Central Americans Wrestle With Life in Mexico’s Shadow

In many ways, Mexico is to Central America what the United States is to Mexico.

Workers weigh the exponentially higher wages just across the river--the Usumacinta rather than the Rio Grande--against the dangers of an illegal crossing. Wealthy parents send their children to study in prestigious universities, then worry about the foreign ideas they may bring back, if they return at all.

Nations look to Mexico for technology, investment and leadership, but they sometimes become resentful at the response.

“Mexico looks almost as wealthy as the United States to most Guatemalans,” said Guatemalan American writer Francisco Goldman. And Guatemala is one of Central America’s better-off countries.

As for Mexico--whose president-elect, Vicente Fox, begins a four-day visit to Central America today--it is constantly being reminded of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

“Being neighbors with Central American countries allows us to put into practice the kind of treatment we would like to receive from more developed countries,” said Ruben Beltran, the Mexican Foreign Ministry undersecretary in charge of relations with Central America.

While that can be an advantage, it can also lead to embarrassment and a lot of bending over backward. Consider Fox’s visit to the isthmus.

He had originally planned a single trip, at the invitation of Costa Rica, to meet with all the isthmian presidents, then a stopover in Guatemala to discuss border issues with President Alfonso Portillo. Private grumbling from presidents who felt slighted at being summoned to a meeting outside their borders by a president-elect persuaded Fox to change his itinerary and plan separate visits.

Such are the kinds of sensibilities that Fox will face for the next six years in dealing with these small neighbors--not so different from Mexican sensitivity about treatment from the United States.

The isthmus’ contradictory feelings about its big northern neighbor have been exacerbated as Mexico has become a regional leader in free trade, arguably doing more than the United States to promote former President Bush’s vision of a Pan-American free-trade zone. Among other agreements, Mexico has signed trade pacts with five Central American countries and is negotiating with a sixth.

Manufacturers in tiny countries whose combined inhabitants barely total the population of Mexico City lust after Mexico’s potential market of 90 million consumers. At the same time, they fear competing with world-class Mexican corporations.

Mexicans, who measure the past in centuries, are uniquely qualified to understand the weight of history they bring with them into Central America.

Centuries ago, the Toltecs were fleeing south from Mexico into the crumbling Maya Empire. They conquered largely by setting the isthmus’ warring tribes against one another.

Mexico Ignored Isthmus in 1800s

After a failed attempt to consolidate control over Central America following independence from Spain, Mexico largely ignored its neighbors throughout the 19th century.

In the early 20th century, said historian David Mares, “Nicaragua was the only Central American country that resisted U.S. domination.” Mexico at first supported rebel Augusto Cesar Sandino in his fight against the U.S. invaders but abandoned him when Washington’s pressure became too great, Mares said.

Mexico decisively reentered Central American history during the civil wars of the 1980s.

Guatemalan refugees--50,000 of them--poured north across the border. Central American activists of all political stripes found jobs in Mexican universities, including Guatemalan President Portillo. Leftist guerrillas from Guatemala and El Salvador set up Mexico City offices. The less wealthy followers of fallen right-wing Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle--those who couldn’t afford to live in Miami--found a welcome in Mexico.

By then an oil-rich country, Mexico sought a role in resolving the conflicts, forming a group of Latin American nations that proposed a regional solution to fighting financed by the United States and the former Soviet Union, through Cuba.

“The five [Central American] foreign ministers refused to sit down at the same table,” former Mexican Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda recalled. Shuttling among the warring countries, top Latin American diplomats finally persuaded them to talk.

Mexico offered locations for peace negotiations. The agreement ending El Salvador’s civil war was signed at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in 1992.

Mexico’s role as a peacemaker laid the foundation for its current business success in Central America, said Sepulveda, who is now the chief legal officer for the Mexican construction company Empresas ICA, which recently built a major highway in Panama.

“We did not want to love Mexico, but we ended up loving Mexico anyway because of its generosity to us,” said Salvadoran psychologist Cecilia Delgado. “Of course, they weren’t just being generous for the sake of being generous. Mexico had its own objectives: to raise its international prestige and to distract from domestic social disintegration.”

Making Jokes at Expense of Neighbors

Significantly, Mexico has been less willing to accept similar help from its tiny neighbors. Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala was ignored in 1994 when she drove her motor home across the border to the Mexican state of Chiapas to try to help resolve an uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

“Mexico is the home of all the really nasty Rigoberta Menchu jokes,” writer Goldman said, referring to a genre of unprintable racist, sexist jibes. “Guatemalans know that Mexicans are mean to them.”

For their part, Guatemalans in 1986 flocked to a Chevy Chase-Steve Martin parody of the Mexican Revolution. “ ‘Three Amigos’ was a big hit in Guatemala because it made fun of Mexicans,” Goldman said.

Nevertheless, Mexican popular culture dominates Central America. Salvadoran journalist Juan Jose Dalton recalled how startled he was the first time he heard a Salvadoran Marxist guerrilla anthem: The rhythm had been changed from a march to a Mexican ranchera, accompanied by guitars.

And not just popular culture has a northern touch. Many Central American leaders are Mexico-philes, having fallen in love with the country during their college years. Former Honduran Finance Minister Gustavo Adolfo Aguilar studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the 1950s, then returned to teach 20 years later.

“There were lots of Central Americans studying majors that universities in their countries did not offer,” he said.

Students Head North to Mexican Universities

Despite the growing number of universities on the isthmus--many with ties to U.S. institutions--lots of Central Americans still go to Mexico for college. More than 400 Central Americans are studying at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, in the devoutly Roman Catholic city that is the home of all that foreigners think of as Mexican: tequila, mariachis and wide-brimmed sombreros.

Panamanian Nelson Manuel Castro transferred to Guadalajara six years ago after two years at a Costa Rican university. The medical student with curly dark hair and a ready smile came for the curriculum and advanced laboratories, but he’s leaving with values of hard work and discipline that he says he finds missing in his own country.

“Central Americans are lively, and we live as if every moment were our last,” he said. “Mexicans are not as frivolous.”

As much as Central Americans enjoy coming to Mexico, they worry when Mexicans go south, especially for business.

Mexican-born Angel Remigio Gonzalez’s control of all four Guatemalan local television stations is controversial, even though he has lived in that country for 50 years and has transferred his shares to Guatemalan family members.

When Mexico City-based Television Azteca bought a Salvadoran channel two years ago, the competition was worried, admitted Ronald Calvo, general manager of Telecorporacion Salvadorena, which owns three channels in El Salvador.

“They came in like conquerors--but our 40 years of experience made the difference,” he said. The Salvadoran company competed by improving its international programming.

Still, Calvo said he’s concerned that other businesses might not do as well against Mexican rivals. “The entrance of Mexican products could be the end for our companies,” he warned.

The fears may be well-founded. Since Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo, whose flagship product is similar to Wonder Bread, entered the Salvadoran market in the early 1990s, nearly 500 small bakeries have gone out of business, said Raul Angel Orellana, who has sold industrial ovens since 1976.

“Many bakeries in El Salvador were disorganized, and that is why they couldn’t compete,” he said. “A big company like Bimbo came along and wiped them out.”

With a free-trade agreement between Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries--Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador--signed and set to take effect in January, business owners throughout the region are nervous. The pact favors the Central American countries by reducing tariffs for their exports to Mexico more quickly than the tariffs on Mexican products entering their markets, but smaller companies say that isn’t enough.

“That is not going to prevent Mexico from sweeping us away,” said Jorge Pinto, president of the Salvadoran Small and Medium Business Assn. and the owner of a 20-employee plastics factory.

But Mexican-born Victor Tirado, once a leader of Nicaragua’s Sandinista junta and now Nicaragua’s representative to the Central American Parliament, which promotes regional integration, said such fears are closed-minded.

“Our businesses want everything made easy,” he said. “As soon as Fox was elected, a Central American delegation should have been up there visiting him. This is the perfect moment for our region to become stronger by attracting investment.”