PERSPECTIVE ON MEXICO : Prenuptial Jitters for Chicanos : The trade pact and prospective cultural merger reminds many that Mexican blood runs in their veins, not in their brains.

In this Mexicopolis, TLC does not stand for tender loving care. The acronym stands for tratado de libre comercio --free-trade agreement. Everyone here has an idea about what that means. Quite a few liken it to a marriage of their virgin nationalist daughter to Uncle Sam.

Victor Diaz, a university professor, believes that by the year 2010, the free-trade agreement will even out wages on both sides of the border, thus wiping out Mexico’s immigration to the United States. If that seems hard to swallow, consider the inconceivable changes the world has seen in this century--or in the last two months.

Mexican Education Secretary Manuel Bartlett Diaz calls for a first-rate educational system if Mexico is going to join the First World.

Some Mexican university professors, who earn an average of $500 a month, believe they will eventually be invited to teach in U.S. universities.

The middle class expects that Mexico will be able to export many more products to obtain much-coveted high-tech toys. Forget that Mexico already exports its best corn while the lower grade is consumed by the home folks.

Not all Mexicanos are optimistic. They are asking very basic questions: What is free? What is there to trade? What is in the agreement? Some say Uncle Sam’s size and power will smother Mexico.

Many Nortenos scoff at the capital’s naivete; along the Mexican border they have a more immediate familiarity with U.S. products, consumerism and the forever uneven business relationship between the two countries.

Forget the old cliche, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” Remember the new cliche, “Poor Mexico, so close to God and so far from U.S. technology.”

These are just some of the thoughts of Mexicans waiting to see the marriage plans being worked out between the old Uncle and the young Malinche (the maiden who was Cortes’ Indian translator).

One result of this marriage can be predicted: the birth of more Chicanos. No, not Mexican-Americans but Mexican-Mexicans becoming Chicanoized as they learn to adapt to a high-tech Anglo-American world. In preparation for this, Malinche has been studying and trying to make up for lost time with the Mexican-American children she abandoned so long ago.

Some Mexicanos fear losing their culture. Others disagree: “If Chicanos learned to maintain their culture and identity among the gringos, we can, too.”

From word to deed is a long stretch. Mexican-Americans held on to their culture for many reasons besides having their roots in the Southwest. Most Mexicanos who emigrated to the United States have been mestizos, the poorest. For their Chicano offspring, culture has been a mode of survival more than a form of resistance. From this necessity Chicanos molded a unique hybrid culture. Far from Mexico and so close to the United States, Chicano culture has become part Mexican, part Anglo-American, and a negation of both. The Chicano reality is to be able to live in both of those worlds within the United States.

Mexicanos, on the other hand, do not necessarily see their culture as a survival tool. No one has directly threatened it. Ironically, the popular Mexican culture, the one that sells in Mexico, is the latest fad from the U.S. of A.

The revolutionary Mexico of 1910 now resides in the realm of national mythology, propped up by the dominant PRI--the “Institutional Revolutionary” political party. It is not run so much by mestizos as by Mexicans of pure European ancestry. Mexicanos will tell you that they are all 100% Mexican and that there is no racism. Chicanos can look in the mirror, or at evidence of electoral fraud, and disagree.

Mexicanos openly admit and apologize for their past contempt for Chicanos and want a reunification. But Chicanos are suspicious and uncomfortable. Some of us find it culturally incestuous and out of the question. The same blood may run in our veins but not in our brains. We belong to a different country. We left Mexico for painful reasons; there is a resentment. We have scars and you can hear them as we speak our mother tongue.

Chicanos have more affinity for the culture and the undocumented newcomers than for traveling to Mexico. Memories of bad journeys have left painful scars. A tenured Chicano professor at Stanford University, a respected worldwide authority in his field with a good command of the Spanish language, recalls his last visit to Mexico. He took an Anglo-American professor and some students to meet with government officials, only to be snubbed and treated like a tour guide.

Another tenured Chicano faculty member at Stanford, who grew up on the Texas border, speaks perfect Spanish and is an activist, refuses to visit Mexico. “I have left nothing there,” he claims.

As President Carlos Salinas de Gortari made plans to visit Stanford for the university’s centennial celebration on Monday, he asked to meet with Chicano intellectuals and Mexican students. In view of the impending marriage and Mexico’s convenient discovery of her long lost children, some Chicano faculty decided to respond with three requests: Keep the meetings with Mexican students and Chicano faculty separate; propose a study of Mexican/Chicano relations, and have the meetings in English.

TLC does not stand for tender loving care, but for an agreement that Chicanos think needs some prenuptial counseling.