Mexico, Fair-Weather Friend

In the days before Sept. 11, after Mexican President Vicente Fox had been feted at the first state dinner of the Bush White House, the United States was reorienting its foreign policy away from Europe toward Latin America. Using language normally reserved for Western European nations, President Bush pronounced Mexico America’s new best friend.

Then came the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Bush’s call for a global coalition to fight terrorism. According to a poll taken last week by Reforma, a Mexico City newspaper, more than two-thirds of Mexicans disagree with their government’s decision to support the U.S. counterattack on Afghanistan. By contrast, most Western Europeans want their governments to support U.S. military action against terrorists. No foreign nation--its public or its government--has been as supportive of the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign as America’s previous best friend, Britain.

Mexico’s ambiguous response to the terrorist attack not only calls into question the depth of its friendship with the United States. It also highlights Mexico’s fundamental ambivalence toward its prospective integration into the Western world.

To be sure, the ties that bind America and Britain run deep. Having close relations to the United States also increases Britain’s global stature, as well as its leverage in its dealings with the European Union. But the depth of British support for the United States ultimately stems from a shared cultural heritage. While there are strong strands of anti-Americanism on the British left, a majority of Britons still identify strongly with America. In a 1999 survey, 59% of respondents said that America would be Britain’s most reliable ally in a time of crisis. Only 16% chose Europe. The two nations’ tendencies to look at the world in similar ways translate directly into shared interests.

While Fox was one of the first foreign leaders to express his solidarity with the U.S., the terrorist attacks and their aftermath have sparked a revealing debate within his government and the nation over Mexico’s proper relationship with the United States. While most European nations observed a moment of silence in honor of those who died on Sept. 11, Mexico did not. At least one cabinet member, Interior Minister Santiago Creel, was concerned that Mexico would appear “subordinate” to the U.S.

Fox’s hastily planned visit to the United States two weeks ago was a clear attempt to control any damage that his nation’s ambiguous response to the terrorist attacks may have had on U.S.-Mexico relations. Perhaps afraid that Mexico’s lukewarm response of support would hurt future negotiations on immigration reform, the president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, wrote a letter to Fox in late September requesting the president’s “total, unequivocal and visible support” of the United States. Sept. 11 not only soured the American public’s mood on immigration, it has exposed the pitfalls that lie ahead in U.S.-Mexican bilateral negotiations.

Historically, Mexican nationalism has taken the form of anti-Americanism. Mexico’s defeat at the hands of the U.S. in 1848--which resulted in the loss of half its territory--and other American and European aggressions have nurtured in Mexicans an anti-interventionist and pacifist politics. It has also engendered a strong suspicion of foreign powers. In the not so distant past, Mexican leaders consciously manipulated such sentiments to unite the public and to distract them from pressing domestic issues.

But Mexican ideological fervor has long conflicted with the nation’s strong streak of pragmatism. While many presidents and revolutionaries may have been wary of U.S. intervention, they routinely sought American backing. From the time of the Revolution until the 1980s, Mexican intellectuals largely viewed their nation as non-Western. A decade ago, Octavio Paz concluded that “the core of Mexico is Indian,” not European. Such a world view helped justify Mexico’s pursuit of foreign and economic policies that directly challenged the interests of its powerful neighbor.

But over the past two decades, particularly during the presidencies of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo, Mexico has begun to redefine its place in the world. While Salinas championed Mexico’s shift toward economic neo-liberalism, Zedillo opened the door for real political democracy. Last year’s election of Fox, which ended 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico, was a milestone in that nation’s continuing transition from a Latin American country into a North American one, an “indigenous” nation into a Western nation.

From the beginning of his presidency, Fox has expressed his desire for greater integration between the U.S. and Mexico. He has asserted that his country’s proximity to the largest economy in the world is a “strategic advantage.” In early September, he called for the U.S. to reach an agreement with Mexico on the legalization of undocumented immigrants by the end of the year.

But the past month has shown the extent to which Fox’s vision of North American integration has not trickled down to the Mexican public. While two-thirds of respondents to last week’s Reforma survey said they had family in the U.S., nearly half said they identified little or not at all with their neighbor to the north.

Still, the findings of another survey question the depth of Mexicans’ adherence to the principle of neutrality. While nearly three-quarters of respondents said that Mexico should remain neutral in the war on terrorism, only 39% said it should remain so if that stance resulted in the United States not coming to their rescue during an economic crisis.

Throughout its history, Mexico has been searching for its identity, oscillating between the ancient and the modern, the indigenous and the European, the Latin American and the North American. Not until it finds itself and chooses a future can it ever be more than a fair-weather friend.