Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0242/02420.txt

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$Unique_ID{COW02420}
$Pretitle{279}
$Title{Mexico
A Love-Hate Relationship with North America}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{George W. Grayson}
$Affiliation{Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs}
$Subject{mexican
mexico
energy
mexicans
states
united
mexico's
oil
president
foreign}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Mexico
Book:        National Negotiating Styles
Author:      George W. Grayson
Affiliation: Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs
Date:        1987

A Love-Hate Relationship with North America

The Mexican Setting

Anti-Americanism

     On the spot where the Aztecs once offered throbbing human hearts to
appease left-handed Hummingbird, their war god, the Mexican government
opened a National Museum of Interventions in September 1981. The facility's
seventeen rooms, joined by red-tiled corridors, contain photographs,
documents, and memorabilia revealing the slights, indignities, incursions,
forays, invasions, and occupations suffered by Mexico at the hands of
foreigners since the country declared its independence in 1810.

     The Spanish ruled Mexico for 300 years, and Napoleon III dispatched
French troops who occupied the nation for five years in the mid-nineteenth
century. Yet, the unmistakable focus of the museum is on North American
activities in a manner termed  "a blend of anti-Americanism and bruised
dignity."

     The first room prominently displays the Monroe Doctrine, as well as
comments of Jose Manuel Zozaya, Mexico's first ambassador to Washington. "The
arrogance of those republicans does not allow them to see us as equals but as
inferiors. With time they will become our sworn enemies," the envoy observed.
Maps and commentaries describe "Jefferson's expansionism" and the U.S.
determination to conquer the west "at Mexico's expense." Cartoons and
engravings recall the 1847 occupation of Mexico by the U.S. Army, led by
General Winfield Scott.

     The war has long receded in the memory of Americans, whose attention is
riveted on the present and future. For Mexicans, an indelible scar of
"virulent, almost pathological Yankeephobia" remains from the wound of defeat
and humiliation produced by what is officially known as "the war of the North
American invasion." Resentment in the Deep South toward the military phase of
Reconstruction provides the closest American analogy to the bitterness so
deeply etched on the Mexicans' psyche. For Mexicans, however, occupation was
followed by the permanent loss of land to a foreign country that had aided and
abetted the hostilities. To add insult to injury, the lost territory
encompassed Sutter's Fort in California where, one year after the war's
conclusion, prospectors discovered the gold that would help finance the U.S.
industrial revolution.

     "U.S. meddling" in the Mexican revolution commands a great deal of space
in the museum. Fading brown photographs depict U.S. Marines seizing the gulf
port of Veracruz in 1914. And other exhibits turn Pancho Villa, a feared and
despised marauder, into a revolutionary hero because of General John J. "Black
Jack" Pershing's punitive expedition to capture him.

     This is "not a place to stress our losses," stated Gaston Garcia Cantu,
director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History and the moving
force behind the museum. "No country can afford to lose its historic memory.
People must understand what happened and why." Many Mexican intellectuals
believe that the museum is especially appropriate at this time because of
renewed U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean basin.

     As revealed by the museum, anti-Americanism in Mexico predates that in
any other developing nation. It became evident when the United States annexed
Texas; was exacerbated by the Mexican-American war; manifested itself during
the revolutionary upheaval early in this century; increased in response to the
nationalization of the oil industry in 1938; reappeared when Washington
applied diplomatic, economic, and political pressures on Fidel Castro's
regime; and intensified in the 1970s, following both the discovery of rich
oil and natural gas deposits in southeastern Mexico and militant U.S.
opposition to revolutionary movements in Central America and the Caribbean.
According to historian Stanley R. Ross, Mexicans perceive their relationship
with the United States as one shaped by "armed conflict, military invasion,
and economic and cultural penetration."

     This perception produces a love-hate relationship between the United
States and Mexico. Mexican leaders admire the economic development, high
standard of living, and political stability of their northern neighbor. Yet,
as evidenced in exhibits dominating the National Museum of Interventions, they
deplore U.S. involvement in their affairs. This legacy of interference often
sparks Mexican accusations that either U.S. government entities such as the
Central Intelligence Agency or U.S.-based multinational corporations are
responsible for the ills that befall their country.

     Seldom is evidence considered a necessary prerequisite to level such
charges against "ubiquitous" and "omnipotent" presumed agents of intervention.
For instance, in mid-1980 Mexican officials and newspapers had a field day
accusing the United States of stealing rain by diverting hurricanes from
Mexico's shores. The villain was the U.S. National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration, whose hurricane-hunter aircraft had allegedly
intercepted a storm named "Ignacio" off Mexico's Pacific coast in October,
1979, thereby contributing to the country's worst drought in two decades.
Mexican observers, including the director of the country's National
Meteorological Service, apparently believed that Yankee ingenuity was so great
that Uncle Sam could bend Mother Nature to his will.

National Defensiveness

     The putative power of the United States inspires a defensive attitude
among Mexicans who find themselves across the negotiating table from
Americans. "How will these intrepid gringos next take advantage of us?" seems
to be the question uppermost in their minds. Insecurity prompts Mexican
officials, alternately, to bluster or bargain, always in their inimitable
style. A case in point took place under the administration of Luis Echeverria
Alvarez (1970-1976) whose representatives pressed Ambassador John J. Jova on
removing the American cemetery in Mexico City. The facility held the remains
of U.S. combatants killed in the Mexican War. And, apparently, their presence,
even in death, constituted a perceived insult to Mexican sovereignty. As a
result, Jova was told in so many words: "The cemetery must go!" His pointing
out that the French were not being asked to remove their cemetery made no
impact-probably because Mexico had ousted Napoleon III's blue-caped troops and
executed Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the French-imposed "emperor" of the
country.

     Once the Mexicans reached the height of intractability, the astute Jova
suggested that he simply "couldn't listen to any more talk" of disinterring
bodies because to do so would be "ignoble and dishonorable." Besides, such an
act would incite resounding protests from the American Legion, Veterans of
Foreign Wars, and other patriotic groups, thereby harming U.S.-Mexican
relations. Ultimately, a compromise was reached: the cemetery remained-with a
superfluous part of the grounds sold to Mexico for a public works project.

     Mexico's inherent misgivings about the United States also give rise to
"scapegoating." A prime example of this took place in 1982. Amid an economic
crisis that was largely of his own making, President Jose Lopez Portillo
appealed to his country not to stand with open arms and allow Mexico to be
bled dry, gutted, and eaten away. He said that the Mexican "nation cannot work
and be organized only to have its life blood drained off by the gravitational
pull of the colosus of the north."

The Myth of the All-Powerful President

     Mexico's decision-making process can only be described as labyrinthine.
Nevertheless