TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080789/08078900.067

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 15.0 KB | 304 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 56

Bordering On Friends


JORGE G. CASTANEDA, Mexico's renowned author and academic,
talks of the dangers and anxieties in a close yet often
misunderstood relationship

By Andrea Dabrowski


    Q. The title of your new book is Limits to Friendship: The
United States and Mexico. Just what are those limits?

    A. The limits are the resistance in each country to
integration between the two. You have more people going from
Mexico to the U.S., and you get a Simpson-Rodino (immigration)
law. You have more drugs going to the U.S., and you get ditches.
The limits are the fears and the objective interests in both
countries against closer ties with each other. They exist on
both sides.

    Q. The perception in Mexico is that the U.S. thinks about
Mexico for short periods of time and then forgets it. But
doesn't that work both ways?

    A. Mexico can never afford to forget that the U.S. exists.
It can never stop thinking for a single moment that the U.S. is
there, on the border, next door. This is an inevitable
consequence of the tremendous asymmetry that exists between
Mexico and the U.S. We have to think obsessively, constantly,
recurrently about the U.S. The U.S. only thinks about us every
now and then, and most of the time for the wrong reasons.

    Q. Is the U.S. sufficiently aware of the problems Mexico is
facing?

    A.  I think the U.S. continues to take Mexico for granted,
although less so than before. The people with decision-making
powers in the U.S. still do not understand the gravity of the
problems Mexico is facing. I do not think there is a real
appreciation in the U.S. yet for what the tremendous drop in
the standard of living of the Mexican people really means, what
the drop in government spending on education, on health, on
infrastructure really means for the country and the people. I
do not think the U.S. understands how close Mexico is to the
brink.

    Q. Do Americans then have reason to view Mexico as a threat
to their national security?

    A. It's conceivable that Mexico could be a threat to the
U.S. -- a Mexico in chaos, a Mexico where the basic institutions
that have governed the country in the past 60 years begin to
unravel, where you have a situation like the one you had in
Venezuela last February (riots broke out in response to
austerity measures). I don't think this is likely. But it's not
something you can discard entirely. There is a limit to how much
people can take. That limit is being approached now, too
quickly. I know for a fact, and I think every Mexican knows,
that an explosion in Mexico would make the Caracas riots look
like child's play.

    Q. What is the likely outcome for President Carlos Salinas
de Gortari's economic restructuring?

    A. The bottom line of the government's economic policies is
that their benefits have not yet appeared but their costs are
already with us. A lot is said about how public spending and
the state's role in the economy have been reduced in Mexico.
The problem is that most of the adjustment has come in cutbacks
in spending on education, on health, on infrastructure. Mexico
in 1982 was spending 5.5% of gross domestic product on
education. Today it's spending less than 3%. In 1982 Mexico
spent 2.5% of GDP on health; today it's spending less than 1.5%.
In 1982 an elementary school teacher -- in a country where half
the population is under 15 and where there are 25 million
children in school -- made six times the minimum wage. Today he
makes 1 1/2 times the minimum wage. In 1982 a top-level
university professor made about $2,000 a month; today that same
professor makes about $500 a month. That's part of the bottom
line.

    Another part is the country's infrastructure. Ten years
ago, Mexico had highways, phones, dams, an electrical grid, of
perhaps the highest level in the so-called Third World. Today
Mexico City's phones are possibly the worst in Latin America.
The highways are falling apart, the electrical grid has not been
maintained, oil installations are in poor shape, and oil
production is now dropping.

    Between now and the year 2000, we have to create a million
jobs a year just to accommodate the new entries into the labor
market. For that to happen the economy has to grow at 4% or 5%
a year. It's not happening. And those millions of people who do
not find jobs are going to have one of two choices: being
unemployed in the streets or going to the U.S. There is no other
choice.

    Q. Is Salinas in control?

    A. He is in control. Through a series of spectacular coups,
like the jailing of the oilworkers' leader and the owner of one
of the most important brokerage houses in Mexico, he has
clearly restored the image of strength and forcefulness of the
Mexican presidency. But the main consideration for the working
of the economy today is the foreign debt situation, and that's
not in his hands.

    Q. Will this latest debt deal bring any relief?

    A. It is doubtful that the new debt agreement will bring
either economic growth or an end to the danger of social
conflict in Mexico. There is simply not enough money in it. If
most of Mexico's creditor banks go the road of debt reduction,
the resources that will be available will be very small. If most
banks decide to provide new money, then there will be greater
resources available but at the cost of piling new debt onto old
debt. The new agreement is not a good one, but it is perhaps the
best Mexico could have got. Under adverse circumstances, I think
we'll have to come back to the negotiating table very soon.

    Q. Salinas has certainly been greeted favorably in the U.S.

    A. I think there are two reasons. The first is that
traditionally Mexican Presidents have a honeymoon not only with
Mexicans but also with U.S. public opinion. If one looks back
at what the U.S. press said about President Miguel de la Madrid,
or even about Lopez Portillo in the mid-'70s, one can see there
was a true love affair going on, not terribly different from the
one we are seeing today. This, of course, runs out of steam
quickly. Frankly, I never believed Mexico would become a top
priority for the U.S. This "We're going to pay a lot of
attention to our neighbors to the south" is a lot of blah-blah.
Every American President says it when he takes office and
forgets it two weeks later.

    Second, Salinas clearly is doing the sort of things that
are viewed in the U.S. as the ones that are best for Mexico's
interests and best for U.S. interests in Mexico. The question
is whether the policies he is following are more in consonance
with Mexico's interests or with American interests in Mexico.
I'm sure that if he has to make the choice, he will eventually
come down on the side of Mexico's interests.

    Q. Does Salinas really intend to open the political system
in Mexico?

    A. I think Carlos Salinas personally wanted political
reform in Mexico. Certainly up until the elections of July 6
last year, Salinas was profoundly convinced that he needed to
open up the Mexican political system, clean up the electoral
process and, in general, create a political opening in the
country. Unfortunately, when faced with the choice of opening
up the system and perhaps losing, or not opening it up and
having the kind of electoral victory that would allow him to
govern in the traditional fashion, he chose the second.

    This year the ruling party lost two elections, in Baja
California and Michoacan. It couldn't afford to recognize both
defeats, and Salinas is thus facing the same dilemma his
predecessors faced and the same dilemma he faced last year in
his own election. In a clean election the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) loses. The only way the P.R.I. can
win is the old-fashioned way: by tampering. I think the
prospects for something more than selective democracy in Mexico
are dim as of now. We will continue to see what we've seen in
the past seven months, the government and the P.R.I. tampering
as much as they can and conceding only what they absolutely have
to, nothing more. The problem with electoral fraud, even in its
more modern version, is that it does enormous damage to the
country and to its dignity. It becomes increasingly frustrating
for Mexicans to face the fact that it is impossible to change
other than through elections, but that through elections no
change is really possible.

    Q. Does the rise of a stronger leftist opposition in
Mexico, led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, pose any threat to the U.S.?

    A. I'm not sure I would agree with that adjective "leftist"
attached to Cardenas or to what he represents in Mexico. I
think "leftist" has a connotation in the U.S.: Communism, or
anti-Americanism, which is not applicable to Cardenas. I would
call Cardenas a left-of-center nationalist alternative to the
present system. Does he represent a threat to the U.S.? I don't
think so. I think most people in Mexico understand, as they have
understood for years now, beginning with Cardenas' father
(President Lazaro Cardenas) 50 years ago, that Mexico has to get
along with the U.S. No government of Mexico can afford to fight
endlessly, constantly, with the U.S. over every issue. Mexico
cannot have an anti-American government.

    Q. Does Cardenas' movement have a future?

    A. It's clear that more democracy in Mexico does not mean
a Mexico moving to the right but a Mexico moving to the left.
There is a deep nationalism and a sense of social justice among
Mexican people that Cardenas has identified with in a very
mystical and mysterious way. He has become a symbol in a nation
that has the most flagrant inequalities and injustices of any
nation in Latin America, if not in the entire Third World. We
are not the poorest country, but we are the most unequal.
Cardenas has become a symbol of the desire for equality in
Mexico, or less inequality, and a symbol of the defense of the
nation in a country where this nationalism question has always
been terribly important. If he runs, he will be a formidable
candidate for the presidency in 1994: he will continue to have
the quasi-religious attachment that he has with the Mexican
people.

    Q. Why were Mexicans angry about the ditch that the U.S.
has said it will build on the border near San Diego? Doesn't the
U.S. have the right to protect its borders against illegal
immigrants?

    A. Mexico's attitude toward the entire phenomenon of
undocumented migration to the U.S. is very contradictory.
Whatever the U.S. does is unacceptable and useless. Those are
contradictory statements, but we have an ambivalent and
contradictory attitude. There is an obvious element of
humiliation in the fact that we are not able to provide jobs for
our own people. The only way many Mexicans can find a decent job
is to go to the U.S. On the other hand, it's a fact that we feel
we have a certain right to do that, because nobody is forcing
American employers to give Mexican workers a job, and a lot of
Mexican immigrants do jobs that Americans would not do, at a
lower wage and under conditions that Americans would not accept.

    The reaction toward the ditch is simply one more episode in
this very contradictory and ambivalent attitude. Every
reasonable Mexican knows that the U.S. can dig as many ditches
as it wants and that it has the right to do so. On the other
hand, there is an aggressive, arrogant touch to the idea of a
ditch. A ditch has water; it has crocodiles, piranhas, or
sharks. The idea of a ditch to stop emigration from Mexico is
one that shakes Mexicans because it reminds us that so many of
our people have to go, and it shows how vulnerable we are to a
closing off of the border. But it ignores the fact that there
is as much of a demand for Mexican labor in the U.S. as there
is a supply of it in Mexico.

    There was an uproar in Mexico over the appointment of John
Dimitri Negroponte as U.S. Ambassador. What is it that Mexicans
don't like about him?

    A. They don't like his role in Central America, his
proconsular, interventionist, pro-contra role as Ambassador in
Honduras. They don't like his Viet Nam background and his
national security, intelligence-community background.
Nonetheless, it is possible that he'll become the first U.S.
ambassador in many years to establish channels of communication
with all sectors of the political spectrum, in which case he
might even become a good ambassador.

    Q. Americans are often angered by what appears to be
Mexican complacency in combatting the flow of illegal drugs
across the border. How do Mexicans view the U.S. drug problem?

    A. The difference in perception stems from one very basic
fact: Mexico does not have a drug-addiction problem. Some drugs
have been consumed in Mexico for many years -- marijuana has
been smoked in Mexican army barracks for well over a century now
-- but there is no major drug problem here in terms of Mexican
youth, in terms of addiction and consumption. There is a
drug-production problem and a drug-trafficking problem, but
addiction is not affecting broad sectors of Mexican society, as
of today. So inevitably that leads everyone in Mexico to view
the problem of drugs as less important, and less directly
relevant to Mexico, than the way the U.S. perceives the problem.
Whether this is fair or not fair, nice or not nice, is
irrelevant. To a certain extent this perception is changing in
certain parts of the country, not because there is a
drug-addiction problem emerging but because there is a level of
criminality associated with drug trafficking that is reaching
alarming proportions.

    Q. What does Mexico want from the U.S.?

    A. There was a real hope on the part of the Salinas
administration that the new White House team would very quickly
have debt, drug and trade policies in place and that all the
decisions regarding Mexico would be made rationally and
coherently, that Mexico would have somebody to deal with in the
U.S. who is both in charge and thoroughly knowledgeable on the
subject. There is a tendency in Mexico to project its own
centralized, omnipotent presidency onto the U.S. side, where
things do not work that way.

    Q. Are Mexico-U.S. relations at a high or low point?

    A. A critical point. Never has the U.S. role in Mexico been
so important to Mexico. Many of the solutions to Mexico's
problems lie in Washington. This is particularly the case with
regard to debt. The U.S. has had the luxury over the past 60
years, as a superpower, of not having to worry about its
borders, either north or south. In the case of Mexico that is
no longer true -- not because the Soviet Union is establishing
a beachhead in Veracruz but because in order to maintain the
type of relationship with Mexico that the U.S. has had over the
past 60 years, the U.S. is going to have to do much more. The
U.S. is going to have to pay a higher price in every sense of
the word: more money, more attention, more time, more effort for
the luxury of having a stable and friendly neighbor.