New Presidents, More Controversy : For U.S. and Mexico, a Short Honeymoon

There was to have been a long and peaceful honeymoon: An upbeat, preinaugural meeting between Presidents-elect George Bush and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Houston last November led diplomats to predict an era of calm in U.S.-Mexico relations.

The new leaders hit it off personally. Once in power, their Cabinet choices pointed to similar political views, particularly on the economy. Bush’s Secretary of State James A. Baker III has a firm grasp of Latin America’s debt crisis; Salinas’ Foreign Minister Fernando Solana Morales was last a banker.

But in spite of everyone’s best intentions, a series of controversies has erupted that again illustrates a seemingly chronic lack of understanding between the United States and Mexico, and a proclivity for conflict.

Not Exactly Honeymooners

Rather than honeymooners, the two administrations already seem more like an old married couple, with each partner apparently incapable of hearing what the other has to say.

Recent actions by both governments--the naming of John D. Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the announcement of American plans to build a border ditch to keep out illegal immigrants and Salinas’ appointment of a man who is a fugitive from U.S. justice as Mexico’s chief of police intelligence--failed to take into account the other’s reaction and have aggravated strained relations.

Further complicating matters was CIA Director William H. Webster’s statement last week that Mexico’s political and economic situation is fragile. He said the United States has “enormous counterintelligence responsibilities” in Mexico and urged bipartisan support for covert action in Latin America.

The remarks came on the heels of the controversial appointment of Negroponte, who was ambassador to Honduras at the height of the U.S.-backed Contra war in Nicaragua, reinforcing fears among the political opposition that a counterinsurgency specialist was picked to set up a covert network in Mexico.

Envoy Seen as a Hard-Liner

“The signal is that they are sending a hard-liner to deal with potential instability,” said Sergio Aguayo, an authority on U.S.-Mexico relations at the post-graduate Colegio de Mexico.

U.S. officials privately acknowledge that the announcement of Negroponte’s appointment was mishandled. The news was leaked to the media before the Mexican government was officially notified and given a chance to respond.

But many officials remain baffled by the extent of opposition to Negroponte.

“I am always amazed by how insecure Mexicans are about the big, bad American ambassador,” one U.S. official said. “They always think he is going to intervene in their internal affairs. I can’t grasp this outlook, why they draw so many connections from so many unrelated things.”

But the Americans failed to anticipate the obvious, responded Manuel Garcia y Griego, a historian and expert on U.S.-Mexican relations at the Colegio de Mexico.

A Mexican president has difficulty cooperating with the United States because a history of U.S. intervention in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America forces him to run the risk of being perceived as submitting to American pressure, Garcia y Griego explained. In addition, Salinas faces unprecedented internal opposition.

“Anyone with half a brain should have been able to figure out that Negroponte would be a problem,” Garcia y Griego said. “He is going to be a symbol in Mexico of right-wing intervention from the United States. From a Mexican government point of view, it will be difficult to conduct relations with him in any way that implies collaboration.”

Mexico was similarly bewildered last month over the announcement of the United States’ intention to build a border ditch at Otay Mesa, near San Ysidro, Calif. to keep out vehicles carrying illegal immigrants.

Classic Example

The ditch issue is a classic example of the lack of communication between the two countries, and of how decisions made for internal reasons can affect the other side.

According to both U.S. and Mexican officials, the Mexican government suggested the building of a water drainage channel as a solution to the problem of waste water from U.S. industries spilling into Mexico along Otay Mesa.

The American section of the International Boundary and Water Commission agreed to study the idea. Then the Immigration and Naturalization Service jumped on board, offering to help pay for the project because it would keep automobiles from crossing illegally into that area, sources said.

But neither agency apparently informed the Mexican government of the new purpose for the ditch. And INS officials, strictly to head off criticism from anti-immigration groups at home, suddenly announced their intention to build the ditch to keep out illegal immigrants.

U.S. ‘Took Advantage’

“Mexico proposed the channel,” a Foreign Ministry official explained with irritation. “Then in the United States, some fifth-level bureaucrat took advantage of a project that is objectively necessary and gave it an emotional charge, putting dynamite into something that didn’t have to be a problem.”

Accustomed to their own highly centralized system, many Mexican officials and intellectuals viewed the affair as an effort to embarrass their government. They failed to understand that U.S. foreign policy is made and carried out, not just by the President, but by several, often-competing government bureaucracies.

Competing interests apparently prompted the U.S. Justice Department to leak a letter from former Secretary of State George P. Shultz that relayed a request from the Salinas administration for information linking Mexican military and government officials to drug trafficking.

U.S. law enforcement officials seemingly did not want to turn over the information for fear of compromising Mexican sources. Embarrassed, the Mexican government denied it made the request.

Just as Guilty

But the Mexican government can be as guilty as its northern neighbor of shortsighted decision-making. Soon after Salinas took office last December, Miguel Nazar Haro, a fugitive from the United States, was named chief of police intelligence in Mexico City.

Although Nazar Haro also has a checkered reputation in Mexico, officials here simply viewed him as the best intelligence man they have.

In 1982, Nazar Haro was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in San Diego on car theft and conspiracy charges. He was arrested in the United States, posted $200,000 bail and fled the country.

“If we had realized the reaction we would get from the United States, Nazar wouldn’t have been appointed,” a Foreign Ministry official conceded.

Yet conflict is natural between two such different countries that share a 2,000-mile border.

“This was very unfortunate,” said one U.S. official of the recent tension. “I believe the Salinas government wanted a honeymoon. I have no indication the Bush Administration didn’t want it. So I just have to believe we don’t know how to do that.”