two reasons: no slave-friendly terrain was included outside of Texas and the US population was going through a peak of anti-Catholic sentiment.
Far from having been the victim of Yankee aggression as Mexicans have liked to think for the past century and a half, the war was sought, provoked, and entered into with glee by the Mexican government and elite. The truth hurts nationalistic egos, but there it is.
Not that many years later it was the US which reclaimed Mexico for the Mexicans when Napoleon III tried to establish a French "protectorate" over the country. Preoccupied by the War Between the States there was nothing the US could do at first. But, when the US reminded Paris that Sherman's Army of the West was now unemployed following the Confederate surrender, the overreaching French withdrew the Foreign Legion supporting Emperor Maximilian and that was that.
Of course, this American action receives little if any credit in Mexico. In the same vein the Mexicans give no public credit to the Yankees who laid the foundations of much of the nation's prosperity. Of such is nationalism comprised.
Now, rather than get a grip on the realities of life and invite foreign firms to assist directly in the development of the oilfields and other extractive industries so as to provide both jobs now and tax revenue necessary for development generally, the Mexicans look for the usual villain--the US. Rather than let go of the badly frayed comfort blanket of hyper-nationalism and actually do something constructive about the fundamental economic and social problems, the Mexican government and elite would much, much rather heave epithets and accusations at Washington.
It is far easier and much cheaper to demand "migration" reform in the presumed needs of Mexican social and economic stability than it is to drop the myth of a history which never was and spend money which the ricos would much prefer to spend on their own perceived needs and desires. It is simpler, if ultimately self-defeating, to whine about American unwillingness to accept every Mexican who makes it across the border than to take real, effective action to solve the problems at home.
Mexico is two hundred years of age. Almost as old as the US. It is long past time that the Mexican government act its age. Quit whining, stop your bitching about the border. Get on with the job of providing a decent present and future for your citizens. Even if it means having to accept foreign investment and investors for the first time in generations.
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