Unleashing the U.S.-Mexico Demons : Bad Policy Brings Out the Worst Human Tendencies

The ongoing deterioration of Mexico’s image in the United States has worsened in the wake of the July 6 elections in the border state of Chihuahua.

Americans had unrealistically high expectations of an opposition victory, fueled by generally accurate reports of growing discontent with the Mexican political system due to the country’s worsening economic crisis. Most independent Mexican observers predicted that the authorities would resort to widespread electoral fraud to ensure victory by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). Events bore this out, adding to the perception of Mexico as a nation rife with corruption, in politics as well as in drug trafficking.

Regardless of the elements of truth that it may reflect, this view bodes no good for the future of U.S.-Mexican relations. It is on a collision course with two emerging trends on each side of the border: Mexico’s growing incapacity to provide jobs for its youth, and an increasingly racist and xenophobic reaction in the United States to greater immigrant flows from the south.

Mexico’s mortality rate has fallen dramatically in the last two decades, but birthrates stayed high until only recently. The result was a baby boom, and its products are reaching adulthood today. This year the number of young Mexicans entering the labor market will reach 1 million for the first time. Another million new jobseekers will emerge on the scene every year until the end of the century. Only then will the effects of this demographic delayed-action bomb begin to taper off.

Since the economy is not growing at the high 6% to 7% annual rate needed to absorb this demand for jobs, many young Mexicans will not find work. The agreement signed Tuesday with the International Monetary Fund, despite certain concessions to Mexico’s plight, can only make things worse with its continuing austerity and piling of new debt onto old. Mexico’s young adults will have only three options: the United States, the streets or revolution.

The first option will remain open for the foreseeable future. Immigration legislation, employer sanctions and greater resources, support and technology for border control may regulate or even moderate the flow of undocumented workers from Mexico. But they will not, by a long shot, choke it off.

The real problem lies in the effects within the United States of mounting immigration from Mexico. Recent developments are disturbing, to say the least.

Early this month there were numerous U.S. media reports on a group of armed right-wing zealots who go by the name of Civilian Materiel Assistance and have been “patrolling” the Arizona-Mexico border and “capturing”--and whatever else the euphemism implies--undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans. The Spanish International Network television chain has shown news footage of Ku Klux Klan meetings in the Southwest with clear anti-Mexican overtones. Loose talk concerning the need for “militarizing” the border also has emanated recently from Reagan Administration officials.

Three factors, then, are converging: Mexican immigration is increasing. U.S. impotence in closing it off is feeding the darker facets of American political life and society--racism, discrimination, vigilantism. And what little sympathy Mexico may have had among Americans who do not subscribe to such revolting views is being overwhelmed by a chorus of criticism, cynicism and despair regarding Mexico.

More and more, those who will suffer from this are not Mexican politicians--of the right or left--but rather the millions of Mexicans who, eagerly or not, live and work in the United States. Never the object of particularly benign or sympathetic attitudes on the part of many Americans, their daily lives could become a nightmare if American bigotry were to get out of hand, as it has done so often in the past.

Ideological passions do not come a la carte ; one cannot pick and choose what one wants and leave the rest. Ronald Reagan and American conservatives have reawakened the most somber reaches of the U.S. political psyche: anti-communism, nationalism, a sense of American superiority and self-righteousness in relation to the rest of the world. Good intentions not-withstanding, racism, bigotry and popular extremism cannot be far behind.

Instead of applying moderation and substantive policy to this potentially explosive situation in U.S.-Mexican relations and in the welfare of millions of Mexicans here or on their way, the Administration and its friends are making a bad situation worse. A right-wing publication in the nation’s capital put it bluntly: The CMA boys were wrong, but “they did have a point.” So do the many Mexicans who ask themselves what the Reagan Administration and its ideological bedfellows really want, and whether they realize what demons they are unleashing on both sides of the border and in each nation’s subconscious.