Replacing Mexican Myth with Reality
by Stanley A. Weiss

Mexico City - "Badges? I don't have to show you no stinking badges!" the bandido posing as a Mexican policeman in the 1948 classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," snarled at a leery American gold digger played by Humphrey Bogart.

As a young man determined to relive Bogart's adventure, I went prospecting in Mexico. Instead of gold, I found manganese (an essential mineral in steel making) and spent more than two decades living and working in Mexico.

A half-century later, the Sierra Madre stereotype of a poor and lawless land endures in the minds of many Americans.

But a visit to this vibrant country reveals a society undergoing dramatic political and economic changes that belie outdated foreign attitudes. Political leaders here wonder whether George W. Bush's second term will mark a new chapter in U.S.-Mexican relations, including U.S. immigration reform and deeper economic integration beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Yet re-energizing this relationship first requires something more basic - dispelling the myths and misconceptions that prevent Americans from fully embracing their southern neighbor.

Myth: Mexican immigration is out of control. In fact, the estimated 4,000 Mexicans who illegally cross the U.S. border every day distort the big picture.

Every day, tens of thousands of Mexicans enter legally on work visas. Every year, some 200,000 Mexican parents, spouses and children sponsored by U.S citizens immigrate legally. Mexicans who want to live in America are the exception, not the rule. Nearly 70 percent have no intention of ever heading north, according to a recent survey by the Mexican and Chicago Councils on Foreign Relations.

Myth: The Mexican economy is a basket case. Given Mexico's history of economic protectionism, endemic poverty and repeated U.S. financial bailouts, Americans can be forgiven for not offering Mexicans an economic bear hug. But the peso remains strong, inflation is under control and the Mexican economy, the world's 10th-largest, is expected to grow 4 percent this year.

Exports, 90 percent going to the United States, are booming and employ more than a million Mexicans at maquiladoras, export assembly plants, mostly along the U.S. border.

Myth: Coming soon, a North American Economic Union. Nafta can be credited with turning Mexico into America's second-largest trading partner and giving rise to a nascent middle class. But as long as incomes here remain a fraction of those in America, poor Mexicans will seek a better life on el otro lado (the other side) and kill any dreams of a European Union-style North American common market with open borders.

As former President Carlos Salinas once said: "Mexicans will either get jobs in Mexico or they will get jobs in the United States. We will send you either goods or people."

Unfortunately, a common North American energy market is also unlikely anytime soon. The United States needs to reduce its Mideast oil dependence, and Mexico needs billions of dollars to develop deep-water oil projects in the Gulf of Mexico. But the Mexican Constitution prohibits foreign investment in Pemex, the state-run oil monopoly. And Mexicans overwhelmingly oppose any grand bargain giving the U.S. greater access to their oil sector, even if it meant increased U.S. investment in Mexican infrastructure or a more liberal U.S. immigration policy.

Myth: "Mexican democracy" is an oxymoron. In fact, the 71-year "perfect dictatorship" of the Institutional Revolutionary Party has given way to an imperfect democracy, with the victory of President Vicente Fox and his National Action Party in the historic election of 2000.

Rigged elections, where the winner was known a year in advance, are a thing of the past. A parade of candidates are off and running for the 2006 presidential election. The biggest problem today is political gridlock between the president and Congress - a problem familiar to some of the world's oldest democracies.

Myth: Mexico doesn't take the drug war seriously. In fact, Mexicans surveyed rank drug trafficking as the most critical threat facing their nation, even more dangerous than economic crises and international terrorism. American officials have praised Mexico's "extraordinary progress" in crop eradication, interdiction and extradition.

Myth: Gringo-hating Mexicans will never cooperate with America. Mexicans still obsess over losing half their territory to the United States in 1848 and cherish their independence from "the colossus to the north." Fox irked the Bush administration by siding with France at the United Nations over Iraq.

Still, in the survey, Mexicans expressed more favorable feelings toward Gringolandia than any other country except Japan. Nearly 60 percent of Mexicans support allowing U.S. security agents to help protect Mexican airports, ports and borders. Indeed, increased cooperation in homeland and border security may offer the best hope for re-energizing U.S.-Mexican ties.

And with greater trust grounded in reality, neither side will have to show their stinking badges.