Think Tank Helps Shape Relations : Mexico’s Listening Post on the Border

As a boy growing up in the northern Mexico city of Chihuahua, Jorge Bustamante was enthralled with the United States, a country that produced a seemingly limitless number of great movies, cars and pop music hits.

But as he grew older, Bustamante was taught in school that the United States was something of a regional bully, a country that had invaded Mexico once and had threatened military intervention several other times. “It was like finding out that Santa Claus is really your parents,” Bustamante said, recalling his disillusionment.

Years passed before Bustamante learned that, for many Mexicans, the United States is both a problem and an opportunity, a conflict that is made clear to him every day.

Bustamante is director of the Center for Border Studies of Northern Mexico, a kind of listening post for the Mexican government, a harvester of information on social and economic life on both sides of the border.

Researchers keep tabs on everything from the price of tortillas in Tijuana to the earnings of undocumented hospital workers in El Paso, Tex. They study inflation, population and air pollution. They also are documenting the massive migration of Mexican workers to the United States and the resulting tension it has created in both countries.

Nearly all the information is gathered to help shape--or at least clarify--relations with the United States. One of the main reasons the center was founded, said Bustamante, was “to identify the areas of potential conflict with the United States.”

“Given the asymmetry that exists between Mexico and the United States--in terms of economic development, military power and everything else--we want to have the best information possible to negotiate with the United States,” said Bustamante.

“For Mexicans, the United States is an opportunity, mainly an economic one. But it is a problem, too, in the sense that the relationship between the two countries is characterized by inequality. When we deal with an American, he is the one with all the money, the one dealing from a position of power.”

Three institutions in San Diego also focus on border issues: the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and the Institute of the Americas, both located on the campus of UC San Diego, and San Diego State University’s Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias.

In a way, the Center for Border Studies is a Mexican version of these American think tanks, but there is at least one important difference.

“We have more linkages between our activities and the decision-making process at the federal level” than the U.S. institutions do, Bustamante said. “A great proportion of all the information we produce here ends up on the desks of high-level bureaucrats in Mexico City.”

Founded in 1982, the center has grown from a fledgling group of less than 10 researchers to a bustling, computerized institution with more than 60 employees and an annual budget of about $1 million. A new building in Tijuana’s fashionable Zona del Rio serves as headquarters for the center, which has branch offices in the border cities of Mexicali, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo.

The center’s success can be traced to Bustamante, 47, an amiable, gentle-spoken man with black hair and a bushy black mustache. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, and his encyclopedic knowledge of border trends and issues has led government officials in both Mexico City and Washington to seek his advice. He also writes a weekly column on border issues for Excelsior, a daily newspaper in Mexico City. And he travels--frequently.

A man who has devoted most of his life to studying migrants, Bustamante is almost constantly on the move, attending conferences or consulting with colleagues in Los Angeles, Tucson, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez and South Bend, Ind. Because of frequent trips to Mexico City, he maintains a house there. But home is in Tijuana, with his wife and two children.

The Center for Border Studies was Bustamante’s “idea, his baby,” said Norris Clement, associate director of SDSU’s Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias and a visiting professor at the Tijuana-based center. “He’s an important political personage in Mexico--he’s been a consultant to Cabinet ministers and the last three Mexican presidents--but he was also the only person in (the government framework) who wanted to . . . study the big (border) issues, like migration,” Clement said.

The center’s growth “is phenomenal for a research institution in just 3 1/2 years,” Clement said. “Jorge is terribly energetic . . . but also very dedicated to a scientific method. One might say he’s obsessed with doing the best possible job he can do.”

The center has 43 researchers in fields ranging from sociology and political science to economics and engineering. Using surveys of various groups as their basic research tool, they have come up with some unexpected and occasionally controversial findings. Among them:

- The migration of workers from the interior of Mexico to Tijuana (and therefore from Tijuana into the United States) is slowing down, decreasing this year for the third year in a row. “The main reason is inflation--the cost of migration,” said Bustamante. “It’s not that the people don’t want to come; it’s not that they don’t need to come. It’s that they can’t afford to come.”

According to the U.S. Border Patrol, the number of undocumented workers who were arrested here between July and November this year rose 45% over the same period last year, indicating an increase in migration. But Bustamante attributes the increased arrests to more Border Patrol agents, not more migrant workers.

- In spite of the slackening migration, there is a net inflow of at least 150,000 people to Tijuana every year, straining that city’s public services such as water, sewers, hospitals and transportation.

“We don’t know how many of them actually stay,” said Bustamante, “but we do know they affect all public services.”

Researchers from the center plan to gather more precise figures on this “floating population” by March, and, using a computer program developed at the center, will calculate what kinds of public services Tijuana would need to accommodate them.

- Surveys of migrants returning to Mexico from the United States indicate that the main demand for undocumented workers no longer comes from agriculture but from service-related businesses, such as nursing homes and restaurants. Bustamante believes that a prime reason for this trend is that the average age of residents of the southwestern United States is increasing, leading to a demand for more services. “These services are (often) provided by unskilled laborers from Mexico,” he said.

U.S. border experts say that information generated by the Center for Border Studies is often invaluable for their own research projects. “The quality if information is high, and it’s the kind of data that research institutions on this side of the border could not get any other way,” said Clement.

However, pointing out that the center’s funds come directly from the Mexican government, Clement and Leo Chavez, a postdoctoral research fellow at UC San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, said that the studies undertaken by the center sometimes serve the interests of the Mexican government or the country’s long-time ruling political party, PRI, rather than the academic community.

Bustamante conceded that “most of the things we research here are for the government. This is not an anti-Establishment institution.” But he also insisted the center is politically independent, and pointed out that the research done at the center sometimes leads to criticism of the Mexican government. At a conference in San Diego in November, one of the center’s researchers charged that there is a widespread feeling in Mexico that the government of President Miguel de la Madrid is not in control.

Maintaining objectivity while spending government funds “is like walking on eggs for me,” Bustamante said. “So far I haven’t had any serious problems. Phone calls, yes. (Government officials) angry with me for what I have written, yes. But I’ve never had a phone call from anyone who attempted to change the priorities of the research here.”

As part of an effort to gather as much information as possible about American attitudes and trends that could affect Mexico, the center has a microfilm index of books pertinent to border issues at the San Diego city and county libraries. Next year, the center will inaugurate computer connections to data banks at SDSU and UCLA that contain vast reference lists.

Such information may one day help clear up what Bustamante feels is the thorniest problem between the two countries: the misunderstanding of each other’s culture and values, which he says was manifested during the outcry over raw sewage that spilled from Tijuana into San Diego last year. When the spill went unchecked, local authorities in San Diego complained bitterly to their counterparts in Tijuana.

“That was the first misunderstanding, thinking that the problem was within the realm of their counterparts in Tijuana,” said Bustamante. “Everything that is international has to go to Mexico City. But local authorities in Tijuana didn’t say anything (about this) to the authorities in San Diego, because they didn’t want to say, ‘We don’t have any control, we’re not really your counterparts.’ They want to be dealt with as counterparts.”

As the dispute continued, U.S. authorities began to accuse Tijuana officials of being lazy and irresponsible. The Mexicans complained that this smacked of racism and, meanwhile, kept waiting to deal with those whom they assumed to have the real power--federal officials in Washington. (The dispute quieted earlier this year when agreements were signed to build sewage treatment facilities in Tijuana.)

“It’s a comedy, but it affects relations,” said Bustamante.

“But, I think the Center for Border Studies has contributed to a new vision of bilateral relations. . . . We are not going to be able to change geography. We must learn how to deal with the United States. And for that we must study, we must do research. And that’s what we do right here.”