"Voices of Mexico" issue 116

ISSN 0186 • 9418

Voices of Mexico is published by the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte, cisan (Center for Research on North America) of the Coordinación de Humanidades (Office of the Coordinator of Humanities), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, unam (National Autonomous University of Mexico).

Director Graciela Martínez-Zalce Coordinator of Publications Astrid Velasco Montante

Editor-in-Chief Art Director Translator Teresa Jiménez Andreu

Patricia Pérez Ramírez Heather Dashner Monk

Editor Editor Translator for Art & Culture Diego Bugeda Bernal María Cristina Hernández Escobar María Cristina Fernández Hall

Layout Assistant to the Coordinator of Publications Circulation and Sales María Elena Álvarez Sotelo Minerva Cruz Salas Sury Sadahi Allende Flores

Rector, unam Enrique Graue Wiechers Coordinator of Humanities Guadalupe Valencia García Director of the Center for Research on North America (cisan) Graciela Martínez-Zalce

EDITORIAL BOARD

Sergio Aguayo, Carlos Alba Vega, Norma Blázquez, Fernando Rafael Castañeda Sabido, Roberto Castañón Romo María Leoba Castañeda, Lourdes N. Chehaibar Náder, Guadalupe González, Roberto Gutiérrez López, Elizabeth Gutiérrez Romero, Carlos Heredia, Julio Labastida, Miguel León-Portilla (V), David Maciel, Paz Consuelo Márquez-Padilla, Alicia Mayer, Humberto Muñoz García, Silvia Núñez, Olga Pellicer, Elena Poniatowska, Vicente Quirarte, Federico Reyes Heroles, Andrés Rozental, José Sarukhán, Mari Carmen Serra Puche, Alina María Signoret, María Teresa Uriarte, Diego Valadés, José Luis Valdés-Ugalde, Mónica Verea, Verónica Villarespe Reyes.

Address letters, advertising, and subscription correspondence to Voices of Mexico, Torre II de Humanidades, piso 9, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, C. P. 04510, Cd. de México Tel: 555623 0308. Electronic mail: voicesmx@unam.mx. Annual subscription rates: Mexico Mex$140; USA US$30; Canada Can$40; other countries US$55, prepaid in U.S. currency to UNAM. Opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the views of Voices of Mexico. All contents are fully protected by © copyright and may not be reproduced without the written consent of Voices of Mexico. The magazine is not responsible for the return of unsolicited manuscripts. Publicación cuatrimestral, año treinta y cinco, número 116, abril, 2022. ISSN 0186-9418. Certificado de Licitud de Contenido núm. 2930 y Certificado de Licitud de Título núm. 3340, expedidos por la Comisión Calificadora de Publicaciones y Revistas Ilustradas. Reserva al uso exclusivo del título núm. 04-2002-0604 13383000-102, expedida por el Instituto Nacional del Derecho de Autor. Correspondencia nacional de segunda clase. Registro 0851292. Características 220261212. Correspondencia internacional de segunda clase. Registro Cri D F 002-92. Todos los derechos reservados. Queda prohibida la reproducción parcial o total de esta revista por cualquier medio, sin la previa autorización por escrito de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Cover Art: Juan Palomino; @juanpalomino.ilustrador

Shared

Our Voice Mexico and the United States, a Singular Bond Interview with Marcela Terrazas Teresa Jiménez

Roosevelt, Cárdenas, and the Good Neighbor Policy Andreu Espasa

Mexico-United States: To Cooperate or Not to Cooperate José Luis Valdés-Ugalde

The Bicentennial of Mexico-U.S. Relations Leonardo Curzio U.S.-Mexico Relations Interdependence and Paradiplomacy Roberto Zepeda

A Brief Review of Mexico-U.S. Relations Paz Consuelo Márquez-Padilla

Is Mexico Better Off with a Donkey Or an Elephant in the White House? Estefanía Cruz Lera

Biden’s “De-Trumpization” of Migration Policy: The López Obrador Response Mónica Verea

Notes to Bolster a Future with More Women in Mexico-U.S. Relations Silvia Núñez García

Mexico and the United States Security: Historic and Current Dilemmas Raúl Benítez Manaut

Two Fossil Fuel Producers in the Face of Climate Change: Mexico and the United States Edit Antal

Cultural Relations Imbalances Due to Disparity in Sociopolitical Realities

Francisco Peredo Castro

“South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” The Musical Comings and Goings Between Mexico and the United States Julia E. Palacios Franco

Mexican Migration to the United States: Belonging, Identities, and Uprootedness A Literary Perspective Mariana Flores

and Culture

Two Centuries of History Mexico-U.S. Bilateral Relations Bryan Alan Hernández Aguilar North A Fortnight in the Wilderness by Zazil Alaíde Collins Relative by María Cristina Hall Illustrations by Xanic Galván

There and Back Interview with Tatiana Parcero Gina Bechelany Fajer

Logan Ryland Dandridge All My Gods Are Black Jaime Soler Frost

The Different Origins of the Press and of Published Political Discussion in Mexico and the United States Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor

Embajadores de Estados Unidos en México Diplomacia de crisis y oportunidades by Roberta Lajous, Erika Pani, Paolo Riguzzi, and María Celia Toro, comps. Ana Luna

Gretta Hernández

Our Voice

The shared history of Mexico and the United States, commemorated in this issue to begin the celebration of the bicentennial of diplomatic relations, has also traversed the modern history of the National University. In the early twentieth century, on the eve of another centennial, that of Mexico’s independence, Don Justo Sierra asked legal scholar Ezequiel A. Chávez to travel to the United States to observe how its universities were constituted and how they functioned. From his observations would be born the Law to Establish the National University of Mexico, today the unam This is why it is no exaggeration to say that the United States was also present in the foundation of our university. From then on, and due to that country’s preeminence on the world stage, its importance for our nation because of its geographical proximity, and the intense economic, migratory, and cultural exchange between the two, our university has given the former an outstanding place among all the countries it studies and with which it has developed academic exchanges. In the sphere of research, in 1988, the University Program for Research on the United States of America was created, the direct predecessor of the Center for Research on the United States of America (ciseua), now the Center for Research on North America (cisan).

This issue of Voices of Mexico brings together reflections about the many complex dimensions of our shared history. They range from our diplomatic relations in the times of James Monroe and the first Mexican Empire, to the challenges to bilateral relations in the twenty-first century in the postTrump and post-covid era.

In this issue, experts invite us to think about the complex proximity with the United States, starting with the recognition of the importance of looking at it from a historical perspective tracing both conflicts and cooperation dating back to the nineteenth century, as well as the uneven origins of the two countries’ media and, therefore, the style of their political discussions. Starting from the past to better understand the present can help eliminate deep-rooted prejudices and stereotypes because knowing their origins will make us aware of them and serve to eliminate them.

To commemorate these 200 years, this issue reviews crucial historic moments. Among them are the transcendental oil expropriation, which even today influences relations between our two countries; the shift beginning in the 1980s that violence and border management have implied; and the relationship between the current governments, with the de-Trumpization of immigration policies, the continuing intense trade moving from nafta to the usmca, and the divergences in environmental, foreign policy, and security issues. Naturally, our authors also ask the perennial question of whether Mexico is better off with Republicans or Democrats in office in the U.S., and recognize that women have had very restricted space for acting in the diplomatic sphere.

With an immense population of Mexican origin on the other side of the border, cultural issues matter. And they matter a great deal. The nations have been marked by divergences in their political and socio-cultural make-up, and this is reflected in cultural products like literature, film, and music, as well as in the production of contemporary art, also dealt with here.

The articles in this issue make us aware that relations between our two countries are crisscrossed by narratives: the U.S. narrative about Mexico and the Mexican narrative about the United States. This complex interdependence runs through the good neighbor policy and is illustrated in the splendid cover that announces the reflections that we share from our voices of Mexico, attesting more than ever to our editorial mission.

Graciela Martínez-Zalce Director of the Center for Research on North America

Problemas del

DESARROLLO

Revista Latinoamericana de Economía

ISSN:0301-7036

Volumen 53, número 208, enero-marzo 2022

Participación salarial y heterogeneidad estructural en Perú: diagnóstico y simulaciones Germán Alarco Tosoni

Informalidad laboral, pobreza monetaria y multidimensional en Bogotá y el Área Metropolitana

Roberto Mauricio Sánchez Torres, Lizeth Dayana Manzano Murillo y Laura Antonia Maturana Cifuentes

Proteccionismo y redes productivas globales del núcleo dinámico: implicaciones para México Sergio Ordóñez

Cumplimiento tributario y facturación electrónica en Ecuador: evaluación de impacto José Ramírez-Álvarez, Nicolás Oliva y Mauro Andino

Trabajo infantil y rendimiento escolar en México

Alma Sofía Santillán Hernández y Juan Roberto Vargas Sánchez

Revisitando la reproducción capitalista: equilibrio, redes y competencia intersectorial John Cajas-Guijarro

Publicación trimestral del Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, UNAM Suscripciones y ventas: revprode@unam.mx

Teléfono: (52) 55 56 23 01 05 https://www.probdes.iiec.unam.mx

Teresa Jiménez*

Mexico and the United States, a Singular Bond Interview with Marcela Terrazas1

Teresa Jiménez: Why is the historical perspective important for studying the relationship between Mexico and the United States?

Marcela Terrazas: As a historian, I’m convinced that tracing what we have back to its origins is looking in depth at a circumstance, a problem, a possible solution. To start, I think that what makes the Mexico-U.S. relationship very particular is our proximity, and the other particularity, which is very obvious, is its asymmetry. We’re talking about two countries with different kinds of wealth, different power, and a very unequal international presence. From the historical perspective, we can see that many things already existed . . . like, for example, we already had arms trafficking in the nineteenth century, as well as human smuggling. And we can trace the violence back even as far as to the eighteenth century. One of the fundamental questions is to see when the interaction, the conflicts, appeared. But we also have to look at the harmony, because I’m not a partisan of thinking about this relationship as though it’s only problems. I think that to have a more well-considered view, we have to see what makes the relationship between these two countries so enormous: the ability to cooperate. So, just as we can see the conflicts, we can also see the ability of the two societies — and also the governments — to have a constructive relationship. We have to see how this edifice that we now have has been built over

* Teresa is the editor-in-chief of Voices of Mexico; you can contact her at tejian@unam.mx

the years. And for that to happen, bringing in other disciplines is also very enriching: bringing in law, sociology, the perspective of political analysts. But, it’s very important to see it from the point of view of history to fully understand the link.

TJ: The complex Mexico-U.S. relationship has gone through many stages, through historic moments that have spelled eras of both closeness and distancing. There have been moments of cooperation and others of frank “anti-yankeeism.” Where are bilateral relations right now?

MT: First I want to say that there are two levels of the relationship: one can be the position of the governments of the two countries, and the other, that of the different sectors of their societies, business community, farmers and growers, migrants, etc. Down through history, many situations have culminated in armed conflicts, like the war that began in 1846 and ended in 1848. That war is often studied from an acrimonious, and not a more level-headed, point of view. Or the U.S. occupation of Veracruz in 1914; or the punitive expedition against Pancho Villa’s incursion a couple of years later. There’ve been moments of great tension, but next to them are many other, constructive moments, which continue.

Where are we today? I come back to this distinction of the spheres: if we talk about the link between governments, perhaps we can say it’s strained. I think that during the Trump administration, this originated more in Washington than in Mexico, and now things seem to be going in the opposite direction. But until today, investments, both

U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons

The United States delivered 1.75 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Mexico on September 21, 2021.

joint investments or U.S. investment in Mexico, haven’t stopped. The percent of trade between the two countries hasn’t changed, just to mention things that can be measured. So, saying that right now the link between Mexico and the United States is going through a sensitive moment, a critical moment, is only part of the truth. It is possible — and I do hope that it’s the case — that this critical moment will end and that collaboration, trade, cultural relations, and links for cooperation in so many things will be maintained. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t conflictive issues, like migration, which is much more complicated, because we’re no longer just dealing with the migration of Mexicans to the United States. Right now, people from as far away as Africa or from Central America are passing through our country and this is quite a grave matter. Not to mention drug trafficking, people smuggling, arms trafficking, the issue of water. Yes, some issues imply confrontation, but other experiences also speak to collaboration, because many of these problems don’t even have their origins exclusively in Mexico, like migration, which is a multinational phenomenon. So that’s why we have to look for solutions together.

To get back to the point of where our relations are right now, I think it’s not the friendliest moment for our diplomatic relations on a governmental level, but I also believe that the infrastructure that holds up the trade, economic, cultural, etc., relationship is increasingly dense and more solid.

TJ: In addition to the federal governments, links also exist between border state governments on both sides. Do you think that this border area is the basis for a large part of bilateral relations?

MT: The border region is vast, and obviously, the interaction between the societies of both countries is extremely intense. You can’t compare the link between Montana and Quintana Roo to that between Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipas and Texas, California, or Arizona. The border region is very large, and, since Mexico became independent — and that’s what we’re commemorating here, two hundred years of relations — that border area was practically autonomous. That has been for different reasons, but mainly because it’s very far from the centers of power, from Mexico City and Washington, and because, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century, at least until the administration of Porfirio Díaz, that the railway lines that connected us with the United States

were laid. It was very far from urban government control due to the issue of the indigenous, which was very intense until almost the end of the nineteenth century. People demanded security from governors and local mayors —we could extrapolate this into the twenty-first century—, but the Mexico City government and even Washington were incapable of offering protection, because the Indians also made incursions into Texas and New Mexico and Arizona. What did they do? Very succinctly, the governors, for example, of Chihuahua or Sonora, made agreements with the indigenous chiefs, using a kind of regional diplomacy, sometimes from one governor to another and very frequently between the governors and the indigenous leaders. Sometimes, municipal presidents would pick up shotguns and the few horses they had and hunt the indigenous. That is, these were regional and even local responses. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, intense economic, kinship, friendship, and cultural relations have been forged in the border states. I think this does leave its mark on bilateral relations. For example, the recent closing of the border had an important impact on the economy of the southern U.S. border states.

TJ: A relationship is always two-way. In the case of Mexico and the United States, it isn’t just about how we see U.S. Americans, but also how they see us. How could the perception, sometimes based on prejudices, that both countries have of each other be changed?

MT: I think the lack of knowledge that we both have of each other is truly mammoth. Instead of knowledge, we have prejudices, many that originated in fourteenth-century England, of how outsiders are seen, or Luther and Calvin’s Reform, how the Reformers saw the Catholics; or what’s called the Spanish Black Legend, how the English have a series of negative judgements about Spain because Spain had been the winner in the distribution of the world at the moment of the “discovery.” Just look how far back I’m going. Of course, things have changed. But those prejudices have largely been inherited by their U.S. descendants.

There are deeply rooted prejudices like racism, but also, both U.S. Americans and Mexicans have contributed to these negative judgements. They’re no longer prejudices: they’re negative judgments because they’re now based on data and concrete facts. If we talk, for example, about nineteenth-century border violence, plus what I already said about the indigenous, we can also talk about

What makes the relationship between these two countries so enormous is the ability to cooperate. Just as we can see the conflicts, we can also see the ability of the two societies — and also the governments — to have a constructive relationship.

the incursions of U.S. marauders into Mexico, when they stole cattle, murdered, or extracted vengeance. However, it’s also true that Mexicans did the same things in the United States.

So, we can say that negative interaction was intense and a two-way street. A third scenario was what González Quiroga has called “criminal cooperation.” In the nineteenth century, Mexicans and U.S. Americans joined up, even with Apaches or Comanches, to commit crimes, above all to steal cattle. That criminal partnership or collaborative violence can be seen today with drug trafficking: if Mexican drugs enter the United States, somebody is allowing it. If U.S. arms enter Mexico, somebody is letting them through, and those partnerships are very solid.

Now, what should we do so that both Mexicans and U.S. Americans have a judgement that’s closer to reality? Well, that can only be done based on study and mutual knowledge. I often tell my students that during their course, I’m not going to change the image they have of the United States, but the only thing I want is that their visions have a solid basis, because the image of the other has to be based on profound knowledge.

And I think that no matter how solid their knowledge and familiarity, that’s not the only thing they need. Other factors and actors also have an influence, like our countrymen and women who live in the United States and who, when they return to their communities, talk to their relatives and friends about what they see in the United States. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that they’re also the object of racism and inequality. But that effort needs to be very concerted, and the governments alone cannot change. It’s the societies that have to make that change. And that’s a transformation that has to start with mutual knowledge.

TJ: What is the gaze that we should adopt to approach bilateral relations? What can we expect in the future of a relationship based on new forms and needs?

MT: I have mentioned some of the bases throughout our chat. In the first place, we have to approach the relation-

ship on two levels. Neither diplomacy nor political relations are sufficient to understand the bilateral bond. I think we have to start off from the interaction between the societies. And in the second place, despite the fact that we’re talking about a relationship between two countries, a very asymmetrical relationship, with different levels of economic and political power, and a different international presence, that asymmetry is not an inevitable manifest destiny.

What do I mean by this? That that asymmetry doesn’t mean that Mexico is always inevitably a victim. I think that, on the one hand, on the diplomatic level, Mexico has been very skillful, with very capable diplomats, diplomats who are concerned with studying the history of the United States and familiarizing themselves with our neighbor. And it is precisely that knowledge that gave them the tools to achieve more equitable negotiations, more favorable to Mexico. This is a contrast with the U.S. ambassadors to our country. Even though there have been first-rate people, there have also been people with no knowledge, and I think that has been a mistake on Washington’s part, of not understanding the role of Mexico in its surroundings. Apart from believing that one thing is the relationship between governments and quite another, the relationship between societies, at least we have to approach the two spheres. We have to think that asymmetry does not necessarily lead to Mexico being a country abused by the United States. Mexico knows how to play this game very well. In addition to diplomacy, in the field of trade and business, Mexico is also very clear on this issue.

I would like to invite your readers to get to know the other and to know ourselves. Self-knowledge of Mexico becomes richer if we study other regions, other countries, other societies. It allows us to define ourselves better. That is the only way we’ll be able to rid ourselves of these elaborate ideas that the bilateral relationship has always been conflictive. If we shed these pre-fabricated mental frameworks, we’ll be able to have a better understanding of the other.

Notes

1 Marcela Terrazas is a doctor in history, researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico Institute for Historical Research, and a professor of U.S. History. She has her bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies. Her area of expertise is U.S. history and its relationship with Mexico, and she has published many articles and books on the subject. She is also a member of different international associations for U.S. American and Latin American studies.

Andreu Espasa*

Roosevelt, Cárdenas, and the Good Neighbor Policy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is universally recognized as one of the great political figures of the twentieth century. His long tenure in the White House (19331945) coincided with two of the most decisive and turbulent episodes of contemporary history: the Great Depression and World War II. He emerged victorious in both cases. He not only defeated the worst crisis in the history of capitalism and the threat of international fascism, but by doing so, he simultaneously transformed the role of government intervention in the economy and that of Washington in the world. The rise of U.S. economic and geopolitical power in those decisive years is undisputable. However, during his first years in office, many would have had a difficult time predicting that outcome.

In the beginning, the New Deal economic policy provided uneven results and stumbled at the outbreak of a serious recession in 1938. In turn, the Roosevelt administration’s initial foreign policy steps included many elements of continuity with the 1920s isolationist unilateralism. The president ignored the collective efforts of the 1933 London Economic Conference, thus dynamiting a global, coordinated way out of the crisis and reinforcing the general tendency to economic nationalism. Under Roosevelt, the United States continued to be absent from the League of Nations, that era’s great multilateral forum.

The challenges from Tokyo, Rome, and Berlin to the international order were met by rather lukewarm responses by Washington. A paradigmatic example of the U.S. version of appeasement in the face of European fascism was the Roosevelt administration’s reaction to German’s an-

* Andreu works at the Institute of Historical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at andreuespasa@filos.unam.mx

nexation of Austria. While Mexico was denouncing this violation of international law, U.S. diplomacy limited itself to degrading its embassy in Vienna to a consulate and demanding that the Nazi authorities in Berlin pay Austria’s debt.1

Despite these less than promising beginnings, the Roosevelt administration could boast of one success in its foreign policy: the so-called Good Neighbor Policy. Although initially formulated in general terms, it soon became identified with a new foreign policy focus for Latin American countries. The idea was to leave behind the most coercion-based aspects of U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and put forward a new form of leadership based on greater respect for neighboring countries’ formal sovereignty at a time when the rest of the world seemed dominated by new and old imperialist aspirations and a growing feeling of pre-war hostility.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río

Given the secular conflicts among the European powers, this administration sought to offer the world an example of peaceful, friendly intra-hemispheric relations. For Washington, the Good Neighbor Policy’s main challenge was how to maintain its position as the region’s main power and, at the same time, project a credible image as a benevolent leader of the “New World.”

This was no minor challenge. Right at the beginning of Roosevelt’s term, in 1933, Washington had to deal with a political crisis in Cuba caused by the fall of General Gerardo Machado. The decision to not recognize Ramón Grau’s revolutionary government and to favor Fulgencio Batista’s taking power seemed to confirm the worst fears about the purely rhetorical nature of the new policy toward Latin America. However, signs that it could be interpreted as a positive change in trend soon began to emerge. In late 1933, at the Pan-American Conference held in Montevideo, the U.S. delegation committed to the principle of nonintervention. Added to this were some significant gestures in the policy of recognition of Central American governments. And, in 1934, the Platt Amendment was repealed, putting an end to the legal mechanism that had justified the U.S. military interventions in Cuba.

After all this, the moment of truth came in 1938, with Mexico as the protagonist. It is difficult to exaggerate the transcendental importance of the expropriation of Mexico’s oil by the Lázaro Cárdenas government in March 1938. As historian Clayton Koppes has pointed out, the nationalization of Mexican oil implied that, for the first time, a country that was not part of the capitalist center took possession of the resources of a basic sector of its economy.2 As time went on, most oil-producing countries followed suit. What could the Roosevelt administration do in the face of a challenge of this kind? Force the Mexican government to step back with an aggressive diplomatic response that would act as an implicit threat of the eventual use of force or take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate the sincerity of the Good Neighbor Policy, dealing with the oil question in the framework of scrupulous respect for Mexican sovereignty?

Washington’s first reaction, encouraged by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, seemed to indicate a preference for an aggressive approach. Roosevelt suspended the purchase of Mexican silver and sent a communiqué demanding an immediate compensation in terms that were so aggressive that they could have sparked the break-off of rela-

The nationalization of Mexican oil implied that, for the first time, a country that was not part of the capitalist center took possession of the resources of a basic sector of its economy.

tions between the two countries. This was averted thanks to a suggestion by Josephus Daniels, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico: ignore the message and act as though it had never been received. The ambassador was not the only politician in the Roosevelt administration who opposed Cordell Hull’s aggressive approach. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau also expressed his disagreement, to the point of neutralizing the suspension of Mexican silver: instead of acquiring it through the bilateral agreement, he continued its purchase on the open market.3

For its part, the Mexican government not only did not succumb to the pressures of the most hostile partisans of its U.S. counterpart, but it also was able to re-channel the discussion to a terrain much more favorable to its own interests. Aware of the delicate international geopolitical moment, Mexican diplomacy opted to put forward the links between oil and international security. To explain Mexico’s position and the gravity of what was at play, the contemporary example of the Spanish Civil War was particularly useful. At the end of the day, the analogies were easy to draw. Mexico, like Republican Spain, had a left-wing, non-Communist government that opposed the political trends of the time in Europe and Latin America. In the Spanish conflict, the alliance of the reactionary military and international fascism had received the decisive support of an oil company: Texaco. In the Mexican case, it was not difficult to imagine the insurrection of an ambitious military leader seeking financing by the companies affected by the nationalization, who could eventually add to that the air support from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Implementing a discrete, disguised intervention, European fascism could have taken over political control in Mexico and put at risk the security of the U.S. southern border. An anti-fascist Mexico with nationalized oil could be much more useful to Washington for the coming world war than one with privately-owned oil and a puppet government under the orders of Berlin and Rome.

Mexican diplomacy wielded these arguments with the force added to them by its brave example. Mexico had been

the first country to send arms to Republican Spain —even before the Soviet Union— and had defended the cause of Spanish democracy and international rule of law in the League of Nations. In addition, its humanitarian work in taking in refugee children had also made it stand out on the international stage. Its anti-fascist commitment was more than confirmed. At the same time, its big risk of nationalizing its oil invited the combination of its anti-fascist trajectory with hard-headed pragmatism. The intense pressure Mexico came under in the late 1930s was accompanied by an implicit threat: if the United States did not distance itself from the interests of the oil companies, Mexico could end up being forced to change its alliances. This threat was based on certain significant gestures throughout 1939, such as the return of Mexico’s ambassador to Berlin and the sale of Mexican oil to the European fascist powers.4

The fact is that Cárdenas’s arguments fit in very well with President Roosevelt’s evolution with regard to the international situation and the possible consequences of the Spanish conflict. At the beginning of the war in Spain, Roosevelt had declared an arms embargo against it and shown enormous indifference about the final outcome of the war. By contrast, in 1938, the White House was identifying Francisco Franco as a danger and even considering the possibility of lifting the arms embargo despite the bad military situation of the Republican forces. The Good Neighbor Policy played a fundamental part in this change of opinion. The idea that a Francoist victory could have very negative effects on relations between the United States and Latin America was gaining strength in the president’s inner circle. In the pre-war context, a Francoist Spain could use its influence and example as a bridge for the interests of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy in Latin America. The danger was particularly concerning in Mexico. In April 1938, Roosevelt explicitly used the analogy between Spain and Mexico to justify an increase in the Navy’s budget at a press conference: “Suppose certain foreign governments, European governments, were to do in Mexico what they did in Spain. Suppose they would organize a revolution, a Fascist revolution in Mexico. ... Do you think that the United States could stand idly by and have this European menace right on our own borders? Of course not. You could not stand for it.”5

In the end, diplomacy prevailed and the Roosevelt administration prioritized maintaining good relations with Mexico over the defense of the oil companies’ interests. The peaceful, friendly resolution of the oil conflict had

enormous consequences for both countries. Mexico reinforced its economic sovereignty, creating a solid basis for the successful development policies that would mark the following three decades. Washington’s Good Neighbor Policy opportunately passed the sincerity test and augurated an important change in strategic U.S. thinking: in contrast to policies followed by his Republican predecessors, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made it clear that, in case of a potential conflict, security considerations should prevail over short-term interests of big U.S. companies with assets abroad.6

Obviously, the main consequence of this historic episode centered on relations between Mexico and the United States. The alliance connecting the two countries became closer, facilitating Mexico’s eventual participation in World War II. Cárdenas recognized that the Good Neighbor Policy was sincere and that, finally, the Monroe Doctrine’s slogan of “America for the Americans” could be interpreted literally without the tragic ironies of the past. For its part, Washington continued to value the positive effects of economic and political stability south of its border. The beginning of the Cold War would put an end to a large part of the Good Neighbor Policy’s most progressive promises, but the legacy of the successful oil nationalization would continue to condition relations between Mexico and the United States even today.

Notes

1 Arnold A. Offner, American Appeasement; United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 238-239.

² Clayton R. Koppes, “The Good Neighbor Policy and the Nationalization of Mexican Oil: A Reinterpretation,” The Journal of American History, vol. 69, no. 1, June 1982, pp. 62-81.

3 Paolo Riguzzi, “Comercio, moneda y política de la plata en las relaciones México-Estados Unidos,” in José Enrique Covarrubias and Antonio Ibarra, Moneda y mercado. Ensayos sobre los orígenes de los sistemas monetarios latinoamericanos, siglos xviii al xx (Mexico City: Instituto Mora-unam, 2013), pp. 341-342.

4 Lorenzo Meyer, México y Estados Unidos en el conflicto petrolero, 19171942, 2nd edition (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1972), pp. 391-393.

5 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A Special Press Conference with Members of the Associated Church Press,” Washington, D. C., April 20, 1938, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 volume, in The Continuing Struggle for Liberalism: with a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt (book 1) (New York: Random House, 1938), pp. 255-256.

6 David G. Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U. S. Strategic Thought, 1936-1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).

Mexico-United States:

To Cooperate or Not to Cooperate

Joe Biden’s administration priorities have been clearly established. On several strategic thematic fronts, it has shown — not without some difficulty — its determination to once again take up the multilateral issues that his country had put forward as central spaces for maintaining its preeminence in the world order. It has also aimed to generate momentum to ensure that multilateralist impetus not only allows it to achieve this goal, but also, for example, to put strategic doctrine objectives of its international policy on the agenda.

While before Biden, the issue of security was reduced to the different aspects represented by the country’s coun-

* José Luis is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico and was the center’s director from 2001 to 2009; you can contact him at jlvaldes@unam.mx

terparts (for example, Iran and Cuba), today, in my opinion, the gamut broadens out significantly by the recognition of different security problems as multifactorial.

In his explanation of how power is exercised in a domestic or international democratic order, the theoretician of power Joseph Nye, alludes to the meaning and weight of leadership in guiding political and economic governance.1 He posits that the attraction awakened by intelligent guidance of the governed is fundamental for obtaining the legitimacy that leadership in a democracy requires, since the absence of that kind of legitimate leadership generally steers to a vacuum of power and mistrust and arrogance of the leader in question.

President Biden needs — and will continue to need — to exercise power effectively, affirmatively, and broadly, in light above all of the anomalous leadership exercised by Donald Trump, which continues today and does not

José Luis Valdés-Ugalde*

Office of the President of the United States/Wikimedia Commons

take into account the consequences of how wearing this is for his presidency and for the intrinsic strength lost regarding government functionality and, in the last analysis, regarding governance during his four-year term. Since Trump left behind vacuums, it was only to be expected that Biden would take maximum advantage of them after his victory.

In his time in office, Biden has been characterized by his vocation for effectiveness and by fostering a government of national unity. At least for now, despite many difficulties, he has attempted to overcome the damnable saga that Trumpism left to the United States. It is clear, then, that he has used his time to reverse that weighty legacy and define a domestic and external geostrategy that would bring with it the outline of a new geopolitics that will surely be announced in the coming months.

It should be mentioned that this could be even more realistic if we consider the reelection variable Biden has introduced into his discourse, as clearly seen in his first press conference on March 25, 2021. However, he was rowing against the current in his first few months in office. The domestic crisis caused by the centrifugal forces of Trumpism and the health emergency have permeated U.S. relations abroad.

He arrived as an “internationalist president,” accustomed to working in global issues from his time as senator and vice-president. When he had only recently taken residence in the White House, he found himself caught up in the bilateral game fabricated by Trump and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. From the very start, his team focused on sorting out bilateral relations, which had become deeply demagogic. In this sense, the current Mexican government’s lack of interest in dealing with some historic aspects of this relationship is particularly worrying.

Disappointments

The anomalous relationship between López Obrador and Trump — but ultimately pleasant for both of them —, the former’s slipshod behavior toward Biden, and the U.S. political process went so far that the Mexican president did not recognize Biden’s victory and never properly congratulated him. Neither did he condemn the vandalism of the Trump hordes at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

He argued that his government did not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, a weak argument given that most U.S. allies, starting with Canada, explicitly condemned it, celebrated Biden’s victory, and expressed solidarity with U.S. democracy.

The new U.S. administration also received a terrible message via Mexico’s offer of asylum to Julian Assange in January 2021 in accordance with our country’s traditional asylum policy. In evaluating the provocation by López Obrador and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, we must not forget that, when he was vice-president, Biden himself had classified Assange as a technological terrorist who had gravely affected U.S. cyber and national security by publishing information in WikiLeaks. This made for another huge provocation, among others, such as the elimination of cooperation with the dea or the Mexican government’s political blackmail to achieve the release of General Cienfuegos in California, undermining the bridges of trust between the two countries. Apart from this, “the Biden administration does have a strategy about what it wants vis-à-vis Mexico, not only regarding traditional agenda issues, but also new ones, such as the pandemic, the economy, unemployment, energy, climate change, and human rights, among others.”2

Despite its counterpart’s clarity, the López Obrador government has shown no signs of having any idea about how it wants to deal with foreign affairs and with the United States, understood as two different policies because the relationship with our northern neighbor is “intermestic,” that is, given the geographical and political proximity, it is both domestic and international. In any case, a comprehensive foreign policy strategy is opaque either internationally or toward the United States. This was made clear with four recent actions: 1) not having prosecuted General Salvador Cienfuegos in January 2021; 2) delaying congratulations to Biden as the president-elect of the United States in November 2020; 3) López Obrador’s mes-

The three major issues for the two countries in the current century and part of the last are migration, trade, and security. These are the bases for the main spaces of bilateral relations and are windows of opportunity and conflict that have prevailed in both societies.

Bilateral relations with the United States are Mexico’s most important foreign relationship since 80 percent of our trade is with that country. This does not seem to be very significant for Mexico’s president.

sage at the seventy-fifth anniversary session of the un in August 2020; and 4) making a working visit to President Trump during the electoral campaigns in July 2020.3

It is worrisome that among the big issues on the bilateral agenda, Mexico is carelessly unconcerned or indifferent about relations with Biden’s United States. With this, we contributed to an openly asymmetrical relationship for cooperation given the lack of interest in strengthening ties, which have been weakened by this attitude, at the same time that others should be built that would make it possible to construct a common agenda to face the risks that current circumstances impose on the relations between our two countries.

The Big Issues

After the long night of Trumpism, classical liberal internationalism is reborn as the basis for U.S. foreign policy. This is a space in which multilateralism and international institutions like the United Nations will seek to reach economic, political, and social agreements by consensus to provide certainty and balance to global governance. It is also a broad front that the Western allies tended to strengthen over time; this trend historically defined relations between Mexico and the United States as allies and strategic neighbors.

The three major issues for the two countries in the current century and part of the last are migration, trade, and security. These are the bases for the main spaces of bilateral relations and are windows of opportunity and conflict that have prevailed in both societies. Although the three touch upon each other in some ways, in the strictest theoretical sense, each has its own thematic and functional sphere, despite the insistence of Trump’s and even Biden’s Washington today to link them together, with Mexico’s acquiescence.

In this sense, and particularly since the September 11, 2001 attacks, immigration policies have been tied to se-

curity. So, since the time of Barack Obama’s presidency, the United States has catalogued undocumented migration as a security issue. This is more a result of the tensions in Washington’s domestic politics than a factual, legitimate demonstration of a link between the two dimensions of bilateral relations. However, Mexico has done nothing to neutralize this link-up with its own migration narrative.

As already mentioned, during Trump’s presidency, Mexico subordinated its migratory policies to the U.S. executive’s intentions, all of which carried over into Biden’s administration. This has meant that, on the ground, Mexico has turned the recently created National Guard into a police force in charge of repressing Central American and Caribbean migrants entering our territory to travel to the North as irregular migrants. Mexico has become, de facto, the third safe country that it so vehemently refused to recognize during the 2018-2019 migratory crisis.

The Big Challenges and the Future Of “Intermestic” Geopolitics

Biden has clearly defined his global strategies, despite the failed exit from Afghanistan —due to how rushed it was— and he has kept them up progressively.4 Outstanding among them has mainly been the decision to rebuild close relations with traditional allies relegated by Trump. In this sense, the re-encounter with Europe has been satisfactory and is moving the Western alliance to several safe ports, above all regarding the tensions with Russia, whose president seems more willing than before to provoke open clashes with Brussels and Washington, even more given the brutal invasion of the Ukraine.

The migratory crisis sparked by the Byelorussian government along the Polish border, flagrantly supported by Putin, and the conflict created with the Ukraine seem to be two acts with which Moscow insists on changing the geopolitics of post-Cold-War Europe. This stubbornness, to be expected and imagined o the part of Vladimir Putin, has led, as we know, to a clash with the Western alliance. Nevertheless, Biden’s decision to reestablish the institutional relations with Europe and the rest of the world could become a containing wall sufficiently strong to pressure Russia into putting an end to its aggression against Kiev. This is in regard to Washington’s international alliances.

In order to have a perspective on the geopolitical dimension of U.S.-Mexico bilateral relations for the next three years, the recent cooperation agreement made December 14, 2021 must be mentioned. Dubbed the “Bicentennial Understanding,” this agreement replaces the Merida Initiative and aims to fight arms trafficking, with both governments formally beginning a new stage in bilateral security cooperation. It is set in the framework of the activities of the High-Level Security Group, which will theoretically divide into five sub-groups: one will deal with protection of the citizenry; another will aim to prevent cross-border crimes; a third will pursue criminal networks; a fourth will report to the armed forces; and the fifth will be made up of the binational cooperation committee. This initiative will re-start the two countries’ strategic alliance, which will impact bilateral geopolitics.5

The extent to which this will improve the chaotic cooperation on security, borders, and migration between the two nations remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we can say that the commitments taken on board do not include the United States’ modifying the Merida Initiative to Combat Illicit Narcotics and Reduce Organized Crime Authorization Act of 2008. For that reason, the Bicentennial Understanding is just a name change. The only modifications —actually updates— are an emphasis on fighting arms trafficking and people smuggling, less severe treatment of consumers of illicit substances, and the mandate to fight online criminal activities.6

Bilateral relations with the United States are Mexico’s most important foreign relationship since 80 percent of our trade is with that country. This does not seem to be very important for Mexico’s president if we look at his

profoundly contradictory statements on the issue, made to retain radical sectors of his electoral clientele and his inner circle, who think that maintaining a hard line on the United States can be politically beneficial. Above all, it is of major concern that this, together with the fact that Mexico’s president has shown himself to be unpredictable, means that Washington has little confidence in its Mexican counterparts, not to mention the lack of confidence inspired by a foreign minister and a president who decided to move “behind the scenes” to obtain supposed economic benefits in exchange for a reckless relinquishment of sovereignty on migration such as that analyzed in this article.

Notes

1 Joseph Nye, The Powers to Lead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

2 Susana Chacón, “Sombras en el entendimiento inicial,” in Olga Pellicer and Hazel Blackmore, comps., Relaciones México-Estados Unidos en 2021: ¿un punto de transición? (Mexico City: itam, 2021), pp. 185-186.

3 Jorge A. Schiavon, “La debilidad institucional ante la relación con Estados Unidos”, in Pellicer and Blackmore, op cit., p. 207.

4 Steve Coll and Adam Entous, “The Secret History of the U.S. Diplomatic Failure in Afghanistan,” The New Yorker, December 10, 2021.

5 Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, “México y Estados Unidos dan inicio al Entendimiento Bicentenario,” Joint Communiqué on Security and Foreign Relations, December 14, 2021, https://www.gob.mx/sre/ prensa/entendimiento-bicentenario?idiom=es-mx. [Editor’s Note.]

6 Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, “hoja informativa. Entendimiento Bicentenario sobre Seguridad, Salud Pública y Comunidades Seguras entre México y los Estados Unidos,” Government of Mexico, October 8, 2021, https://www.gob.mx/sre/documentos/hoja-infor mativa-entendimiento-bicentenario; and The White House, “Fact Sheet: U. S.-Mexico High-Level Security Dialogue,” October 28, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases /2021/10/08/fact-sheet-u-s-mexico-high-level-security-dialogue/.

Curzio*

The Bicentennial Of Mexico-U.S. Relations

For some reason, anniversaries make human beings think differently. The bicentennial of relations between Mexico and the United States offers an opportunity not only to celebrate —something that Ambassador Ken Salazar has announced for December 2022—, but also to reassess this historical process on three levels. The first is how we see the United States and what we have learned from it in these two centuries. The second is how they see us and what we have learned from the Mexican-U.S. narrative about Mexico’s reality. The third is how bilateral relations have changed.

Let me start with the last one. To understand this long process, I want to refer to the extraordinary book com-

* Leonardo is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at leonardocurzio@gmail.com.

piled by Terrazas, Riguzzi, De los Ríos, and Gurza about the history of bilateral relations.1 It is an essential encyclopedic work that offers an exhaustive, detailed outlook on this historical process.

The two empires of the Atlantic world, the Spanish and the English, were born, developed, and concluded in absolutely different ways, as John Elliot has explained in one of the most important books of history to be published in recent years.2 In their more than three centuries of existence, New Spain and New England did not develop synchronically. New Spain had existed for a long time when the English founded their first settlements and projected a false image abroad. In New England, it was believed that Cortez’s conquest had been an enormous economic success and it was presumed that Mexico was a kind of horn of plenty. That is one of the most powerful myths propagated about Mexico since then, and it was what

Leonardo

U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons

From the 1980s until now, we have experienced a great deal of bilateral tension due to the criminals’ violence and power: today, the matter continues to be open. But we have also moved from the paradigm of distant neighbors to what Shannon O’Neil called “indivisible nations”.

led many U.S. Americans to conceive of the conquest of Mexico as a reference point. The fascination that the conquest of Mexico held for U.S. Americans is noteworthy, to the point that, many centuries later, when their armies entered Mexico in the nineteenth century, they carried under their arms William H. Prescott’s book about the history of the Conquest.

In the twilight of British colonial domination in the Americas, a territorial redefinition of its sphere of influence intensified, and from the second half of the eighteenth century on, the advance of the colonists and the projects of the U.S. “proto-nation” began to grow with a voracious religious and political expansionism that would end by cutting off New Spain’s viceregal legacy in the newly founded Mexican republic.

At least from the time of the Onis/Adams Treaty in 1819, the issue of U.S. expansion is an irritant in relations between the two republics. While relations were erratic during the colonial period, the new republics did not emerge on the basis of equality. The relationship was never symmetrical, much less based on trust or mutual respect, even though they called us a “sister republic.” The old prejudices that the English had fostered about the Spanish were transferred to the new continent.3 In addition, the U.S. colonists’ racism against Afro-descendants and the indigenous populations increased in the case of Mexico, a nation that merged the two traditions in its lineage.

We were the children of Spanish obscurantism, of the Inquisition. The Pope and all the elements that made up the accursed Spanish legend, plus the indigenous past and Mexico’s inability to create its own solid institutions came together. With profound disdain for the country’s first steps, the first U.S. ambassador, Joel R. Poinsett, said that the lack of means for acquiring knowledge and the lack of stimuli for that effort coincided to make Mexicans a people more ignorant and libertine than their ancestors had been.4

We were, from his arrogant perspective, a combination of the bad and the worst. The nineteenth century saw the

maturation of the United States as a great power, once it got over its Civil War and consolidated its continental territory to Mexico’s detriment, projecting itself as a global power. The territorial problems, however, did not end with the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, which ended the U.S. occupation. It is interesting to follow the variations and regularities during the arc of these 200 years. The issue of territorial boundaries and management of the common border became a headache for the different administrations throughout the nineteenth century.

In the twentieth century, territorial expansionism became outdated and relations took on a new feel. The management of the common border was the most important issue, but for Mexico, the crucial point was to ensure an equilibrium such that both countries remained on their own tracks. One strategic line of thinking is how to maintain the proximity and simultaneous distance that would allow the country to develop its own project without breaking with the United States. We have never totally agreed with them, although we fought shoulder to shoulder in World War II, but we did not want to accompany them in their incursions into Korea and we loudly decried their policy in Latin America. This way, the model of “distant” but pragmatic neighbors consolidated. Two countries that decided what they had to resolve without fanfare or enthusiasm, taking care that the differences always remained on a level that were politically manageable.

As Mexico saw the end of its internally-centered development model, a period of domestic decomposition began, which saw, among other things, an increase in the power of the criminal organizations that exported drugs to the United States, an insatiable growing market. At the same time that the U.S. government demonizes drug consumption, it also fosters it with all manner of stimuli, leading to a kind of narcotization of the agenda and situating Mexico as a state that practically protects criminals.

From the 1980s until now, we have experienced a great deal of bilateral tension due to the criminals’ violence and power: today, the matter continues to be open. But we have also moved from the paradigm of distant neighbors to what Shannon O’Neil called “indivisible nations,”5 that is, the commonality of interests that the future poses. Despite the parenthesis represented by Trump, which made a powerful narrative of anti-Mexicanism and the stalking and demolition of nafta, Mexico and the United States are strategic partners that share an economic, demographic,

and security space with ever-increasing interactions. At bottom, they also share the same strategic vision of the region in the face of the powerful Asian economies.

We are, then, neighbors condemned to understand one another. Beyond pointing out the small differences, this bicentennial should lead us to clarify how many things we share today and how many more we will share in the near future. When you look at the Hispanic caucus, the presence of Latinos is growing in the great power’s political decisions. And, as Tonatiuh Guillén has pointed out, the Mexican nation has re-defined itself to recognize that today, many millions of its co-nationals live in the United States and are U.S. citizens, but at the same time Mexicans.6 In the coming years, this will increase drastically, and it is probable that, despite medium-term political events, the convergence will re-define the kind of bilateral relationship we have had until now.

The question that this kind of retrospective view puts before the two countries continues to be valid. Each will use it for its own ends. It is interesting to return to the reflections of Paul Johnson, the author of one of the most beautiful histories of the United States,7 about what would have been the effect on the forging of the U.S. American character and way of seeing the world if on its southern border there had been a structured country with the ability to limit its neighbor’s arrogant expansionism and poisonous idea of extending slavery as a mechanism for capital accumulation. Mexico was never capable of slowing those aspirations and the colossus of the North was able to advance territorially, but it was its own domestic contradictions and bloody Civil War that slowed the expansion of slavery.

The other point is what we have achieved in two centuries. After 200 years, the United States went from being a series of colonies discussing whether to create a unified government, to being the world’s foremost power and seeing its old metropolis as an important, but clearly subordinate, ally. Mexico has also changed a great deal, but

A new stage is opening up with this bicentennial, as well as a future in which Mexico and the United States share strategic priorities and increasing common interests as perhaps at no other time in history.

after 200 years, its official discourse continues to perceive the weight of the colonial period and to have an inferiority complex vis-à-vis Spain that it has not been able to overcome. In 200 years, our neighbors created an arrogant, glitzy powerhouse, and here, we continue to tell the story of a nation that was sacked and the victim of the worst kind of plunder that humanity has ever seen.

The U.S. view of Mexico has been ambivalent. Valuable collections of stories by writers and travelers offer a contrasting palette. Some describe an untrustworthy, disorderly, dirty country; others have found —or known how to discover— the cultural grandeur that this country hides and the glorious past that allows it to show not only pride of belonging, but also show its archaeological areas and colonial cities as its best feature. In this country, in 200 years, many things have been done, but none on the scale that impresses its neighbors. Perhaps there has been a will to understand its own circumstances, but it is the splendor and decline of the Maya and all the pre-Hispanic civilizations, as well as the viceregal period, that continues to project Mexico’s grandeur. Mesoamerica outshines the U.S. Southwest and the plains of the North, and New Spain eclipse all the civil and religious buildings of New England.

A new stage is opening up with this bicentennial, as well as a future in which Mexico and the United States share strategic priorities and increasing common interests as perhaps at no other time in history. The future of this relationship remains to be written.

Notes

1 Marcela Terrazas, Paolo Riguzzi, Gerardo Gurza, and Patricia de los Ríos, Las relaciones México-Estados Unidos, 1756-2010, vols. I-II (Mexico City: unam, 2012).

2 John Elliott, Imperios del mundo atlántico: España y Gran Bretaña en América (1492-1830) (Madrid: Taurus, 2006).

3 Richard Morse, El espejo de Próspero. Un estudio de la dialéctica del nuevo mundo (Mexico City: Siglo xxi, 1982).

4 Quoted by Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello, “Joel R. Poinsett. La intromisión en los asuntos mexicanos,” in Roberta Lajous, Paolo Riguzzi, Celia Toro, and Erika Pani, Embajadores de México en Estados Unidos: diplomacia de crisis y oportunidades (Mexico City: El Colegio de México y Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021).

5 Shannon O´Neil, Dos naciones indivisibles. México, Estados Unidos y el camino por venir (Mexico City: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, 2014).

6 Tonatiuh Guillén, México, nación transterritorial: el desafío del siglo xxi (Mexico City: pued, unam, 2021).

7 Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (Glasgow: Harper Collins U. K. Publishers, Ltd., 1997).

Roberto Zepeda*

U.S.-Mexico Relations Interdependence And Paradiplomacy

The economic integration of Mexico and the United States has facilitated other forms of cooperation among subnational actors. Subnational governmental actors’ international activities, also known as paradiplomacy, constitute forms of governance in North America around various issues that range from free trade to climate change and international cooperation in science, technology, and education.

The Mexico-U.S. Relationship

Relations between the two countries have been close since the end of the twentieth century when they signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta). The context of the link between the two has changed drastically in two decades of growing economic integration, but certain shifts in demographics and important cultural influences have united them even more.

They have sought cooperation to face and resolve issues of common interest. With a 2,000-mile border and fifty-five land ports of entry, bilateral relations have a direct impact on millions of U.S. Americans regarding issues as varied as trade and economic reform, educational exchange, public security, drug controls, migration, people smuggling, entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, energy cooperation, and public health. The scope of these interactions covers broad trade, cultural, and educational ties;

daily transactions between the two countries come to US$1.7 billion; and, in normal times, hundreds of thousands of people cross the border legally every day. In addition, 1.6 million U.S. Americans live in our country, which is also their main destination for travel abroad.1

Generally speaking, the relationship between Mexico and the United States is cordial, although certain issues do cause friction, such as migration, security, and, recently, the imposition of tariffs and other trade barriers. After concluding the negotiations that gave rise to the usmca in July 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Donald Trump launch the agreement.2

Complex Interdependence

* Roberto is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at rzepeda@unam.mx

It is practically impossible to carry out tasks such as promoting economic growth and prosperity, fighting climate change, containing weapons of mass destruction, combatting pandemic diseases, among other global problems in an isolated manner. Countries are forced to work together and trust in collective efforts and energies. This

network of relations has created what Keohane and Nye define as “complex interdependence,” wherein countries are more likely to cooperate and integrate when close trade relations and other economic links exist.3 In short, relations are more harmonious between countries that enjoy free trade between them.

This can be applied to Mexico-U.S. relations, since this kind of interdependence is very clear. Factors such as trade agreements, increased U.S. investment in Mexico, the growing number of Mexicans in the United States, among others, have contributed to the consolidation of this type of link. In addition, economic, political, social, and cultural interactions in the border region illustrate the existence of multiple channels of communication among state and non-state actors.

In this dynamic, Mexico has become the United States’ second most important trade partner and is among the first three destinations for exports from 29 of its states. At least five million jobs there depend on their relationship with our country, something that is very evident in California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois.4 Some industries have created integrated supply chains, so that the success of manufacturing in the United States depends and is closely connected to that of Mexico and Canada, and this creates a manufacturing platform that combines the three partners’ competitive advantages.

The usmca area includes a population of 480 million people; the region produces 30 percent of the world’s goods, and, in fact, is the world’s largest free trade area. Huge numbers of jobs depend on this economic, institutional structure: about fourteen million in the United States, ten million in Mexico, and a little over three million in Canada.

Bilateral trade is even more intense in the border area and is an essential part of the overall relationship. As mentioned above, Mexico has been the foremost destination for exports from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, which represent a little over half the country’s total exports. In addition, these states facilitate the storage and transport of Mexican goods into the United States, among other logistical services.5

California is key, since it has the largest economy of all the states in the country and represents the world’s sixth largest economy. It exports mainly computers and electronic products; its imports depend on China and it imports mainly automobiles. In addition, California and Baja California enjoy wide-ranging collaboration, as do

Local cooperation includes coordination between state and local authorities on cross-border infrastructure, transportation and security planning, and collaboration with institutions that deal with migration, natural resources, the environment, and health.

San Diego and Tijuana, through a series of cross-border cooperation agreements. In addition, exports from California to Mexico have increased 311 percent since 1994 when nafta opened up; 6.9 million Mexicans visit California every year, and 692,000 California jobs depend on trade with Mexico.

Mexico is also the first trade partner of Texas, the world’s thirteenth largest economy and also the most outstanding state in Mexico-U.S. relations. This is due, among other things, to the fact that it exported goods worth US$92 billion to Mexico, more than it exported combined to the ten countries with which it has trade agreements. In addition, its imports from Mexico came to twice those from China; its exports created more than a million jobs. The main exports are oil, computers, and other electronic equipment, while it imports above all crude oil. Texas is the state that sells the most goods abroad, and those exports come to approximately 16 percent of the state’s gdp, the highest percentage in the nation.

Mexico is also Arizona’s first trade partner. The state mainly sends us minerals, among them copper concentrates, as well as electronic circuits, dashboards, and control panels; while Mexico sends it mainly electronic components, agricultural products, machinery and equipment, and minerals. Bilateral trade between the two comes to US$15.5 billion and 90,000 of its jobs are closely linked to trade with Mexico.

Complex interdependence does not simply refer to the mutual benefits of trade, but also to the importance of other transnational actors who challenge the dominance of sovereign states. Global politics is no longer a scenario exclusively for national states, as it was under the Westphalian system. Keohane and Nye underline the importance of other actors, such as interest groups, multinational corporations, and non-governmental organizations. Subnational entities have also become important actors in global politics.6

Paradiplomacy

Paradiplomacy is the participation of subnational states in international activities to promote their own interests. The most important aspect they promote is their economic interest, including exports and imports, tourism, and the specialization of productive activities to attract foreign investment. In this context, subnational governments seek to create an international presence to attract foreign investment and international companies to their region and explore new markets.7

Cross-border regional paradiplomacy refers to institutional, cross-border, formal, and informal contacts between neighboring subnational entities. These interactions happen through a series of forums, conferences, and cooperation plans. The border strip between Mexico and the United States has a combined population of about fifteen million people. Local cooperation includes coordination between state and local authorities on cross-border infrastructure, transportation and security planning, and collaboration with institutions that deal with migration, natural resources, the environment, and health.

The multi-institutional Binational Bridges and Border Crossings Group meets three times a year to foster joint initiatives to improve the efficiency of crossings and coordinate their planning. All ten border states participate actively.8

The Border Governors Conference is a permanent forum for communication among the ten states involved. Other examples of cooperation are the Arizona-Mexico Commission, the Border Legislative Conference, the New Mexico-Chihuahua and New Mexico-Sonora border commissions, and the Commission of the Californias. The most outstanding of these is the Arizona-Mexico Commission: for six decades, its efforts have helped construct a crossborder community that brings together representatives of both industry and the professions.

Some of the benefits of governance promoted by subnational actors are greater coordination among customs authorities in Sonora and Arizona, agreements to strengthen tourism in the region through the Lukeville-Puerto Peñasco and Puerto Peñasco-Sonoyta safe corridor, and reducing wait times for truckers crossing the border. All this is the result of the coordination in the framework of the Arizona-Mexico Commission.

The trade, political, and cultural interaction of public, private, and social actors of both countries has fostered

the design of a regional governance to deal with common security, migration, health, and environmental challenges. In the first half of 2021, Mexican workers were vaccinated against covid-19 in San Diego as a result of coordination between California and Baja California authorities. The United States has shared 16.9 million doses of vaccine free of charge since May 2021, all donated through bilateral agreements: 3.5 million shots of Moderna vaccine; 1.3 million of Johnson & Johnson; and 12 million of AstraZeneca.

Final Comments

The economic integration of Mexico and the United States has facilitated cooperation between subnational and nonstate actors in different ways. A series of economic and trade factors — but also productive factors, through integrated supply chains — became a huge encouragement for these actors to establish a closer relationship in a variety of areas. This is particularly true of subnational bodies with a high level of economic relations.

Paradiplomacy is even more intense in border regions, such as the case of Mexico and the United States. More than barriers, borders become bridges of communication for seeking solutions to security, migration, and environmental problems, but also for creating economic prosperity and development.

Notes

1 U. S. Department of State, “U. S. Relations with Mexico,” United States Government, https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-mexico/, accessed in January, 2021.

2 Clare R. Seelke, “Mexico: Background and U.S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D. C., January 7, 2021.

3 On the other hand, interdependence is not always associated to a tendency toward peace, cooperation, and integration. It can be asymmetrical, in which case it can lead to domination and conflict. See Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman & Company, 1989); and Andrew Heywood, Global Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

4 Chris Wilson, “Growing Together: Economic Ties between the United States and Mexico. Final Report,” Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, March 20, 2017.

5 Ibid.

6 Keohane and Nye, op. cit.

7 André Lecours, “Political Issues of Paradiplomacy: Lessons from the Developed World,” report, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, December 17, 2008.

8 U.S. Department of State, op. cit.

A Brief Review Of Mexico-U.S. Relations

In my 2014 book on international justice, I propose a heuristic model for understanding when countries cooperate with each other and when, on the contrary, they enter into conflict. They cooperate when they approach the conditions established in the model, and their relations become tense when they move away from those conditions, which are necessary for coming to agreements acceptable to all parties, and therefore fair in the framework of a minimum, shared conception of justice. Differences of power among nations are assumed to exist internationally as well as the fact that joint decisions will not always be completely equally beneficial. This is be-

* Paz Consuelo is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and was the center’s director from 1997 to 2002; you can contact her at <paz1@gmail.com>

cause the most powerful state can easily impose its will on the weaker state. However, at times, governments will seek to come to an agreement acceptable to both parties after a rational negotiation in which, even if the stronger country gets more of what it wants, the weaker country will accept it because it will also benefit proportionately.

In my opinion, relations between Mexico and the United States can be understood in the framework of this heuristic model: agreements can sometimes benefit both nations as the result of well-intentioned cooperation, although at other times they stray from the model and then tension, conflict, and even the abuse of power dominates.

Let us imagine the moment of negotiations within the framework of the model when the two countries suffer from a kind of mental amnesia and forget their national identity. This would happen both to the stronger and to the weaker country.

Paz Consuelo Márquez-Padilla*

Let us suppose that each sits on one side of the negotiating table and then changes to the other. The negotiators will have information about what might belong to the more powerful country or to the weaker one without really knowing the truth. With the most relevant information about the culture and interests of each nationstate, they will have to make a decision for both parties. Given the fact that in this hypothetical exercise, they do not know which country they are representing, they will try to come to an intermediate consensus, whereby, if they were authorities of the most powerful nation, they would win more privileges, but also proportionately achieve many advantages if they were representing the weaker country. One way or another, this ideal method forces both parties to make an effort of empathy to everyone’s benefit. The definitive decision may not be the best for either of the two countries, but both accept it and, therefore, it falls within the “framework of minimum justice.” Clearly, all the negotiators will offer up their arguments, acting as rational beings and presenting reasonable justifications as well.

So, if we look back at the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) negotiations of the early 1990s, we can see that both Mexico and the United States had to make an effort of empathy such as the one described above to be able to understand the culture, interests, political systems, and history of their counterparts. nafta was very criticized in Mexico by the left, which thought that all the benefits would accrue to the United States, but was also paradoxically faulted by President Trump as being what he called the worst free trade agreement in his country’s history, saying that only Mexico had gained from it. This means that both sides saw their opponents as the sole winner. More profound, objective analyses have shown that each of the two countries had both winners and losers. What is more, the concrete aim of increasing trade between the two nations was undeniably achieved in spades. In 1997, trade was at US$1.7 billion and by 2020 it had risen to US$112.7 billion. In 2021, trade soared to US$661.164 billion according to the Congressional Research Service. So, both countries benefitted from international cooperation in this sphere.

We cannot forget that Mexico’s domestic results show that it was clearly possible to try to help the losers in the trade deal, creating the social networks necessary for compensating or minimizing their losses and supporting them

If we look back at nafta negotiations of the early 1990s, we can see that both Mexico and the United States had to make an effort of empathy to be able to understand the culture, interests, political systems, and history of their counterparts.

in transitioning to fields with greater opportunities through technical training. Undoubtedly, the treaty should have been more inclusive, considering the country as a whole. The costs and benefits of social cooperation were not distributed equitably in Mexican society; the greatest advantages went to the northern states, closest to the U.S. market, so that above all it was the modern exporting agricultural industries in that region that benefitted. The biggest costs were accrued by the southern states, home to traditional agriculture. Even so, we can say that, overall in the bilateral relationship, macro-economically, nafta was beneficial to both countries.

Those in the central part of the United States, the socalled rust states, lost ground in certain industries that moved a large part of their operations to Mexico, where they took advantage of lower wages and therefore made bigger profits. Thus, we can conclude that, while the negotiation between Mexico and the United States ran its course thanks to the fact that both nations recognized common interests and that therefore, generally speaking, the treaty was beneficial for both of them, it is also true that the public policies needed to diminish the negative effects of nafta domestically were not implemented in either country. However, on the scale of international relations, broad cooperation was achieved between both governments, which inaugurated this kind of treaty in the new era of globalization.

In my 2004 book Justicia internacional. Ideas y reflexiones (International Justice. Ideas and Reflections), I argued that the communicating vessels between the two countries go way beyond what their respective governments may or may not want. Geopolitical forces exist that surpass the specific desires of any administration.

In 2020, nafta had to be modernized. Despite the coincidence of two populist presidents who opposed the treaty, the pressure from the different interest groups associated with it were enough to get the new agreement

formulated. On the one hand, President Donald Trump had been speaking out against nafta since his electoral campaign and threatening to withdraw his country from it. On the other hand, President López Obrador had shown on several occasions little interest in modernizing it. The framework of populist policies explains both presidents, one from the right and the other from the left, since populism is not an ideology, but rather a movement with specific strategies that both leaders adhered to faithfully.

Both politicians are protectionist, nationalist, and define themselves as representatives of the will of the people. Both argued that they were fighting against the elites, against the establishment. They identified their enemies clearly: in Trump’s case, China and Mexico, and in López Obrador’s case, the conservatives, a category which covers everyone who does not completely agree with him. Their definition of the elite also includes the scientific community, which they disdain and lash out at. Both intended to weaken freedom of expression by using the power of the state to forcefully attack the media that criticized them, even individual journalists. They fight against existing institutions because they are counterweights to the concentration of power: among them, the National Electoral Institute (ine) in Mexico and local electoral officials in the United States. Trump went to the extreme when he talked about “the big lie,” arguing that President Biden had stolen the 2020 election. On the other hand, the populists maintain an image of legality although, in essence, they manage to weaken the existing constitutional democratic system, which they do not respect.

The important thing is to underline that despite the fact that in the populist framework, both presidents despised nafta, the geopolitical forces existing in our two countries functioned and the United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement (usmca) was finally signed. One piece of evidence that President López Obrador was against the treaty is that he proposed an energy reform that did not respect the agreement’s terms. This could undoubtedly have been very costly for Mexico since, as the country

The usmca is an agreement that is less fair than nafta. In fact, differentiated treatment was established for the parties since the rules of origin for many products are different for each country.

didn’t want to be isolated from the international community, it would have been forced to pay the economic consequences of the many lawsuits that U.S. companies would have brought based on the clear violations of the usmca, but the so-called Electric Reform was rejected in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies on April 17 this year.

Now, if we go back to my heuristic model, we can see that it has been a long time since Mexico had faced in as a profoundly conflictive a situation vis-à-vis the United States as it is today. The two countries are retreating from the exercise of empathy and moving toward open conflict. In the usmca negotiation, they actually retreated from the postulates of my heuristic model: neither of the two governments truly entered into negotiations transparently, trying to identify common interests and arrive at intermediate decisions acceptable for both.

During the entire negotiation, President Trump threatened to cancel nafta, and once a new agreement was reached, in clear violation of the treaty’s terms, he warned that he would impose trade tariffs on several Mexican products if the government did not stop migration over the common border. From that time on, López Obrador, for his part, implemented his plan to carry out an energy counter-reform, which clearly ignores the commitments stipulated in the usmca

Both leaders showed their disdain in different ways for the implicit and explicit commitments agreed to. The result was that the usmca is an agreement that is less fair than nafta. In fact, although it is only a single document, the reality is that to a certain, concealed extent, two independent treaties were actually set up: one between the United States and Mexico, and the other between the United States and Canada. For example, the controversy resolution panels were weakened, since the procedures established will expire three years after the new treaty came into effect, and from that moment on, local tribunals will be used. Finally, differentiated treatment was established for the parties since the rules of origin for many products are different for each country.

These populist governments moved away from collaborating with each other and what really happened was imposition. This happened to a great extent because the different economic groups who benefitted from nafta pressured for the “new version” to be signed; powerful geopolitical forces exist that are reflected in the establishment of productive chains with their own driving force

What is clear is that 200 years after they began, bilateral relations have moved away from good practices of cooperation and are closer than ever to tension and conflict.

and that function beyond ephemeral decisions. What is clear is that 200 years after they began, bilateral relations have moved away from good practices of cooperation and are closer than ever to tension and conflict.

Unfortunately, the spiral of conflicts the bilateral relationship has entered into is manifested in different points on the agenda. I would like to underline that our participation in the un Security Council will certainly be very costly at this terribly critical moment in the clash between Russia and the United States. The argument against Mexico taking a seat on the council has traditionally been that our country wins nothing by doing so and only runs the risk of having to support the United States in difficult decisions involved in international relations, with potentially grave consequences if it does not do so. This is exactly what is happening now: while the entire European community and all its other allies have supported the United States in imposing sanctions against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, President López Obrador stated that Mexico will not go down that road. This will certainly have an enormous cost, not only for our head of state, but also for Mexico and its economy. The United States takes into very careful consideration the international support it receives during moments of crisis. It is difficult to understand why today Mexico is on the side of an authoritarian invading country and not that of a sovereign democracy.

At the same time, several U.S. congresspersons are urging President Biden to investigate whether Mexico is violating the usmca or fulfilling its commitments. In the

opinion of more than forty representatives, President López Obrador is in fact trying to nationalize the energy industry and closing the door to foreign competition. The areas of cooperation between the two countries are constantly on the rise. Just as one example, I would like to mention that the most important project President Biden is betting on is his decided support for developing clean technologies. He is strongly encouraging the auto industry to put a priority on producing electric vehicles, a field where Mexico would clearly have a window of opportunity, which would undoubtedly help to create productive chains that would result in technological advances for both nations. Also, many well-paying jobs in both countries due to this industry would immediately be created, something that cannot be ignored since the covid-19 pandemic caused one of the strongest slow-downs in the world’s economies in history. In addition to supporting clean energy, we would be putting ourselves on the side of protecting the environment and in favor of the well-being of future generations, if not their very survival. Unfortunately, the United States and Mexico have not decided to establish a negotiation on this issue, on which it can easily be intuited that there are common interests, something that would facilitate cooperation with undoubted benefits to both nations. Today, what we are seeing is that there is very little political will on the part of either government to cooperate.

Further Reading

Congressional Research Service (2021), <https://crsreports. congress.gov/> Márquez-Padilla, Paz Consuelo, Justicia internacional. Ideas y reflexiones (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2014).

www.cisan.unam.mx

unamcisan@facebook.com @cisanunam cisanunam.blogspot.mx/

cisanunamweb cisan_unam http://ru.micisan.unam.mx/

Is Mexico Better Off with a Donkey or an Elephant in the White House?

The study of U.S. foreign policy includes something called the “partisan gap.” Basically, this means that each of the political parties is associated with specific strategies and issues on the international stage; in addition, the party that occupies the White House is the one that moves the pieces around on the international chessboard. In line with this logic, the Republican Party’s foreign policy strategy is unilateralist, aggressive, and coercive. The Democratic Party, for its part, implements a multilateral, less militarist, more cooperative policy. On these issues, the Democrats are more interested in fighting climate change, and the Republicans, more concerned with putting an end to international terrorism. Foreign governments and international public opinion are not immune to this partisan gap.

In Mexico particularly, there are two misunderstandings about U.S. foreign policy. The first is the idea that it is exclusively influenced by the president in office; the second refers to the belief that the president’s party affiliation is what shapes the environment, the political attitudes, the agenda, and in general the “intermestic” relationship between Mexico and the United States during each fouryear U.S. presidential term.

Few international events cause such a flurry in Mexico as the presidential elections of our neighbor to the

* Estefanía is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact her at estefania.1616@outlook.com

north. And few societies suffer as much angst and great expectations as Mexico’s over the results of U.S. balloting. If the new resident of the White House is from the blue party, Mexican society breaths easy, and the press predicts a bonanza in bilateral relations; if, on the contrary, the red party is in office, chats on the street are flooded with pessimism and even the Mexican stock market succumbs to uncertainty.

In this context, the crucial question arises about what it is that motivates these attitudes and pre-conceptions. Is it merely the presidents’ discursive styles? Is it the profiles of the ambassadors and diplomatic delegations that Republicans and Democrats send south? Would it have to do with conflicting views expressed in party platforms about the strategic alliance with its biggest partner and closest neighbor?

When you assume that bilateral relations between Mexico and the United States take on the color of the party of the occupant of the White House, you are understanding the many facets of the bilateral relationship as mere mechanical. The truth is that it depends more on interactions subject to local, national, and global situations that can be as tranquil as a peaceful lake or as furious as the ocean during a hurricane. It can even be the case that many aspects of bilateral relations flow positively, but a single issue can tempestuously revolutionize intermestic politics of both nations.

Estefanía Cruz Lera*

State Department.

Photo by Freddie Everett/Wikimedia Commons

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken holds a joint press conference with Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, in Mexico City, Mexico, on October 8, 2021.

Henry Lane Wilson is one of the best-known U.S. ambassadors and undoubtedly one of the least appreciated. The path the Mexican Revolution took is owed to his interference and conspiracies, both well documented in history books and still reverberating in the collective memory of our open veins. This shows us how we remember public figures and episodes in history. So, why do we insist on coloring bilateral relations red or blue and not depicting them in all their complexity?

Two important questions about Mexicans’ political imaginary lead us to understand bilateral relations in terms of red and blue. The first involves the nature of our own party system. The second emerges from our exacerbated presidentialism.

Mexico’s political parties are diametrically different kinds of entities from their U.S. American counterparts. Mexico’s parties are much more centralized, rigid, and hierarchical. They have national platforms and action plans developed from the top and a process of political organization that takes place without such very close ties with the diverse, changing interests of their members.

In addition to the different organizational practices and forms of operation, the very ecosystem of the parties is different. The U.S. political system is multi-partisan, but it is structured to maintain only two dominant parties. The electoral system based on principles like “first pass the post” and “winner takes all” perpetuates the domination of only two parties and makes it difficult for new organizations to enter the public sphere. U.S. electoral history has always been dominated by two opposing parties, but they have not always been the Republican and Democratic branch parties that we know today. The modern party system was forged between the 1930s and 1968.

Mexico also has a multi-party system and diverse conditions foster the rise and fall of new party organizations. The relative ease of forming a political party, the continuing existence in the public sphere of parties with few followers,

Few international events cause such a flurry in Mexico as the presidential elections of our neighbor to the north. And few societies suffer as much angst and great expectations as Mexico’s over the results of U.S. balloting.

the candidacies for proportional representation in which the parties obtain seats in legislatures without having to get a majority of votes in electoral districts all have the effect that politicians are often more limited by their parties than they are accountable to their voters. So, in the Mexican case, political parties have more influence on agendas and the design of politics, above all if compared with the dual mandate that U.S. politicians have: on the one hand, the mandate from their parties, but also from their voters, to both of whom they owe accountability.

Another of the conditions to consider in explaining mistaken ideas about the effect of U.S. parties on bilateral Mexican-U.S. relations involves the central role of the executive in government. Mexico’s caudillo tradition has solidified the idea that the president is the political leader, responsible for the big national decisions.

On the other hand, the U.S. founding fathers sketched out a unified government made up of three separate but equally important branches. Foreign policy came under the jurisdiction of the executive and the legislative branches. Then, greater U.S. involvement internationally and more dynamic activity on the world stage would lead to more transcendental decisions being made by the executive branch given their urgency or the need for discretion. However, the executive is not made up exclusively by the inhabitant of the second floor of the White House.

Numerous agencies contribute to decision-making about U.S. international activities. Some of the most iconic are the National Security Council (nsc) and the Central Intelligence Agency (cia) in the case of the executive branch, and the Congressional Research Service (crs) on the part of the legislature. The crs writes up reports on issues and regions on the request of members of Congress. The cia, as is public knowledge, is the organization in charge of providing intelligence services to the government, for example, on issues such as counter-terrorism, nuclear arms, cyberattacks, and any other kind of aggression that could be considered of interest to U.S. security. The National Security Council is very different from the other two organizations: it is a collegial body that can meet at a moment’s notice and includes all the heads of agencies and departments involved in issues, nations, or international bodies that could exert pressure on national security.

Once we understand in general terms that a huge edifice of individuals and organizations influences and has a capacity to act on U.S. foreign policy, it is inadmissible

to think that the president’s political party is the fundamental element needed for understanding the relationship with its strategic ally south of the border. If the collective misunderstanding cannot be explained by governmental functioning, we can look at its roots in history.

In the two centuries of Mexico-U.S. relations, we encounter both painful and glorious episodes. We can remember different demonstrations of solidarity from each side of the border to the other, but also systematic violations of the other’s integrity, which have left both countries with open wounds. Entire volumes have been written to document the episodes and key players in the bilateral relationship, and therefore it is not practical to try to convey them here. So, if we consider that the modern U.S. party system dates from the 1930s, and that Mexicans tend to think that the resident of the White House’s being a Democrat or a Republican is a fundamental explanation of bilateral relations, I will focus my attention on recent iconic moments in that history, mentioning to which party belonged the chief executive in that specific time. All this is to be able to present a balance sheet about which of the two U.S. parties has been more successful in building a positive relationship with Mexico.

The Mexican Farm Labor Agreement created the Bracero Program and was signed in 1942 under the administration of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the international context of World War II, Mexico and the United States created regional productive chains that benefitted both countries greatly. However, the program ended in 1964 under the presidency of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson due to the severe criticisms of its violations of workers’ rights. That is, both the creation and the termination of this controversial program happened under blue governments.

The second key episode in U.S. contemporary history is the negotiation and signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), which came into effect in 1994. Actually, the interest in negotiating a regional free trade agreement dated from the Republican presidency of Ronald Reagan and a large part of the negotiations took place during the administration of Republican George Bush, even though it came into effect under the goverment of Democrat William Clinton. Thus, on balance, the presidencies behind the trade agreement, also controversial in terms of perceptions and effects, were red.

In late 1994, Mexico was fraught with one of the deepest economic crises in its history, known at home as “the

In the two centuries of Mexico-U.S. relations, we encounter both painful and glorious episodes. We can remember different demonstrations of solidarity but also systematic violations of the other’s integrity.

Mistake of December,” and north of the border as “the Tequila Effect,” in which the peso devaluated abruptly. Support for Mexico’s economy would come from the United States. Democrat Bill Clinton asked the U.S. Congress for a bail-out package, which Congress denied. However, the Department of the Treasury was able to send US$20 billion from its Exchange Stabilization Fund. Thanks to this and US$30 billion more in international credits brokered by the U.S., the Mexican economy stabilized.

One of the recent still unresolved problems between Mexico and the United States is drug trafficking. In 2008, the U.S. Congress approved a security assistance and cooperation program known as the Merida Initiative. It included funds, equipment, arms, and training projected for three years. This critical program was negotiated and implemented under Republican President George W. Bush.

The most recent episode in bilateral relations was the renegotiation of nafta, which would give rise to a new trade deal known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (usmca). These tense negotiations and the huge uncertainty that accompanied them took place during the presidency of Republican, discursively anti-Mexican President Donald Trump.

Looking at the key historic episodes in bilateral relations explained above, it is clear that most of the action took place during Republican administrations. It is possible that the visibility of these important events, perceived ambivalently by Mexicans, as well as the fact that they happened to occur mostly under Republican presidents, are the reasons behind the forging of the negative association with Republican administrations. Democratic presidents seem to have been more effective at building positive environments, at least in their discourse, with their closest ally. However, these two dynamics do not imply that we will be better off with the blues than with the reds: our relationship has so many rough spots and is subject to so many changes that the color of the chief executive’s party is not as important as is commonly believed.

his coercive approach, which Biden has tried to soften, attempting to dismantle some of his aggressive anti-immigrant stance. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s response has been ambivalent: agreeable to Trump and defensive and aggressive toward Biden, thus raising a red flag in the White House. This article will describe Trump’s and Biden’s migration policies and López’s stance and response.

President Donald Trump (2017-2021) was a xenophobe with a destructive, anti-immigrant, pro-white-nationalist discourse that became his signature. Looking beyond his rhetoric, Trump took a highly hostile approach to both unauthorized and legal migration. During his presidency, he made an important institutional effort to transform immigration through rule changes, adjustments to asylum officers’ guidelines, modifications to enforcement norms, and other measures that are difficult to reverse. Objections from several U.S. courts were crucial for stopping these harsh anti-immigrant policies.

Biden’s

“De-Trumpization” of Migration Policy: The López Obrador Response

Traditional issues such as migration, border management, security, drug trafficking, organized crime, trade, and the environment have always been present in U.S.-Mexico relations. Sometimes a positive perception would prevail and other times an ongoing process would deal with problems resolved either institutionally or directly by the executives of the two governments. During the Trump era the relationship was damaged by

* Mónica is a researcher and the founding director of the the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico (1989-1997); you can contact her at mverea@unam.mx

As part of his hard line immigration policy, Trump established actions such as significantly reinforcing the U.S.-Mexico border by rebuilding some parts of the wall and deploying thousands of troops to increase apprehensions and detentions of non-criminal undocumented migrants; implementing a “zero-tolerance” policy that resulted in the cruel separation of families; prosecuting asylum seekers and forcing them to apply only at points of entry; coercing Mexico to formally accept the Migrant Protections Protocol ( mpp ), better known as the “Remain-in-Mexico” policy; responding aggressively to sanctuary policies; establishing a travel ban targeting Muslims; ending Temporary Protected Status (tps) for hundreds of migrants; significantly decreasing refugee admissions; curbing and slowing the entry of legal immigrants and temporary workers; and making life hard for many immigrants already in the United States, among many other actions.

Furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic gave Trump a perfect excuse to establish even harsher immigration policies as part of his anti-immigrant agenda. So, during 2020, he pressed to increase apprehensions; separate families; abandon migrants and asylum seekers in Mexican border towns; end the right to asylum in order to “protect” the border through the establishment of Title 42;1 promote general shutdowns of the legal immigration system for some permanent residence applicants; and block the entry of high- and low-skilled seasonal workers. This situation

Mónica Verea*

Office of the White House Press

Secretary/Wikimedia Commons

During the Trump era the relationship was damaged by his coercive approach, which Biden has tried to soften, attempting to dismantle some of his aggressive anti-immigrant stance.

negatively affected Mexicans: the issuance of different types of visas for Mexican temporary workers decreased from 297,778, in 2019 to 265,333 in 2020, an 11% drop.2 For comparison purposes, Central Americans from the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) received a total of 5,811 temporary visas in 2020. In this regard, Biden has proposed to issue an additional 22,000 non-agricultural h2-b visas in 2021 over the 66,000-yearly cap. Six thousand of them will be granted to Central Americans, which bodes well for the future. The opening of legal pathways in the U.S. market, meaning an extension of temporary agricultural and non-agricultural worker visas (h2-a and h2-b), is essential for the safe entry of Mexicans and Central Americans into the U.S. Trump did huge damage to migrants and the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

In the middle of a terrible pandemic, President Biden took office on January 20, 2021. Since the beginning of his administration, he has had a more positive attitude toward migration and has changed the official narrative on immigration with a more humane approach. His administration has been trying to reverse or undo the damage caused by Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, signing several executive orders to reverse them, a difficult task that requires substantial structural changes. His administration is focusing extensively on issues related to entry into the United States through new directives and regulations. During his one year in office, he has

• limited the construction of the border wall;

• ended the Zero Tolerance Policy and promoted family reunification;

• increased the refugee cap and ended the “Muslim Ban”;

• revoked punishments to sanctuary cities;

• increased inclusion efforts for new U.S. Americans, incentivizing them to become citizens;

• decreased internal deportations;

• expanded the number of beds in different shelters;

• facilitated the release of parents with children;

• promised to shorten the paperwork review process

for asylum seekers with a hearing;

• stopped the expulsion of unaccompanied children under Title 42;

• tried to phase out the Migrant Protection Protocols (mpp);3

• strengthened the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (daca) initiative as well as the Temporary Protected Status (tps);

• focused on the existing root causes that push migrants out of their countries of origin and proposed investment in the Central America region.

We cannot deny that Biden has taken constructive steps, but they have been slow in some respects, and in others, not very visible. The Democrats and their base assumed that Biden had the ability to easily reverse or “de-Trumpize” the changes established in the immigration system, but this has not been the case, since it has been logistically and politically difficult because the Trumpist bureaucracy has been very difficult to reverse. It is important to mention that during the first year of the Biden administration, the number of apprehensions at the border increased significantly: in 1.66 million events, migrants were apprehended in fiscal year 2021 trying to cross the border. The arrests represented almost double those of 2019 (859,501) and triple those of 2020 (405,036).4 Hence, Republicans have been very critical of his stance on the handling of migration flows and asylum seekers at the border, which has represented a great challenge for him.

At the beginning of his term, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (amlo or López from here on) established an “open door” migration policy oriented to respect their human rights and, in that vein, welcomed migrants and gave them proper permits to stay and even work, moving freely with a legal permit card through Mexican territory. amlo’s attitude was drastically reversed in May 2019 due to Trump’s threat to impose trade tariffs —an incremental 5%— if Mexico did not halt all illegal migration and implement a high enforcement policy. This program aims to send nonMexican asylum seekers to Mexican border cities that are not necessarily safe. López agreed and accepted the mpp, a bilateral agreement, to allow asylum seekers to be removed without a hearing and/or access to an immigration attorney. This agreement provided Trump with shelters in different Mexican border cities, converting them in the U.S. backyard for approximately 70,000 asylum

seekers in the U.S. since 2020.5 Asylum seekers find themselves in deplorable conditions and migrants can wait, months or even years at our political, economic, and social expense. At the same time, Mexico’s migration management strategy has become increasingly militarized. In the first eleven months of 2021, Mexico deported over 80,000 migrants and detained over a quarter of a million, a 200% increase from 2020, 192,000 of whom were Central Americans, the vast majority from Honduras and Guatemala.6 The Mexican National Guard, despite a lack of relevant training, has taken on a significant role in migration management, coupled with people smugglers, cartel members, and even National Guardsmen who target vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers, resulting in highly unsafe conditions with abuses and violation of human rights.

In this sense, Trump managed symbolically to get the Mexican government to pay for the controversial wall and move the border further south. López accepted the temporary stay of non-Mexicans on our northern border in shelters with deplorable conditions where many await a decision by immigration judges, knowing in advance the important consequences for Mexico and its relationship with the United States.

At a bilateral level, Biden has forced amlo’s government, as Trump did before, to collaborate contentiously by assigning additional 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops on both borders to contain the growing number of migrants coming from Central America and Mexico as asylum seekers or undocumented migrants. For this purpose, Biden and amlo reached an agreement in March 2021: although not a quid pro quo, it resulted in an exchange of the supply of 2.7 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses, the closing of Mexico’s southern border for non-essential travel, and the dispatch of additional troops, at the expense of Mexico’s economy and security. These troops, who are highly needed throughout Mexico due to the fact that that insecurity has gotten worse than ever, are serv-

The Democrats and their base assumed that Biden had the ability to easily reverse or “de-Trumpize” the changes established in the immigration system, but this has not been the case.

ing as inexperienced border patrol officers. The Biden administration is highly concerned about López Obrador’s autocratic projects, such as the energy reform, that would cause a great deal of harm to the United StatesMexico-Canada Agreement (usmca),7 his dismantling of institutions, and anti-democratic attitudes. Therefore, senior Biden administration officials have engaged in an increased number of visits that have resulted in institutional meetings with the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department,8 dealing with border management as well as security and economic issues.

At a regional level, with a Trumpism-containment approach, Biden has reached similar agreements with Central American countries to establish greater surveillance at their respective borders in order to contain their flows of migrants. In an effort to deal with the situation, Biden designated Vice President Kamala Harris to reach a regional agreement, a vision contrasting with that of Trump, who drastically cut off the annual aid offered to Central American countries. Both governments have agreed to establish a mechanism for U.S.-Mexico cooperation to address the causes of migration from southeastern Mexico and Central America, through a program called Sowing Opportunities. Under this framework, the United States Agency for International Development ( usaid ) and the Mexican Agency for International Development and Cooperation ( amexcid ) plan to coordinate resources and expertise to help citizens of Central America build projects in their home communities. Biden has recognized that shared problems need to be overcome together with his country’s neighbors. He knows that the most effective and sustainable way to reduce migration from the Central American Northern Triangle countries is to address its root causes. We hope that the program in charge of Vice President Kamala Harris, a fouryear, US$4billion regional strategy of aid to the region, will prove effective in addressing the factors driving migration to the U.S.

Mexicans had high expectations when Biden was elected president, after having been constantly threatened and continuously insulted by Trump. In contrast, López, who bet on Trump’s reelection, demonstrated not only indifference but uncomprehending hostility toward Biden when he won the election, not congratulating him until the Electoral College certified the vote. This was a signal of a typical totalitarian leader sending a message that

Trump and, so far, Biden have gotten what they wanted from amlo, specifically in limiting immigration through Mexican territory and on both borders.

his sovereignty is untouchable: he will not intervene in any international domestic issue so no government interferes in Mexican decisions, specifically Washington. In fact, he seldom participates in foreign meetings and his priority has not been foreign policy, unless it has a positive impact on internal politics. He recently invoked a “friendship with Russia” and will not impose any economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine; this was unnecessary, but it sends a signal to the U.S. government. Nevertheless, Trump and, so far, Biden have gotten what they wanted from amlo, specifically in limiting immigration through Mexican territory and on both borders. Trump stayed silent at López’s anti-institutional policies adopted in his first years at government; in contrast, Biden, aware of his anti-constitutional and antidemocratic initiatives, has sent several high-level officials to deal with different bilateral issues besides migration, that potentially could negatively affect the U.S.-Mexican relationship, specifically the usmca agreements.

Biden announced that Title 42 would be rescinded in May 2022. However, the Republicans, fearful that this would increase immigration not only from Mexico and Central America, but from the world over, exerted a great deal of pressure to prevent it. Finally, a Louisiana judge blocked the move and Title 42 continues to be in place. Also, it is essential and urgent to rescind again the “Remain-in-Mexico” program as Biden did at the beginning of his mandate. Nevertheless, we are not sure if immigration will be a priority for Biden in the short term, due to the midterm elections and Republicans’ awareness of any intention to eliminate the mpp

Further Reading

Chishti, Muzaffar, and Jessica Bolter, “Controversial U.S. Title 42 Expulsions Policy Is Coming to an End, Bringing New Border Challenges,” Migration Policy Institute, Migration Information Source, March 31, 2022,

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/title-42-ex pulsions-policy

Sarukhan, Arturo, “America Must Not Ignore Mexico’s Democratic Decay: Washington’s Obsession with Migrants Is Warping U.S. Policy,” February 18, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/centralamerica-caribbean/2022-02-18/america-must-notignore-mexicos-democratic-decay.

Stillman, Sarah, “The Race to Dismantle Trump’s Immigration Policies,” The New Yorker, February 8, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/ the-race-to-dismantle-trumps-immigration-policies.

Verea, Mónica, “La política migratoria de Biden a un año de su administración,” Norteamérica (Mexico City: cisan-unam, at press).

Verea, Mónica, and Camelia Tigau, Trump’s Legacy in Migration Policy and covid-19: Challenges for Biden (Mexico City: cisan-unam, at press).

Notes

1 Title 42 policy uses covid-19 to authorize immediate expulsions of migrants, including would-be asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Up to February 2022, 1.7 million expulsions had been carried out under this policy, 1.2 million of them since January 2021 under the Biden administration. During the Trump presidency, 83 percent of migrant encounters at the border led to expulsions, compared to 55 percent so far under Biden.

2 The only increase was for agricultural workers with h2-a visas, which rose from 188,758 in 2019 to 197,908 in 2020 (Bureau of Consular Affairs, U. S. Department of State, 2021, “Nonimmigrant Visa Statistics, Nonimmigrant Visa Issuances by Visa Class and Nationality,” fiscal years 1997-2020, https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/ legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics/nonimmigrant-visa-statistics.html

3 Blocked by Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito, who argued that the Biden administration did not give an adequate reason to cancel the program.

4 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (cbp), “cbp Enforcement Statistics, Fiscal Year 2021,” Newsroom, 2021, https://www.cbp.gov/news room/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics

5,Kevin, Appleby “U.S. Policy Developments: March 2020-July 2020,” Center for Migration Studies, July 31, 2020, https://cmsny.org/uspolicy-developments-2020-covid/.

6 Forbes staff, “México rebasa 228,000 arrestos de migrantes y 82,000 deportaciones en 2021,” Forbes, December 4, 2021, https://www.forbes com.mx/mexico-rebasa-228000-arrestos-de-migrantes-y82000-deportaciones-en-2021/

7 The usmca, which replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement (nafta), entered into force on July 1, 2020.

8 Duncan Wood and Alexandra Helfgott, “Seeking Process and Predictability: An Evaluation of U.S.-Mexico Relations under President Biden,” January 24, 2022, The Wilson Center, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/seeking-process-and-predictability-evaluationus-mexico-relations-under-president-biden

Silvia Núñez García*

Notes to Bolster a Future with More Women in Mexico-U.S. Relations

The relationship on a timeline between two sovereign states is often narrated by citing personalities and economic and political events that show up the characteristics and male tone of the links between them.

While Mexico and the United States are not the exception to this rule, their saga covering two centuries includes conflicts, disputes, and even armed clashes, and at the same time episodes of solidarity, cooperation, and good neighborliness that —to be objective about it— end up being highly contrasted.

From this perspective, we can underline the fact that the events in each of the official stories, one Mexican and the other U.S. American, are a testimony to our links, their contradictions, and asymmetries, and confirm a complex proximity, marked by a notable absence of female voices.

This is precisely what motivates me to select rather fleetingly and arbitrarily a few episodes in which women

show up as protagonists of different aspects of these stories. From my particular point of view, I think it is an ethical principle to underline the fact that the relationship between the two countries is not only about governments, but also about connecting our two peoples. For that reason, I will include some figures I consider to be emblematic on one or the other side of the balance sheet and in different periods of that history. My aim is to leave evidence of the female stamp on history and, at the same time to honor the memory of the thousands who from Mexico and the United States have sown friendship and empathy, going beyond the official story.

Two Journalists

* Silvia is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and was the center’s director from 2009 to 2017; currently, she is the director of the unam office in Los Angeles, California; you can contact her at silnugs@gmail.com

I will begin by mentioning journalist and film script writer Edith O’Shaughnessy, the wife of U.S. diplomat Nelson O’Shaughnessy, the business attaché at the U.S. embassy in Mexico. During her stay in our country between 1911 and 1914, Edith became renowned for her prolific writings narrating her experiences during the presidencies of Francisco I. Madero (1911­1913) and Victoriano Huerta (1913­1914).

From left to right, American journalist Edith O’Shaughnessy, Mexican ambassador to the United States Martha Bárcena Coqui, former United States’ Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, and The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa (2016 to date).

My aim is to leave evidence of the female stamp on history and to honor the memory of the thousands who have sown friendship and empathy, going beyond the official story.

Her passion for Mexican history left us works about the era of the presidency of Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican Revolution, social life in Mexico City during the empire of Maximilian of Habsburg, and Huerta’s implacable rule. Among her most important works are A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico (1916) and Diplomatic Days (1917), collections of the letters Edith sent her mother.1

In the 1920s, a second U.S. journalist, Alma Reed, left a profound mark covering the history of the links with Mexico because of her commitment to defending and supporting Mexicans living in poverty in California. Her column, signed “Mrs. Goodfellow,” responded to the letters of our compatriots with legal advice, aware of their vulnerability.

Her fame gradually trickled into Mexico, above all when she actively participated in a campaign to stop the imposition of the death penalty on a Mexican teenager in California. She is recognized as a brilliant, progressive woman, an untiring fighter for social justice. Despite not speaking Spanish, she passed into national legend for several reasons: her visit to Mexico on the special invitation of President Álvaro Obregón; her tragic love affair with Yucatán Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who was assassinated;2 her passion for the Mayan civilization, and her fascination with Mexican culture.

Alma Reed was awarded the highest honor that the Mexican government can give to a foreigner, the Order of the Aztec Eagle.

The Four Foreign Ministers

Next, we can describe the trajectory of a small group of talented diplomats from Mexico and the United States who have been the foreign ministers of their respective countries, therefore playing an important role in that relationship.

Under the administrations of Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico (1994­2000) and Bill Clinton in the United States (19932001), something unprecedented took place in the bilateral relationship and in the political history of both nations:

the very fortunate appointment of two women as heads of their respective countries’ foreign policy for the first time in history.

This coincidence allowed for the two women, Mexico’s Ambassador Emeritus Rosario Green and the United States’ Madeleine K. Albright, to establish a personal relationship, a friendship, that would leave an indelible mark on the terms of bilateral dialogue.

Albright was completely convinced that those moments showed that the ties between the two countries were moving toward a promising future, based on high levels of cooperation and communication. In an address in early 2000, she said that she had met ten times with Green to work on issues of mutual interest: migration, trade, and the fight against drug trafficking.

For Minister Rosario Green, both countries had highly professional delegations, which had a positive effect on the quality of diplomatic dialogue and understanding. Among the issues in her friendly exchange with Albright, she repeatedly mentioned that one of the migratory issues was the growing number of deaths of Mexicans crossing the border through high­risk areas into the United States, as well as the urgent need to limit the violation of Mexican migrant workers’ human rights through the use of excessive force by U.S. agents.

Another element united the two women: their enormous experience and appreciation of and commitment to multilateralism. Madeleine Albright had been the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, while Rosario Green occupied the post of general vice­minister for political affairs of that organization from 1994 to 1997.

While Ambassador Green was particularly interested in human rights and the defense of individual liberties, Albright made women’s issues a priority in foreign policy, as well as arguing for democracy and warning about the threats of fascism. Both had had the opportunity of being teachers, a privilege that implies the ability to give yourself to others.

Undeniably, these two women have left behind a great legacy for the history of international relations in general, but they are also an example for those who aspire to contribute professionally to the sphere of international affairs, where, fortunately, more and more women from both countries are now participating.

Also outstanding in the history of Mexico­U.S. relations is Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of

State during the Barack Obama administration. One particularly complex episode was her intervention to weaken the monopoly of Pemex, the Mexican state company that controls the oil and gas industry. Clinton promoted a reform that would allow that market to open up to international private companies. The issue came to light during her Democratic presidential campaign in 2015, when the Department of State made public a series of emails that Mrs. Clinton had sent, breaking the institutional rules while corresponding with her closest advisors on a private server. This was one of many elements that weakened her possibilities for victory in the race against Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State coincided in 2013 with the period in which Mexico had named Ambassador Patricia Espinosa as minister of Foreign Relations. Both had the responsibility of navigating times of huge challenges for the relationship between the two countries, marked by rising violence in Mexico, drug trafficking, and organized crime.

The Two Ambassadors

In the history of diplomacy between the two countries, it is noteworthy that in the long list of Mexican permanent or interim ambassadors, only one woman has ever been appointed. Martha Bárcena Coqui occupied the position from December 2018 to February 2021, under the current presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Bárcena’s prior career is distinguished: she was Mexico’s ambassador to Turkey and Denmark, as well as its permanent representative before un agencies in Rome, among other assignments.

Her stay in Washington coincided with Donald Trump’s administration and the renegotiation of the current North American trade agreement, the usmca. In addition to fostering cooperation between Mexico and the United States, she defended vulnerable migrants, emphasizing the need for both countries to work together to combat racism and hate speech.

The United States was in the same situation, since Roberta Jacobson, ambassador from June 2016 to May 2018, was the only woman ever to occupy the position. Her long career in the State Department is highlighted by her specialization in Latin America, having served previously as the coordinator for Mexican affairs, the coordinator for

Cuban affairs, and as deputy chief of mission in the United States embassy in Peru

One of the main causes she espouses is the fight against discrimination against women. During her stay in Mexico, she reiterated on several occasions her love of our country, saying that this experience had been the best one of her life.

Final Remarks

In addition to these talented figures, who have left us with valuable contributions to the bicentennial relationship between Mexico and the United States at different times and under different circumstances, it is imperative that we realize that many others have made contributions worthy of admiration from different areas.

A long list of women working in prestigious Mexican universities have contributed as teachers, researchers, and leaders of different institutions committed to educating new generations. These institutions include the unam itself, mainly the Center for Research on North America (cisan); the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (itam); El Colegio de México; and the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (cide) in Mexico, and, in the United States, the University of Southern California (usc), ucla, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Arizona State University, among others.

Still other women are committed to the sphere of crossborder activism in favor of vulnerable migrants, participating in emblematic organizations like Mexico’s Without Borders and the United States’ Women’s Refugee Commission.

This is why it must be underlined that the work and unshakable will of all the women committed to the common good of both nations, many of whom do not show up in the media, constitute the biggest potential for fostering a new era in bilateral relations.

Notes

1 Both originally published by Harper & Brothers (New York and London in 1916 and 1917, respectively) and recently by Burb (2021). [Editor’s Note.]

2 It is common knowledge that the famous Mexican song Peregrina (words by Yucatecan poet Luis Rosado Vega and music by Ricardo Palmerín) is a testimony to that love story, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=fGfqMG8Wkgk. [Editor’s Note.]

Mexico and the United States Security: Historic and Current Dilemmas

Different Territories And National Construction

The history of “the bilateral” in security issues has been a difficult process between Mexico and the United States. In 1823, the two governments recognized each other, but both were still constructing their identities, defining their territory, and building their institutions. Relations with their neighbors were difficult. The United States was born in 1776 and Mexico in 1821; that’s a forty-five-year difference, and the impetus and strength of each at birth were also different.

The United States was born as thirteen colonies, which it turned into states, and quickly expanded southward and westward. Mexico was born with a huge territory, reaching to what is now the northern part of California, but

ica,

without Mexicans and, instead, indigenous inhabitants who did not identify with the new nation.1 To the south, in 1824 the Central American provinces declared their independence from the Mexican empire and the country began to “whittle down.” In other words, the United States was expanding and Mexico was shrinking. The United States did not manage to annex Canada to its burgeoning federation of states; English troops clashed with U.S. forces in U.S. territories from 1812 to 1815; peace was signed; and during the nineteenth century, the U.S. established its definitive northern border in 1867 when it bought Alaska from Russia. In the late nineteenth century, the United States continued to expand in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The victory of the North over the Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-1865) also determined what would be the great industrial power of the twentieth century. To the south, the 1846-1848 war with Mexico demonstrated the U.S. impetus as an expansionist nation. The Mexicans were divided and weak and had lost Texas in 1836. President James K. Polk declared war on May 13, 1846 and sign-

* Raúl is a researcher at the Center for Research on North Amer-

National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at manaut@unam.mx

Raúl Benítez Manaut*

J. Guadalupe Pérez/Cuartoscuro.com

ed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.2 Nationalism was being constructed in both countries: the United States as a strong, successful, expanding entity, and Mexico, still under construction, as a space in which the liberals and conservatives were going head to head. Without determining the way forward for the state, Mexico invited a European emperor, supported by France, to govern it. The liberals managed to expel him, but the cost was building a militarist, oligarchical state under the long dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz between 1876 and 1911.

In the second decade of the twentieth century, the 1910 Revolution broke out in Mexico, and the United States, as the Great War began, occupied Veracruz on April 21, 1914, under the pretext of preventing the unloading of arms from Germany. The occupation lasted nine months.3 The United States again intervened in Mexico, looking for Pancho Villa, in 1916. It did not find him, but it did leave the mark of its power on the country. In January 1917, the United States was on the brink of entering World War I and would be the determining factor in the conflict. It was on its way to becoming the world’s foremost power militarily, economically, and politically.

By the third decade of the twentieth century, the two countries were on different paths. Mexico was just emerging from its civil war and was slowly rebuilding its institutions. The United States was already a great power. One of its concerns vis-à-vis its neighbor to the south was to normalize diplomatic relations and negotiate the “issues pending” after the revolution, such as some articles of the 1917 Mexican Constitution regarding the ownership of natural mineral resources and oil. President Lázaro Cárdenas decreed the nationalization of oil on March 18, 1938, affecting big U.S. and British companies. After long negotiations and due to the approaching outbreak of World War II, the two countries grew closer together and Mexico supported the Allied cause.

“Manifest Destiny” Made Reality, Not without Conflicts

World War II was at the root of the first great strategic rapprochement between the two countries. Between 1942 and 1960 they went from being neighbors to being partners. The Cold War came to this hemisphere in 1947, and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a cause for conflict. The

World War II was at the root of the first great strategic rapprochement between the two countries. Between 1942 and 1960 they went from being neighbors to being partners.

United States backed the military efforts to fight the communists and the nascent armed guerrilla groups. Mexico decided to take the opposite track diplomatically. It did not break off relations with Cuba and it opposed the coups d’état like the one in Guatemala in 1954, supporting its neighbor only on the issue of nuclear weapons. In 1967, Mexico promoted the signing of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, whereby the Latin American countries would not develop either nuclear technology or weapons, to avoid another event like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

In the 1970s, a new version of nationalism emerged in Mexico. It drew close to the movement of non-aligned countries, strengthened ties to China, and condemned the U.S.-backed coup d’état in Chile; President Luis Echeverría (1970-1976) also made many trips to socialist countries. From 1977 on, Mexico became an oil-producing country. The differences with the United States sharpened with the outbreak of important conflicts in Central America beginning in 1979. Mexico defended its own national security interests, promoting closer relations with guerrilla groups from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This was not to the liking of President Ronald Reagan, who supported counter-insurgency strategies. In other spheres, Mexico promoted dialogues and peace negotiations. It was the promotor of the un-backed peace accords in El Salvador in 1992 and Guatemala in 1996.

The New Geo-economy and Geopolitics

In late 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War was rapidly dismantled and a new era of multilateralism, economic integration, and geopolitical re-ordering started. People began to talk about radical changes all over the world. Canada and the United States referred to themselves as North America and invited Mexico to join in. nafta was signed in November 1993 and came into effect on January 1, 1994.

Mexico changed its perception of the world and its role in it. However, to remind Mexicans that it still belong-

ed to the underdeveloped world, the Zapatista uprising broke out that same January 1.4 nafta, plus the indigenous uprising, were the new reality; that is, Mexico had a door open to the developed world, but without having resolved its circumstances as a backward country.

nafta accelerated Canadian and U.S. investments, but Mexico had to democratize. The long-lived authoritarian political regime headed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) was going through its final moments at the turn of the century.

potential terrorists into the United States, but it could not easily stop the invasion of white powder from Colombia.

Terrorism and the War Against Drug Trafficking

With the victory of President Vicente Fox (2000-2006), of the right-wing National Action Party (pan) in Mexico, many thought that free trade plus democracy would carry Mexico out of underdevelopment. With that, migrants, able to find work in their places of origin, would stay home, the economy would grow rapidly, and North America would be strengthened.

In the United States, George W. Bush took office as president on January 20, 2001. Everything was set for signing agreements in both countries to create what came to be known as “the whole enchilada.” 5 From Asia, Osama Bin Laden ordered an attack on the United States and September 11, 2001 changed global geopolitics. The U.S. closed its borders, asking its North American neighbors to sign the smart borders treaties (Canada in December 2001 and Mexico, in March 2002), and economic integration faded into the background, overwhelmed by the new threat.

Another challenge appeared on the horizon: in Latin America the cocaine trade expanded and invaded the United States. The drug traffickers from Mexico partnered with producers from Colombia and “the war against drugs” began. All this overshadowed the advance of free trade and opening of borders. Mexico modernized its immigration control system in airports and sea ports to prevent the entry of

In security and foreign policy matters, Mexico considers the United States interventionist, and the latter thinks that many Mexican officials are corrupt and cannot enforce the law.

Little by little, the two countries began to talk about improving the systems in place to control drug trafficking. When Mexico’s administration changed in 2006, the new president, Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), began negotiations to design what would be the Merida Initiative. In 2008, the U.S. Congress authorized this program to control Mexican criminal groups, and between 2008 and 2022, more than US$3 billion in aid has been authorized. The Merida Initiative consists of a large number of military and legal training programs, equipment delivery, training Mexican authorities against money laundering, border surveillance, and even helping strengthen social cohesion to favor vulnerable people. It was in effect under the administrations of Barack Obama (2009-2017) and Donald Trump (2017-2021). However, since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), its efficiency has come into question in Mexico. This is because the criminal groups have expanded, increased their power, continued to dominate entire territories in the states of Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Michoacán, and Guerrero, and the flow of drugs into the United States has not abated. Other substances, such as fentanyl have even flooded U.S. streets.6

The so-called “war against drugs” led high-ranking Mexican officials to be accused of complicity with organized crime, such as former minister of Public Safety Genaro García Luna. Toward the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and at the beginning of the current Mexican administration headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s former minister of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos, was captured in October 2019. However, he was only under arrest for one month.

The presidents of the two countries do not look kindly at free trade. However, the economic opening is vital for the two economies to function. In 2021, Mexico became the United States’ main trade partner, surpassing China.

Donald Trump’s nationalism was added to an anti-immigration position, based on which there was talk of suspending trade in mid-2019. Mexico had to use its armed forces to contain the advance of migrants from Central America and other parts of the world. Trump, as a nationalist, also questioned free trade, but renegotiated nafta with Mexico and Canada, giving rise to a new treaty, the usmca, which came into effect on July 1, 2020.7 Trade and immigration became security issues for the United States.

Friendship with Differences

The change in U.S. administration in January 2021 was accompanied by the most serious political crisis in the country since the 1861-1865 Civil War. Trump did not accept the election results and his followers violently attacked Congress on January 6. This shook up not only the country, but the world. The new president, Joseph Biden, has to heal the wounds in his divided nation. Trump’s followers, many of them nativists, anti-immigrant, and anti-free-trade, see Mexico as a threat. Governors like Greg Abbott from Texas spout a very strongly anti-Mexican discourse. President Biden has good relations with Mexico, but a lot of pressure is exercised on our country. Also, in Mexico, President López Obrador’s nationalism creates friction with the United States. The two governments declared the Merida Initiative dead in 2021 and have called the new security cooperation instrument the U.S.-Mexico Bicentennial Framework.8

Mexico constantly accuses the United States of being interventionist. One of the very serious security problems is that Mexico considers that the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration (dea) acts against Mexican interests, which is why its liaison office was closed down for being infiltrated by criminals. López Obrador argued, “That group, which was supposedly a high-level strategic group, was infiltrated [by criminals]; we put Mexico’s relations with the United States in order. Past administrations had allowed those ties to infringe on Mexico’s sovereignty.” 9

Final Thoughts

The differences between the two countries’ levels of development are very large. The two democracies operate differently. In security and foreign policy matters, Mexico considers the United States interventionist, and the latter thinks that many Mexican officials are corrupt and cannot enforce the law. With regard to the central security issue in bilateral relations, drug trafficking, the populations of both countries are affected similarly. In 2021, approximately 100,000 young people in the United States died due to fentanyl consumption. In Mexico, more than 32,000 people died due to criminal violence in the same year. Proportionately, this is the same number of deaths

given the fact that the United States has three times Mexico’s population.

As a super-power, the United States bears great responsibility in grave matters of international security. The war in the Ukraine, which broke out February 24, 2022, placed Mexico in a dilemma. Its foreign policy doctrines are based on non-intervention and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. At the United Nations, our country has backed the group of countries that condemn Russia, but it has not opened up an option for important humanitarian assistance to the civilian Ukrainian population affected by the war. It also does not share the policy of embargos and economic sanctions, which have not been effective in Latin America against Cuba or Venezuela.

Undoubtedly, these differences in global security policy will continue. Nevertheless, the two governments are working to ensure that this war does not affect our bilateral relations.

Notes

1 Marcela Terrazas and Gerardo Gurza, Las relaciones México-Estados Unidos 1756-1867, vol. 1 (Mexico City: unam/Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2012), p. 123.

2 Craig A. Deare, A Tale of Two Eagles. The U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Defense Relationship Post Cold War (Boulder, Colorado: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), p. 38.

3 Secretaría de Marina, La invasión a Veracruz en 1914: enfoques multidisciplinarios (Mexico City: Semar, 2015), p. 337.

4 The movement headed by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ezln), whose most widely known leader is Sub-commander Marcos, emerged on that day. [Editor’s Note.]

5 The celebration of an immigration agreement favorable to Mexico became the priority in binational relations. “The whole enchilada” was the term coined by Jorge Castañeda, minister of Foreign Affairs under Vicente Fox, to refer to a comprehensive immigration reform, which was on the brink of becoming a reality until the events of 9/11. [Editor’s Note.]

6 Clare Ribando Seelke and Joshua Klein, “Mexico: Background and U. S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, Washington D. C., March 21, 2022.

7 “t-mec entrará en vigor el 1º de julio de 2020,” press release no. 37, April 24, 2020, http://www.sice.oas.org/tpd/usmca/Entry_into_Force /usmca_EiF_s.pdf.

8 U. S. Department of State, “Summary of the Action Plan for U.S.Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities,” Fact Sheet, January 31, 2022, https://www.state.gov/ summary-of-the-action-plan-for-u-s-mexico-bicentennial-framework-for-security-public-health-and-safe-communities.

9 Reuters, “Mexican President Confirms Closure of Counter-narcotics Unit Working with U. S.,” April 21, 2022, https://news.yahoo.com/ mexican-president-confirms-closure-counter-145650792.html? guccounter=1.

Two Fossil Fuel Producers in the Face of Climate Change: Mexico and the United States

The governments of Mexico and the United States are in charge of countries and economies based on fossil fuel. They are producers, exporters, and consumers of oil and gas that also have relatively little alternative energy. This is faithfully reflected in the energy mix data: in both countries, coal still represents a significant proportion (10 percent in the United States and 4 percent in Mexico). But the biggest problem is that oil and gas continue to represent the immense majority of their energy mix: 69 percent in the United States, and the even greater figure of 84 percent in Mexico. Alternative energies are barely larger than coal: in the United States,

*

hydroelectricity represents 2 percent; biofuels, 4 percent, and other renewables, 6 percent. In Mexico, hydroelectricity represents only 1 percent; biofuels, 6 percent, and other alternative sources, 3 percent. Nuclear power is also low: 9 percent in the U.S. and 2 percent in Mexico.1 In both cases, we are looking at very conventional energy mixes, dominated by oil, and whose development has been throughout history — and even today — intimately linked to the massive production and consumption of this energy source, which, it must be said, they have always obtained at low cost in internationally comparative terms.

Today, the big difference is that, while Joe Biden’s administration boasts of being green and wanting to create the conditions for the green economy and renewable energy, Mexico’s is betting openly on oil, broadening out fossil fuel infrastructure, suggesting that green energy, the

Edit is a researcher at the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact her at antal@unam.mx

Patrick Hendry/Unsplash

Today, the big difference is that, while Joe Biden’s administration boasts of being green and wanting to create the conditions for the green economy and renewable energy, Mexico is betting openly on oil, broadening out fossil fuel infrastructure.

protection of the environment, and the struggle against climate change are some kind of luxury reserved for developed countries. Despite this apparently big difference, in both countries, fossil fuel’s still overwhelming weight seems to take precedence over environmental protection and the effective struggle against climate change.

This article looks at how much the two governments’ different positions about climate change and the green economy may impact cooperation between them, and legally and practically, to what extent this could be an issue that could impede — or at least make more difficult — bilateral cooperation and even whether the latter is compatible or not with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (usmca)

The United States

Since Joe Biden was a candidate, he promised to work on climate legislation that has been dubbed the most ambitious of all time. Could this become a possible source of conflict on environmental issues with Mexico?

To achieve this end, Biden proposed creating a very broad infrastructure for generating and consuming renewable energy. Initially, there was talk of investing US$2.3 trillion in infrastructure for this, and the proposal met with the opposition not only of Republicans but also with some Democratic representatives. The opposition stemmed both from what the package meant and how it was going to be paid for. Biden talked about human infrastructure that included modern public goods in the broadest sense, such as, for example, childcare for preschoolers, public services like broadband access, maintaining and subsidizing public schools, electric charging stations, etc. This kind of package is not acceptable for the opposition because they understand infrastructure in the more conventional sense, meaning basically bridges, highways, and other means of communication. With regard to where

the monies would come from for financing such an ambitious project, the idea was to introduce a tax on wealth that would involve taxing fifty-five large companies and 1 percent of the richest individuals.

Another part of the green reform involved an even more difficult issue to handle: subsidies for fossil fuels, which implies nothing less than dismantling the complex system of direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuels and cutting off government support estimated at no less than US$8.2 billion in tax breaks for 77 companies. Eliminating preferential treatment for oil, gas, and coal companies, created gradually over many years and historically reflecting the enormous power of the U.S. fossil fuel sector, is extremely difficult to accomplish. This is the case because of the enormous political weight these companies have as well as the complexity of the system of supports, which includes the most diverse tax breaks, legal loopholes, and legislation that allows fossil fuel corporations to dodge costs and avoid cleaning up what they pollute.2

Other green promises by Biden included re-joining the Paris Accord, which has already happened, and recuperating global climate-change leadership, which, however, is not easy to do given his country’s very damaged reputation on the global stage in these matters. Regarding global commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the United States’ goal is to reach net zero emissions by 2050, which presupposes a 50- 52 percent reduction vis-à-vis those of 2005 by 2030. To better understand this figure, we can add that it is almost double the climate goals set by President Obama. The current administration also aims to establish the way forward for achieving a coal-free electricity sector by 2035 and to create legal mechanisms that would ensure that no future administration could go back on this.

However, a great distance lies between what is on paper and reality. Until now, only executive decrees have been issued to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and US$1.2 trillion approved for green infrastructure. What is notably lacking — and for the time being, it does not look probable that it can be achieved — is precisely the passage of the clean energy and social welfare legislation called Build Back Better, which would be the most important instrument for actually reaching the climate change goals proposed or the generation of renewable energy.

Biden has also implemented actions that clash head-on with fighting climate change. For example, he has urged oil-producing countries to increase production in order to

lower oil and gas prices; plus, he has not stopped pipeline construction projects, has approved oil drilling projects on public lands, and allowed fracking in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite Biden’s vast radical green proposals, he is clearly under heavy pressure from the fossil fuel sector and because of the incessant appetite for oil in the current economy, all of which has made those proposals only inaccessible dreams up until now.

Mexico

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (amlo) has always been and continues to be the great defender of oil for Mexico, in the sense that he considers it the basis for national wealth and the inalienable property of the Mexican people; therefore, it must be the indisputable guarantor of national sovereignty. Despite the harsh criticisms from his political opponents that this is an outmoded view, surpassed by the overwhelming reality of climate change, the current Mexican administration considers that hydrocarbons must continue to be the center of the national economy and a secure source of well-being for Mexicans today and in the future.

In Mexico, a public political discussion is taking place about whether amlo’s energy policy violates the usmca or not. At the same time, we can see certain pressure from U.S. businesspersons and legislators stemming from López Obrador’s proposal for a constitutional reform to limit private participation in electricity generation to 46 percent. The explicit aim of this bill is to favor Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (cfe), the government company traditionally in charge of the sector. The same reform would also eliminate autonomous energy regulators, making it possible to cancel previously existing contracts; and some speculate that the cfe’s plants that mainly use fossil fuels could be the priority over plants that use renewable energy, most from the private sector and many owned by foreign companies. For these reasons, the reform’s critics maintain that the differentiated treatment for Mexican and foreign companies could violate the usmca

Legal experts maintain that the reform to the Law on the Electricity Industry does violate the usmca because the treaty’s Chapter 22, specifically relating to the non-discriminatory treatment for state-owned companies — in this case the Federal Electricity Commission —, implies that a

monopoly position in the market cannot be used through anti-competitive practices in a market that would negatively affect trade or investment. Foreign investment from the United States or Canada could be exposed to the violation of the obligation to protect investments established in usmca Chapter 14, above all the principle of fair, equitable treatment and that referring to indirect expropriation or equivalent measures.3

To analyze whether Mexico’s energy policy violates the usmca, we have to look at two laws, the Electrical Industry Law (lie) and the Hydrocarbon Law (lh). Critics maintain that these 2 pieces of legislation change the market conditions in favor of Pemex and the cfe, creating an unfair advantage for the public sector, with the potential for limiting both domestic and foreign investment in the terms established in usmca Articles 25 and 28, which refer to free competition. This is due to the fact that the energy sector was not excluded during the treaty renegotiations. The detractors of the lie say it opens up the possibility for a monopoly in the electricity sector, making hydroelectric and fossil fuel energy a priority for the cfe; for that reason, they consider it imposes a change in the order electricity is sent to nodes, clearly favoring fossil-fuelbased energy. The Ministry of Energy (Sener) defends its orientation arguing that the reason for the law is to free the cfe from the straitjacket of having to purchase electricity even if it does not require it; that is, it is a measure for savings in the public interest.

With regard to the Hydrocarbon Law, those who oppose it say that its Articles 57 and 59 allow the government to “temporarily occupy, intervene in, and suspend” contracts and licenses, as well as take them over completely. In addition, ambiguity in the law’s wording can spark the fear of expropriation given that it speaks of “imminent danger” that could affect “national security,” giving the Sener discretional powers.

In addition to these objections, the lie is objected to based on climate change: critics maintain that it violates Article 133 of Mexico’s Constitution and international

Despite the two countries’ initial premises being very different, both, for very different reasons, continue to base their kind of development on a predominantly fossil fuel sector.

climate change treaties. Among them are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Accords, precisely because this would imply that Mexico would not fulfill its emission reduction commitments.

Finally, despite the two countries’ initial premises being very different, both, for very different reasons, continue to base their kind of development on a predominantly fossil fuel sector. This clearly shows how difficult it is to change the energy mix so that it does not depend on fossil fuels and create very strong political and social interests, whether this is manifested by the opposition, like in the United States, or by those in office, such as the Mexican case today. In both cases, the commitments and real possibilities of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting this form of climate change are hampered. It is a real possibility that some regulations or articles of the law in Mexico may come into conflict with the usmca, but the treaty itself has mechanisms for conflict resolution. The fact is that in both

countries, the federal government is facing serious difficulties. However, fortunately, there are also lower-scale levels of decision-making, such as the states, cities, and the sub-national regions, that can cooperate and advance on climate change issues.

Notes

1 Natural Resources Canada, 2020, Energy Fact Book 2020-2021, https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/nrcan/files/energy/energy_fact/energy-factbook-2020-2021-English.pdf ; U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2020, “U.S. Primary energy consumption by source and sector, 2020,” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ #:~:text=Download%20image%20U.S.%20primary%20energy,natural %20gas%2034%25%20petroleum%2035%25; SENER, 2020, “Balance Nacional de Energía 2019,” https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attach ment/file/618408/20210218_BNE.pdf.

2 Antal, Edit, “Solución verde a la crisis y liderazgo climático,” in Paz Consuelo Márquez-Padilla, ed., La democracia rescatada (Mexico City: cisan, 2022), p. 98.

3 Ana Karen de la Torre, “Los argumentos legales en contra de la reforma energética de AMLO,” in LexLatin, March 31, 2021, https:// lexlatin.com/entrevistas/los-argumentos-legales-en-contra-de-lareforma-energetica-de-amlo.

Bryan Alan Hernández Aguilar*

Two Centuries of History Mexico-U.S. Bilateral Relations

December 12

The two countries establish diplomatic relations.

The first U.S. legation is established in Mexico City.

The two nations sign a treaty defining the borders between them.

Mexico’s Congress passes the Colonization Law to contain U.S. migration to Texas.

Texas declares its independence from Mexico.

Mexico breaks off diplomatic relations with the United States for its annexation of Texas.

The U.S. Congress declares war on Mexico.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the war and establishes a new border after Mexico ceded part of its territory to the United States.

Diplomatic relations are restored.

Diplomatic relations are interrupted between the United States and Mexico’s conservative government due to a property tax levied on foreigners and Mexicans.

* Bryan is a research assistant at the Institute for Historical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at bryan-hdz@hotmail.com.

Illustrated diagramation by Editorial Albatros (EASACV); informes@editorial-albatros.com.

The United States recognizes Mexico’s liberal government headed by President Benito Juárez as legitimate and diplomatic relations are reestablished.

The U.S. Senate refuses to ratify the McLaneOcampo Treaty of Transit and Commerce.

The United States and Mexico sign the Treaty for the Extradition of Criminals and the Postal Convention.

The United States recognizes the government of President Porfirio Díaz almost eighteen months after he took office.

The U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act is signed into law and, with the ban on Chinese immigration, railway companies begin to recruit Mexican workers.

The two countries sign a reciprocal agreement allowing regular troops to cross the border to pursue Native American raiders or bandits.

The Convention between the United States and Mexico for the Equitable Distribution of the Waters of the Rio Grande is signed.

With the authorization of the governor of the state of Sonora, 275 Arizona rangers participate in the repression of a strike at the Cananea mine.

U.S. President William Howard Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Díaz meet in El Paso, Texas. 1909

The Mexican government grants U.S. companies concessions to build railway lines in Mexico.

Generals Félix Díaz and Victoriano Huerta hold a secret meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to finish the details for the coup d’état against President Francisco I. Madero. 1913

President Woodrow Wilson recalls his ambassador to Mexico for having intervened in the coup d’état against President Madero.

The U.S. Navy shells and occupies the port of Veracruz, arguing that it was in reprisal for the arrest of seamen from the USS Dolphin.

July 17 April 21

1913 1914 1915 1916

The United States recognizes Venustiano Carranza as the interim president of Mexico and invites him to send a diplomatic representative to Washington.

4,800 U.S. troops enter Chihuahua to capture Francisco Villa for having invaded U.S. territory and led an incursion against the border town of Columbus, New Mexico.

Octuber 19 March 15

The United States recognizes the government of President Álvaro Obregón after the signing of the Bucareli Treaty to redress the losses of U.S. citizens due to the nationalization of resources.

In San Antonio, Texas, the Bureau of Immigration carries out the first of many large-scale deportation operations against undocumented foreign workers, the majority Mexican.

Mexico enters World War II, declaring war on the Axis powers.

1942

August 4

1930 1942

February May 22

1923

August 31

The Agreement between the United States and Mexico Regarding the Temporary Migration of Agricultural Workers into the United States, later known as the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement, is signed, the first of the diplomatic accords that make up the Bracero Program.

1964 1965 1971 1985

December May 20 June 17 February 9

The Bracero Program concludes by decision of the U.S. government, under pressure from U.S. labor unions.

The Mexican government officially announces its Border Industrialization Program in response to the termination of the Bracero Program and combat unemployment in its northern border states.

President Nixon announces his “War against Drugs” and begins operations to confiscate drugs on the border with Mexico.

Drug traffickers murder U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara.

1986

November 6

President Ronald Reagan signs into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act, increasing Border Patrol funding to surveil the border with Mexico, establishing sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers, and offering amnesty and a path to immigration regularization for workers who had lived for many years in the United States.

1994

January 1

The North American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect.

President Bill Clinton announces a US$20-billion loan to Mexico to stabilize the peso after the 1994 economic crisis. 1995

January 31

Mexico withdraws from the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance in protest against U.S. plans to invade Iraq. 2002

Mexico and the United States sign the Merida Initiative, a cooperation program to fight drug trafficking, and Washington provides it with US$1.4 billion in equipment and training. 2008

October 6

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols, which mandates non-Mexican asylum seekers to await the resolution of their cases in Mexico. 2019 May 30 July 1

January 25

2019 2020

December 3

President Donald Trump announces publicly that he will impose tariffs on Mexican exports if Mexico does not take measures to stop Central American migration to the U.S. The Mexican government deploys its National Guard along its southern border.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (usmca) goes into effect. It retains most of the content of nafta, but with a few important new stipulations: new rules for strengthening auto production in North America, modified mechanisms for conflict resolution, and more protections for labor rights.

The governments of Mexico and the United States announce the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities, replacing the Merida Initiative.

October 8

President López Obrador confirms the closing of the Mexico’s Sensitive Investigative Unit (uis), which collaborated with and received training from the dea. Iván Reyes Arzate, UIS commander from 2008 to 2016, had been sentenced in New York to ten years in prison for drug trafficking and corruption on February 9, 2022.

April 21

A selection of poetry by Zazil Alaíde Collins* and María Cristina Hall** Illustrations by Xanic Galván***

This poetry sample put together by Collins and Hall showcases two identities that have been constructed from a place of otherhood — Collins, as a Mexican in El Paso, Texas, and Hall as a Mexican-American whose origins encompass both Guadalajara and New York. In an exercise of exchange, Hall has translated the following poems by Collins from Spanish to English.

A FORTNIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS*

*After Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic of the same name Zazil Alaíde Collins

Coral Drop

L’indifferenza è il peso morto della storia. Antonio Gramsci

From the fire’s bow, I, woman of the world’s end beheld a country deserted, a domesticated State of exception, an implacable ghost nation : a country of memoricide crimson mountain, lumberjack

* Zazil is a poet and musical curator studying a bilingual mfa in creative writing at the University of Texas; you can contact her at zazilcollins@gmail.com.

** María Cristina is a poet, translator, and PhD student in sociology at National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact her at mcf2141@columbia.edu.

*** Visual artist; @xan_ic

: a country to lull mules in high-security prisons

[high security | high security] in the tension of water and sad sleep songs

: a country for the apathetic

I hate them too, partisano to live is to take a side

: a country where the she-wolf howls at the vague night the bird epiphany smoke and calamity : a country to pretend that the current won’t slog and that I’m not a woman at the end of the world on the smuggling ship of masticated words

om ah ra pa tsa na dhi om ah ra pa tsa na dhi om ah ra pa tsa na dhi

Title 42

Suchiate white as the wound flesh cured on a salamander

Men to the north, women to the south a dying wish behind

His name in the letters of his name, Cristóbal Cabreiro Ramírez, age 35

And all of Cuba in the word Cuba land of syrup, red and white Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica,

Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala a jungle of cartridges at a stone’s throw

All of Mexico in the line of fire along Yuma red as embers

Onoruame, father and mother, Onoruame Cristóbal, age 35, died on the roadway

San Miguel del Padrón is waiting to free him of all infamy

of a covered-up migranticide in Pijijiapan, Chiapas

Onoruame, father and mother, Onoruame Cristóbal, age 35, died on the roadway

Tutuguri

I The draught a breeze as río bravo is fierce

thistle in bloom to temper the blaze a land-in-between chabochis screeching tutuguri in the ribs tutuguri the owl hoots for your return II Brutality a rock as the ravine is calm a ladleful of stew so I might march along puente Nepantla scarring spilling tutuguri white sun tutuguri tutuguri sol negro

The world changes when two people dance souls burgeon in beef tongues

dust sifted down from the stars crossing in the dawn

For your return I holler I holler para no morir

óro óno óno tawéri gá óro óno óno tawéri gá óro óno óno tawéri gá

IV

I charm you hilarity so your days might soften I shepherd the cold brightness like the wound of days blandos mis ojos radiating on the table surrounded by canyons and hickory.

V

The cow’s slumber threads the milky way’s mourning cemetery of stars nestled in the galactic river

that sketches, in my heart, the sun’s eternal death tutuguri Basalówala Aminá Ralámuli Paísila tutuguri

The Second Ellis Island

On the second Ellis Island the enigmatic fox man and I she coyote gale and all our gaping eyes stand in a sea of sand Silence at the center my flag reddened in the wind The herd awaits me in the city Tundras Sonatas Broncos marching slowly the Border Patrol detains the half moon a vine tainted in brothel dyes I want poetry beauty glory yes I do I will I’ll take it on the second Ellis Island shirking backs and mature nymphs scraping the scales of history

His epidermis also brims with me Me sitian rejas fenced in like the Unaccompanied Alien Children in Tornillo Let’s band together the wall cries on the second Ellis The tram unstoppable the underlings agonize before its sacred heart Working women take up the pots poetry beauty and glory their cause The political force can’t be ignored on the second Ellis the American executioner trills northern roadrunners rustle Dehydrated the purple cacti dazzle old wounds In the sky some planet devours filaments while the Grateful Dead sing Marty Robbins It’s the rail of history A fortnight in the American wilderness like your Spirit Old Gold Trumpet a desert sweet west old date where no one else breathes poetry beauty and glory my reed sharpened in the plain He is gray and I opaque as I yearn to howl at the heart of the second Ellis Island

“Is it your object […] to promote the love of poetry, beauty, and glory?”

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

María Cristina Hall

UpIf we point up it won’t be north we’re signaling but the universe expanding.

In 1994 we agreed upon a mutant identity.

What opaque rumors of insidious invasion speak of obsidian capital?

Only the stars’ smoke will tell.

[1]

The Time I Realized I Wasn’t White

I was nine and Grandma Miller introduced me at the San Diego Pentecostal church. I politely kissed her white friend on the cheek, to everyone’s shock, and burned a red backdrop to my freckles.

A few years after my quinceañera my Spanish boyfriend corrected algo en las estructuras que no va flattened my accent in a cove of love a woman’s grievances folded in papers he’d lock away childish confetti.

Feminism’s just a petty excuse for my voice silenced from radical to analyst from beacon to branded from brilliant to affirmative action from man to woman.

I hide my phony diploma behind my leg check from the side of my eye if anyone’s looking. The white boy couldn’t get in anywhere because he was a white boy.

The time I was most white was when at twenty-five I capitalized on your adolescence in Virginia knew your South Asian wouldn’t let you say no to me. That’s the time I saw myself in you.

The time I was least white was when in Mexico a white man took my work and didn’t invite me to the party.

In Spain at twenty-two my teacher called Latin America an insult to language in front of ten women and an institution that said the sun would do enough to dry me.

One time I wasn’t white and didn’t realize was at nineteen in New York when Becca Stein said the Spanish street names in my poem were disorienting like, is this Arizona or Mexico? because the way you’ve situated the text is confusing —to a white woman.

The time I felt most white was when at eighteen I read David Foster Wallace on SWE and agreed. The time I felt least white was when fuck you.

The time I felt least white was when people only care if your camera won’t show your color negative if you can afford a camera, SWE, BMW, 401K.

The time I was least white was when insurance is only for residents and they pick up the phone and say who’s speaking And I say María Fernández.

The time I felt least white was when I had a skinny iced latte in Polanco and my girlfriends said Chicanos weren’t really Mexican. The time I felt most white was when I laughed along.

Elections

One body hits the sidewalk from nothing more than gravity.

A tea kettle will go on whistling. Leave your headphones tight through crossnational bank transactions. La Bestia will go on whistling. A laptop screened through the salt of five extra hours at the airport. The silence you’ve practiced for relatives who somehow found their fired-up peace amid your war. Tonight, just us. A visa to your picket line. A brick I have laid down for you. A fort, a warmth, my body.

The Mexican American War: Manifestations of Capitalism

art has been positioned before me a bearer of intrinsic value tulips resilient mining the ice caps a cryptic wall of blood vessels scalps flap on the horse bridle severing the floodgates a memory valve of manifest destiny currency cropped for futures

[1] The next three poems will be part of the book Raw Age / La Hora Cruda (Dharma Books, 2023).

Gina Bechelany Fajer*

There and Back

Interview with Tatiana Parcero

The geographical proximity between Mexico and the United States has strengthened their ties in the weaving together of geopolitical commitments and integration, mutual migratory flows, and a wealth of cultural exchange that has impacted every aspect of life for the area’s dwellers.

Throughout history, Mexico has influenced the United States, and vice versa, in a plethora of ways. This cultural flux, which especially took off in the early twentieth

*Gina is an editor and cultural manager; you can contact her at gbechelany@gmail.com.

All photos courtesy of the artist.

century with muralists like Siqueiros, Rivera, and Orozco encountering U.S. American painters, for instance, has involved the creation of binational art. It is worth noting that the artistic expressions emanating from the city of Los Angeles, California, made an impact in New York, Mexico, and many other places in the postwar period.

This relationship has also been marked by great tension and contradiction, especially over the last few decades, due to Mexican migration to the United States. The latter has sparked a variety of creative expressions according to each artist’s specific themes. The artistic production of the more or less homogenous Chicano com­

Interior Cartography #21, 1995.

munity has demonstrated how art can make history and memory visible and how everyday life can become a fundamental element with which one might allude to context and time.

With a career spanning more than three decades dedicated to photography, Tatiana Parcero, a Mexican woman living in Argentina, has explored concepts such as identity, memory, territory, time, and most recently, the migration­immigration phenomenon.

The evolution of her work has been marked by experimentation with both technique and discourse, which she has incorporated in a way that appears loaded with

social content yet preserves her own perspective — one she has enriched through collective work with feminist groups, especially in Mexico and Argentina.

Parcero’s work is an expression of her gaze, bringing together the places where she has lived and worked for more than 35 years: Mexico, the United States, and Argentina. Tatiana studied a bachelor’s in psychology in Mexico and a master’s in art and photography in New York, where she later worked, though she eventually moved to Argentina. “Every place, moment, and sociopolitical context has given me a diversity of experiences that influence the work I make and the topics I study. Every country has

Ossis #1, 2016.

I cannot be indifferent, which is why, through my work, I either directly talk about or subtly reference what it is that worries and occupies me the most, such as climate change, nature and our relationship to it, or gender violence.

its own specificities, but certain situations unfold in all three: the battle for women’s rights over their own bodies and the fights against gender violence, discrimination, and the environment, among others,” Tatiana stated for this interview.

Her work has consistently established an intimate vision, exploring historical transpositions and the new possibilities of the digital image, as in Interior Cartography (1995–1996), where we may observe certain recurring elements that are specific to her career: the human body (usually her own) and the use of graphic representations juxtaposed against these bodily registers.

“Exploring the external body was not enough, which is why I started exploring through different techniques.

Based on trial and error, I arrived at the two­layer technique with acetate and color photography. This technique allows the eye to become an x­ray so that one can gaze into the interior. I have kept using this technique ever since. The ideas of investigating the physical and emotional spaces intermingle within the piece. I strive for personal experience to become universal through my work, so that the viewer can connect with what she sees,” Parcero explains.

Parcero based the process of creating Interior Cartography on New York University’s ancient anatomy archives. The images she produced incorporated and alluded to fragments of pre­Hispanic codices and other documents from Mexico’s indigenous past.

Interior Cartography #1, 1995.

“Interior Cartography #35” was selected for the exhibition Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum, on view from April 16 to October 2 of this year at room 5 of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The exhibition aims to demonstrate that feminism and photography have been intertwined throughout their histories. Tatiana Parcero shares the space with photographers as renowned as Lola Álvarez Bravo, Gertrud Arndt, Lotte Jacobi, Lucia Moholy, Graciela Iturbide, Rosemarie Trockel, and Lorie Novak, among others.

On the occasion of this exhibition, we have interviewed the Mexican photographer Tatiana Parcero in order to understand her perspective on the cultural­transfer processes that Mexico and the United States share, in both directions.

Gina Bechelany: On the binational Mexico­U.S. plane, how would you describe the process of cultural transfer, specifically in those border spaces where integration, migration, and culture are constantly discussed?

Tatiana Parcero: Cultural­transfer processes are complex and unequal. This is a very broad topic that can be addressed from many areas — economically, socially, culturally, or tourism­ or education­relatedly, to name a few. There is no single vision of the border. All I can say is that migration is a serious issue for which no solution has been found,

and which continues to risk the lives of people who have decided to leave their countries of origin out of necessity.

As an artist, I can use my work to convey certain issues that we, as a society, need to address. I cannot be indifferent, which is why, through my work, I either directly talk about or subtly reference what it is that worries and occupies me the most, such as climate change, nature and our relationship to it, or the gender violence I am documenting through photographic registers of the women’s marches in Mexico and Argentina.

GB: Do you see the exhibition of Interior Cartography #35 at the MoMA as contributing to a certain understanding? That is, as an element of shared culture creating new references in both the Hispanic and U.S. American spheres?

TP: This exhibition is a response to an opening in terms of different nationalities and preferences as well as freedom of expression. Citing the MoMA, “the exhibition takes as a starting point the idea that the histories of feminism and photography have been intertwined.”

I made Interior Cartography #35 when I lived in New York. It’s part of a larger series that’s also called Interior Cartography. The idea emerged as a way of visually narrating the process of change that I experienced upon my arrival to a new country, when I had to build a new life. The idea of working with the concept of the map was born of my need to define my space and locate my new environment — both internal and external — while redefining my interior as a process of self knowledge and as the possibility of showing that which cannot be seen with the naked eye. The title alludes to the idea of the map and cartography more broadly as a geopolitical reading. Its association with the body implies travelling through it as a territory that can be analyzed, inspected, recognized, and recovered.

The series has two parts. For the first, I worked with ancient anatomy diagrams in reference to the interior universe. For the second, I started observing the links between the inner body and the cosmogony of Mexico’s pre­Columbian cultures, in which body and nature constitute a single terrain. I was thus able to make more diverse connections with aspects of identity, memory, history, and time. I also like how Roxana Marcoci, the exhibition’s curator, describes how my “overlay of Indigenous knowledge on the female body creates a map of self­governance linked to animist, anticolonial and natural histories — a feminist reclamation of land and a mobilization of cultural identity as resistance against colonialism’s legacy.”  Ossis

Consciousness Terra #4, 2020.

The idea of working with the concept of the map was born of my need to define my space and locate my new environment — both internal and external — while redefining my interior as a process of self knowledge and as the possibility of showing that which cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Leaps of faith #2, 2003.

As a woman and as a Mexican artist, being a part of this exhibition stands as recognition of my many years of work. Participating in Ourselves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum is a great achievement and a triumph for womanhood. Throughout history, we have trodden a difficult path, and we’ve been fighting against a world in which men remain the main characters and occupy positions of power. This exhibition implies the conquering of a space that belongs to us, too, and the possibility of being recognized in different spaces.

GB: You said that your stay in the United States influenced you to create a series that narrates what happens to women who are far from their countries and their rights. What was your experience in this respect?

TP: One aspect that has defined my art ever since I started to work with photography is that I have lived in several countries where I wasn’t born, as well as my desire to reconstruct my own history using a range of iconographies and references such as maps, pre­Colombian codices, and images of flora and fauna. Yet, my quest has continued thanks to the exchange between diverse cultures and customs. I want people to draw their own conclusions, to analyze and reflect upon what they see in every detail, to discover something beyond what can be seen at first glance and make their own interpretations.

I created the Portraits of Women (Retratos de Mujeres) series soon after moving to Argentina. Most of the women were residents. I wanted to do a bit of research on the reasons why they had left their countries. I was interested in knowing more about their feelings and desires, learning a thing or two about their pasts, their presents, and their dreams, anxieties, and emotions around being away from their countries of birth. Being a foreigner implies an entire process in terms of learning the codes and languages specific to each place. I am still working on this series, as I’m still adding new faces and stories to it.

GB: Interior Cartography has been widely recognized given the way that you express and explore the body, its interior, and its relationship to the outer world. It’s a very

intimate and personal piece. How have you managed to insert it in a more global environment, with this exploration transforming other human beings in turn?

TP: This piece has already come a long way. It’s been shown at several exhibitions and publications around the world, and its influence is tied to what you see in it and what it transmits, what moves you and what connects with your own story. I work with ideas related to personal and global processes in which the body and nature function as metaphors of the public and the private, as mirrors of the individual and collective memory. To me, the body is a container of memory where the “interior” holds history: my ancestral culture. My body is my own territory, and I have control over it. I can decide how to use it, how to preserve it, and how to show it.

Both art and the human body are vehicles of expression for feelings and emotions that transcend borders, obstacles, and even eras. Thus, the cultural exchange between Mexico and the United States can be redefined as a two­way street that condenses the seriousness of the migratory experience, loss, the quest for identity, and encounters with the other. There’s an existential dimension, a voyage of different moments, a journey of memories, feelings, life, and states of being.

Both art and the human body are vehicles of expression for feelings and emotions that transcend borders, obstacles, and even eras.

Consciousness Terra #10, 2020.

Logan Ryland Dandridge

All My Gods Are Black

Jaime Soler Frost*

By the rivers of Babylon

There we sat down and wept When we remembered Zion.

Psalms 137

University Contemporary Arty Museum (muac) virtual exhibitions Room 10 has hosted the work of African-American artist Logan Dandridge on video since April of this year1. Dandridge graduated in the arts from the University of Virginia in 2016 and received his graduate degree at the Oxford University Ruskin School of Art in 2018. Since autumn 2021, he has been an assistant professor of film at the Department of Film and Media Arts at the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts in New York.

The images in the exhibit center on the African-American experience and have very different sources, although most of them date from the 1960s until today, that is, from the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement to the times of Black Lives Matter. For Dandridge, “Images are sometimes just documents, some are provocation, but others are testimony,” and, together, they allow him to show his “interest in web-based culture and media convergence,” but above all, in the “associative dialogue” that emerges from a “visual montage, proximity and simultaneity.” In this exhibit, the muac is showing two recent videos, Black Continuum and Reprise, both from 2019. Despite this focus on a very different reality, issues do emerge that undoubtedly resonate in Mexico: racism, oppression, exclusion, racialized violence, and the urgency of imagining inclusive futures. In this work by Dandridge, the arts, political movements, sports, and daily life co-exist in a constantly shifting collage. This may not be so evident in these two videos, which are very different from one another, but does become clear if we delve into the rest of his production available on line on his personal accounts both on Vimeo and YouTube.

Dandridge is an artist of images in movement for whom “the sound is the picture.” So, music — whether blues, gospel, jazz, reggae or ska, rap, or hip hop — and also the rhythm of the spoken word, like that of dub poetry, are essential for his work. This is always set in counterpoint by either the audio (different superimposed voices, pushing and evening each other out) or through different visual sequences that are simultaneous or piled on top of each other, parallel to each other, from his multichannel installations, since Dandridge conceives counterpoint as “the art of balancing similarity and difference to create harmony between separate melodies.”

In Black Continuum, for example, on top of images of nebulas and galaxies, of African-American musicians and basketball players, of liquid fire in movement, of police arrests and Black Panthers in military formation, we hear the hypnotic voice of Linton Kwesi Johnson reciting in Jamaican patois his poem Tings and Times:

Now like a fragile fragment af lite

Trapped inna di belly a di daak night

Like a bline man stuicified an dazed Last an alone in a mystical maze

Fi days

Upan days

Upan days

Upan days

*Jaime is the coordinator of publications at the unam Institute for Aesthetic Research; you can contact him at jaime.solerf@gmail.com **All images are still photos of the video Black Continuum, 2019, and are courtesy of the University Museum of Contemporary Art.

(This is not the only piece that uses the voice of Linton Kwesi Johnson. In How Many Black Futures Will End Before They Begin? also on top of images of African-American athletes and activists, of arrests and police abuses, he can be heard to say, “The rhythm just bubbling and backfiring, raging and rising, when suddenly the music cut. Steel blade drink in blood and darkness.”

In Reprise — which in music means a repetition or sound reiteration — in contrast, the rhythm and counterpoint of the images mark the palimpsest of the voices of those who come on stage: Angela Davis, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Fred Hampton, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton, John F. Kennedy, one of the few white men to be seen in his work, among other creators, activists, politicians, and social fighters who occupy the screen and talk about their journeys. Later, against a background of syncopated music, appear those who we only see images of: Sam Cooke singing; Muhammad Ali giving an interview; Martin Luther

For Dandridge, “Images are sometimes just documents, some are provocation, but others are testimony,” and, together, they allow him to show his “interest in web-based culture and media convergence,” but above all, in the “associative dialogue” that emerges from a “visual montage, proximity and simultaneity.”

King, Jr.; tennis-player Arthur Ashe at his 1975 Wimbledon victory; a musical video of ScHoolboy Qu; the aftermath of the JFK assassination; football player Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem; protests in New Orleans; and Gil Scott-Heron reciting a poem in front of the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital.

These same images and sequences can be found again in many other Dandridge pieces, as though he were attempting time and again to appeal to the trauma and memory, thereby being able to reconstruct the history of the African Diaspora or imagine their many possible derivations. Because, regardless of the techniques of film montage or musical counterpoint that he uses, a series of recurring themes emerge from his work. One of the main ones is so-called Afro-futurism, which writer and filmmaker Ytasha Womack has described as the combination of “elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with nonWestern beliefs.” This is a creative framework for other experiences of the Diaspora, a practice and an aesthetic of expansion, in which science fiction and technology, the visual arts and music, partly through the global community of the Black Speculative Arts Movement, come together to reveal alternative realities and histories, are the catalyst for new currents of thought, and imagine the future of liberation for Blackness and an inclusive future society.

The mighty man will become tinder, and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire.

Isaiah 1:31

Other athletes, other artists, other activists join Dandridge’s work, that synchronic dialogue that he establishes between physical and psychological movement, that hyper-condensed compendium of Black cultures that is his filmography: writers like Zora Neal or Alice Walker —”In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own”—; basketball players, professionals like Michael Jordan, Sterling Brown, Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, and James Harden, or streetballers like Taurian Fontenette (the fellow who in July 2006 made a basket after a jump with a full double twist and from then on would be known as Mr. 720° or “The Air Up There”); skaters like Frenchwoman Surya Bonaly, who was denied the gold medal in the 1998 Nangano Olympic Games; poets like Countee Cullen, Margaret Walker —“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born”—, Claude MacKay, Langston Hughes, and Amiri Baraka —“reaching, changing, humanism is for animals, spiritism for humans”—; movie people like Bill Gunn —“In 1973 Bill Gunn imagined a world where death wasn’t the end”—, Spike Lee or Laurence Fishburne; and musicians like Fred Hammond, Meek Mill, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, the Jackson Five, Nina Simone, or Scott Travis, because, as Dandridge himself says, “The physically coded language of Black music is a spiritual provocation.”

And spirituality is another constant, intricate theme of his work, from gospel choirs, adult baptisms by immersion, and the enthusiastic communion of the faithful, to the preaching of the great African-descendants’ community leaders and what is called Black Theology. “Black theology is situated somewhere between Utopia and madness,” says Dandridge in Here, Yesterday (2021), because Black theology, like its relative to the south, Liberation Theology, asks which side God should be on: on the side of the oppressed or the oppressors. And if God truly values justice more than abuse, then he/she wants the liberation of all oppressed persons, and that just, true God wants the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination.

Spirituality is another constant, intricate theme of his work, from gospel choirs, adult baptisms by immersion, and the enthusiastic communion of the faithful, to the preaching of the great Africandescendants’ community leaders and what is called Black Theology.

And the quest for liberation from the political, social, economic, and religious yoke is linked, of course, with the Black power movement. And therefore, there again we see emerge the parallel discourses, although with opposite methods, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and the iconic images of the members of the Black Panther Party and the raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.

As for me

I will remain on Earth because all of my Gods are Black

In October 2021, Logan Ryland Dandridge was awarded the first Cavendish Arts Science fellowship for one year at Girton College, Cambridge in the United Kingdom. There, with the collaboration of physicists from the Cavendish Laboratory, he will seek to create works focused on the memory and possible reimagined futures in the context of physical concepts like non-linear time, in which the past and the future are indistinguishable. In Dandridge’s words, “I’m thinking about how physics can be used to reckon with the continuum of Black experience in the interest of more disruptive scientific and artistic interventions. The research project will channel an experimental storytelling practice through an Afrofuturist lens.”

How many Black futures will end before they begin?

To dream removes you from the world to find what lies beyond it… because the resonance will exist in different, potentially infinite versions.

Notes

1 You can watch the videos at https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/sala10-logan-dandridge

Cultural Relations Imbalances Due to Disparity In Sociopolitical Realities

Cultural relations between countries are undoubtedly determined by their political, diplomatic, and economic links. It is also undeniable that we must not understand cultural relations solely as exchanges or collaboration in science, education, technology, high culture, the fine arts, etc., but rather also the interactions in popular culture and media/communications processes. The latter are now included in the study of cultural diplomacy and generally involve the forms of constructing representations, creating signifiers, as well as their dis-

*Francisco is a researcher at the Center for Communication Sciences Studies (cecc) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Political and Social Sciences; you can contact him at peredofm@unam.mx

tribution and dissemination and the impacts that all of them generate.

In this field, relations between Mexico and the United States have always been very complex. And, in some stages, they have been outright conflictive. We should remember this now, not to keep wounds open but to move on to a necessary, healthy healing of differences.

The disparity of cultural relations between the two countries began precisely due to divergences in their sociopolitical and cultural make-up. Mexico was born as an independent country almost a half century after the United States, and its birth gave rise to a brutally poor, weak nation, in almost continuous domestic crisis for more than half a century due to the insoluble division among

Francisco Peredo Castro*

Daniel Schwen / Wikimedia Commons

Remember the Alamo.

Constructing the other as “inferior,” “uncivilized,” “threatening,” etc., is always useful for justifying intervention against that “other.” This is particularly the case when the perpetrator sees itself not only as being at the apex of civilization, culture, democracy, etc., but also as the herald in charge of disseminating these qualities to the rest of the world.

those in charge of building and consolidating Mexico as a country. This turned it into an object ripe for dispute between Europe and the United States.

After the interference of the York (U.S.) and Scots (European) Masonic lodges in our domestic politics, the process began of gradually creating an image of Mexico that favored the political, diplomatic, and cultural U.S. elites’ justification of what was to come shortly. Constructing the other as “inferior,” “uncivilized,” “threatening,” etc., utilizing diverse mechanisms is always useful for justifying intervention against that “other.” This is particularly the case when the perpetrator is a party that sees itself not only as being at the apex of civilization, culture, democracy, etc., but also as the herald in charge of disseminating these qualities to the rest of the world, starting with its own hemisphere. This was done with the Monroe Doctrine at the ready, as an instrument, or Manifest Destiny, as a justification for carrying out successive “civilizing” offensives in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, including the Caribbean.

Perhaps it all started at the moment that someone decided to obliterate from the collective U.S. cultural memory the stratagems used to separate Texas from Mexico. The idea was to imprint in the mind of Texans first, and later of the entire country, the idea of “Remember the Alamo,” and to turn the site into a place for pilgrimages and civic, patriotic worship at the cost of constantly reviling Mexico, as demonstrated in recent times by Donald Trump’s electoral campaign. That operation in the field of ideas laid the cornerstone for characterizing Mexico and Mexicans from then on as violent, murderers, brutal, savage, inhuman, and lacking in the slightest degree of pity for the weak or unprotected.

From that moment in history on, in the press, in literature, in the field of iconography, and, above all, in political and diplomatic practice, that imaginary was consolidated in U.S. society. This not only did not change, but was reinforced and added to, above all with the help of innova-

tions in technology and communications, like film, which contributed to keeping these constructions alive in the field of ideas.

For starters, let’s remember the “greasers,” the name given to poor Mexicans after the so-called “MexicanAmerican War” of 1847, who woke up on February 3, 1848 to discover that their country no longer belonged to them and that they were now pariahs under the tutelage of their new master: the Apollonian, rubicund Anglo-Saxon, blueor green-eyed man, sharply contrasting with Mexicans, seen and described as short, dark, big-bellied, and dirty. They were called “greasers” because the trade of greasing their new masters’ wagon wheels as they made their way to their new possessions did not allow for maintaining a tidy appearance.

To this cultural construction of the “greasers” was soon added the profile of a pitiless criminal; this made the physical appearance seem to jibe with a particular kind of behavior. The mental association between the “savage, brutal, murderers” of the Alamo in 1836 and the disagreeable, dirty “greasers,” which resulted above all from the 1848 “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement,” reconfigured the stereotype, giving it a form to justify the plunder by the new white colonizers of Mexicans and their possessions. The image of the Sonora-born hero Joaquín Murrieta, his nephew Procopio Murrieta, and all others like them from that time would oscillate between being local Robin Hoods, precursors of the El Zorro legend, for Mexicans, and simple “Mexican bandoleros” for the white colonizers. The fact that these Mexican activists were seen and promoted as “murderers,” “a threat to whites,” and “kidnappers” and “rapists” of settlers’ wives explains a new intellectual transaction and a new practical manifestation of it.

Given the desire to erase the collective memory as soon as possible and the plunder committed during the 1847 war, which continued daily in the recently occupied territories, the whites decided that it was necessary to emphasize the supposed “criminal” aspect of Mexicans

and even their “Negroid [sic] tendencies.” This was used as the pillar of the rationale needed to pass legislation such as the Greaser Act of Sacramento (California, 1850), and the Greaser Act of 1855 in the same state during the Gold Rush, laws that allowed Mexicans to be lynched on charges of vagrancy or “being a threat to whites.”

After the debate between Mexico’s “Frenchification” under the Porfirio Díaz regime and the economic proEuropeanism promoted to balance the U.S. presence in Mexico, the advent of cinema and the Mexican Revolution opened up a whole new stage in the construction of U.S. representations of what is Mexican, generating sharp differences. U.S. society’s anxiety, sparked by the Mexican conflict, caused by Mexican “bandoleros”, apparently “revolutionaries without a cause,” turned the border between the two countries into the dividing line between “civilization” and “barbarism” (the latter being represented by Mexico and its revolution). The nineteenth-century myth of the “greaser” was reinforced by cinema used as a propaganda tool in films like D. W. Griffith’s 1908 The Greaser’s Gauntlet

Given the degrading representations of Mexico and Mexicans in the press, caricatures, literature, and cinema, among other media and processes of cultural construction, in 1919, the Venustiano Carranza government (19171920) issued a norm to censor the budding Hollywood film industry, which from 1906 to 1919 constantly reviled our country. In addition to the insults hurled against Mexicans for simply being Mexicans and the denigration of the revolution, during World War I, the film industry promoted a peculiar form of paranoia about supposed risks of hypothetical alliances of Mexicans with the Japanese, the Germans, and all the countries of Latin America and the Latino countries of Europe to attack, destabilize, and subjugate the United States.

It would be illusory to think that all of this was just something in the popular imaginary and that it originated exclusively in the media, which, like the press in the

first quarter of the twentieth century, promoted the idea that the United States should intervene in Mexico to annex it completely and “civilize” it through “benevolent assimilation.” On the contrary, this insanity prevailed as well in the upper echelons of U.S. politics and diplomacy.

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and Woodrow Wilson’s (1913-1921) Darwinist views, for example, had permeated all aspects of U.S. cultural production, as well as all currents of its foreign policy. This makes it perfectly understandable that a despicable pamphlet against Mexico, Justin Harvey Smith’s The War with Mexico (1919), would be awarded very important honors: the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 and the Loubat Prize in 1923, respectively as the “best work” in history and in social sciences about the United States.

That confirmation of the flood of prejudices bandied about daily in all spheres against the repugnant Mexican “greasers” was similar to the denigrating references to the Latin “dagoes” of Europe and Latin America —that is, all people of Latin American, Spanish, or Italian descent—, the “darkies” of the Caribbean, the “yellow dogs” from Asia, etc., and would spark a new confrontation with Mexico. In that context, the Álvaro Obregón government (1920-1924) banned Hollywood cinema in 1922 due to its degrading vision of Mexicans. In response to this and other possible similar measures, on March 10, 1922, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (mppda) association was created practically as a public relations and lobbying agency to dissuade the governments of the world to confront Hollywood as Mexico was doing. The Obregón government’s ban brought with it the considerable danger that its “bad example” could spread to other nations affected, like Panama, which followed suit in 1923, while others warned that they would take measures in this regard. Finally, President Obregón signed an agreement that sought Hollywood’s commitment to stop insulting Mexicans and other Latin Americans.

Nevertheless, the conflicts about cultural representations of the Mexican and the Latino in general continued

The advent of cinema and the Mexican Revolution opened up a whole new stage in the construction of U.S. representations of what is Mexican, and turned the border between the two countries into the dividing line between “civilization” and “barbarism” (the latter being represented by Mexico and its revolution).

World War II was the only period in the 200 years of bilateral diplomatic and cultural relations when there has been an acceptably respectful treatment by the United States of its neighbors to the south.

until the early 1930s, when Mexico and Spain signed an agreement of mutual exclusion: Spain would not show any film that offended Mexico and Latinos in general and Mexico would not show films that denigrated Spain.

The same scenario of a possible collective action or action by blocs of nations observed in 1922 was repeated in 1933, and this was enormously dangerous for the United States in the pre-war period. This explains why World War II was the only period in the 200 years of bilateral diplomatic and cultural relations when there has been an acceptably respectful treatment by the United States of its neighbors to the south, starting with Mexico. The White House was forced to implement a measured cultural diplomacy and foreign policy to maintain the necessary temporary equilibrium through bodies like the Office of the Coordination of Inter-American Affairs (ociaa) and the Motion Picture Society for the Americas (mpsa).

The implementation of a “good neighbor film policy” lasted only as long as the war. In all fields of culture, education, and the arts in general, links were established and all manner of initiatives promoted in the framework of strategies whereby the United States certified the existence and value of Latin American artistic and cultural manifestations through exhibitions of Latin American art nationwide. At the same time, it also sought the “de-Europeanization” of the Latin American elites to begin their gradual adherence to the “American way” and the “American Dream,” as well as to the U.S. forms of doing politics and its economic praxis and diplomacy, above all in the context of the Cold War.

That period brought with it once again the abandonment of all tact and restraint observed during the war. U.S. diplomacy would consist of cultural relations that, although they brought some benefits in the fields of science, education, and culture, were characterized by the same neglectful, permissive, and at times extremely tolerant attitude that once again reviled and denigrated, or outright mocked everything related to Latin American societies, their ways of life and social relations in media and cultural production in general.

It is undeniable that a large part of the elites in Latin American scientific, educational, and cultural spheres have had noteworthy opportunities for training and development at U.S. universities through programs promoted through governmental and diplomatic bodies. The same is true of some members of the corrupt, predatory political elites, who later return to their alma maters as teachers without too much regard for the trail of poverty, depredation, violence, and exclusion they left in their wake in the countries they (mis)governed following U.S. dictates.

From the time after World War II until today, during the entire Cold War and its aftermath, the disparity has been evident between the power of a nation of political and economic superiority and what is possible for weaker nations in facing the former. The monopoly of constructing representations, those generated and distributed throughout the world from the great U.S. media conglomerates, has acted as a steamroller in the world of cultural media consumption in Latin America. And the imbalance in cultural relations has been noteworthy at several times in that history. When films like Espaldas mojadas (Wetbacks) (Alejandro Galindo, 1953) or La rosa blanca (The White Rose) (Roberto Gavaldón, 1961) were produced in Mexico, the United States had the diplomatic power to ban their screening because they considered the image they presented of U.S. Americans to be negative. By contrast, only on very few occasions Mexico has had the power to censor or ban the screening of a U.S. movie considered libelous or insulting to the country or to Mexicans inside or outside the United States.

This has been, then, the tone of bilateral cultural relations. In this sense, it is very positive that the current U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, remembered that the relationship between our nation and his is indissoluble and forever. Together with that assertion, we would do well to also remember the key moments in the 200 years of our cultural relations, because forgetting the past is the foundation for repeating its mistakes. While it is true that our relationship is indissoluble and eternal, a great deal of rationality is needed to not forget that it must always be based on mutual respect in all fields.

The Musical Comings and Goings

Between Mexico and the United States1

While we may trace the musical relationship between Mexico and the United States back to colonial times, when exchanges took place between once borderless geographical spaces —whose subsequent boundaries remained blurry once they did come into existence— today I will observe the more recent relationships established as of the twentieth century.2 These musical intersections and exchanges unfolded between industrialized, media-heavy, and urbanized spaces.3

*Julia is a researcher and professor at the Ibero-American University’s (uia) Department of Communications; you can contact her at juliapalacios@gmail.com.

The emergence of recorded sound in the late nineteenth century, and the surge of two great record labels, rca Victor and Columbia Records, impacted both the production of records and of record players. Novelty music recorded in the United States reached Mexico and especially the upper classes that had access to it. Over the first quarter of the twentieth century, technological innovation coexisted with the publication of sheet music, which not only helped promote the songs but also swiftly increased their popularity. Whether at social gatherings, family get togethers, dances, revue theaters, or world cinema screenings, sheet music was essential to musical accompaniment. A lot of the sheet music brought in popular

Julia E. Palacios Franco*

“South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)”

Clem Onojeghuo / Unsplash.com

songs from abroad, especially from the United States, and helped spread them across Mexico.

One major shift in music came with the spawning of commercial radio in Mexico in 1923 and the subsequent surge of radio receivers, which were becoming more and more accessible — while record players remained limited to privileged homes and spaces.

In Mexico, a number of genres matured on the radio by basically emulating the programming broadcasted by their US counterparts: radio drama, political messaging, and news, but also live music broadcasts and, eventually, programming on sporting events and bullfighting.

At least in Mexico City, certain radio stations aired programs with music in English, such as “Your Hit Parade.” The program successfully launched in the United States in 1935 and was later recorded for other target countries, such as Mexico, keeping the public up to speed with the most popular American songs.

In the late 1930s, Ken Smith hosted the program “La hora americana” on xebz (660 am), presenting the most popular songs on U.S. radio.

New radio stations thus began to crop up, many focusing on English-language music from the United States. We should highlight the importance of Radio Capital xel 1260 am, which broadcasted the US hit parade for many years, with the 100 most popular songs aired every 31st of December.

Film was key to the dissemination of music, too. Before television, the only way to see performers was to attend live shows at night clubs and revue theaters or to go to the movies. With huge movie theaters, the film-going experience was fundamental to everyday entertainment. In these films, movie stars sang, and singers acted. Those with multiple talents stood out the most. Films with music idols like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Doris Day, among others, could also be enjoyed in Mexico.

In the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, which mainly unfolded in the 1940s and ’50s, U.S. music permeated many forms of expression. As in the United States, great orchestras and crooners proliferated in Mexico, too, and even though they sang in Spanish, they sought to emulate the lead singers of big-band music.

The local big-band repertoire in Mexico included popular rhythms akin to the ones playing in the United States at the time. A musical bridge would connect Mexico City, New York, and Havana, with fads, songs, and dance moves

In the 1940s and ’50s as in the United States, great orchestras and crooners proliferated in Mexico, and even though they sang in Spanish, they sought to emulate the lead singers of big-band music.

circulating from one place to another. Quintessentially, we might look to Germán Valdés, also known as Tin Tan, who often made appearances in movies, dancing the swing and singing in English and especially in Spanglish for his classical interpretation of the pachuco. Meanwhile, Mario Moreno, also known as Cantinflas, danced the swing with an American tourist in the film El portero (Dir. Miguel M. Delgado, 1950), accompanied by a mariachi band in the “El Tenampa” cantina located in Plaza Garibaldi.

In general, Mexican films would include an orchestra and a trending singer who would perform original pieces and, less frequently, top hits translated from English.

One moment that I find especially interesting in the Mexico-US musical relationship takes place in the emblematic box-office success a.t.m. ¡A toda máquina! (1951), directed by Ismael Rodríguez. In the film, at a cabaret of sorts, Pedro Infante sings Consuelito Velázquez’s renowned hit “Bésame mucho” (1940), but in English. Accompanied by the orchestra, he sports a suit and bowtie in the style of a true crooner. As he sings, the women in the audience cry “Sinatra!” much like the teeny boppers who would fall all over Frank. At the end of his performance, Infante is surrounded by the teeny boppers, just as Sinatra often found himself.

Likewise, with revue theaters, cabarets, and night clubs, American singers started making a splash in Mexico City. The radio, record sales, films, newspapers, and specialized magazines would keep the Mexican public abreast of American hits.

In the early 1950s, jazz ensembles also proliferated, with musicians making incursions into this completely American genre that ended up playing an important part in Mexican films. The bands led by Juan García Esquivel, Héctor Hallal “El Árabe,” Mario Patrón, “Chilo” Morán, and Tino Contreras, among others, played jazz, as did other large orchestras such as those led by Luis Arcaraz and Pablo Beltrán Ruiz.

By the mid-1950s, rock and roll, whose rhythm emanated from the United States, shook the world, and

Mexico felt it, too. Rock became the rhythm of youth, sparking significant changes in lifestyles, belief systems, and dancing. The cultural and generational gap between the adult world and youths took hold, and music became a way to express one’s identity. The song “Rock around the Clock,” by Bill Haley & his Comets, which opened the film The Blackboard Jungle (Dir. Richard Brooks, 1954), along with Elvis Presley’s smashing success, were two elements that gave rock and roll the greatest musical impact beyond U.S. borders. Presley became particularly famous after his first recordings at rca Victor in 1956.

In Mexico, the big orchestras and jazz ensembles started to include rock and roll in their repertoires. It was Pablo Beltrán Ruiz who recorded the first instrumental rock and roll in Mexico in 1956, which he coined as “Mexican Rock and Roll.”

Meanwhile, Gloria Ríos, an actress and vedette born in San Antonio, Texas, who came to Mexico to work in the film industry, stood as the first official rock and roll singer in Mexico. When rock and roll began to make its mark, she incorporated it in her performances, dancing and singing in a mix of Spanish and English. She was known as the “Queen of Rock and Roll,” with her first rock recording in Mexico taking place in 1957. She was generally accompanied by the jazz ensembles led by Hector Hallal and later Mario Patrón, with whom she saw great professional success.

It was through film that rock and roll first reached Mexico. Many movies familiarized audiences with the genre, especially films for young people. We might highlight Los chiflados del rock and roll (Dir. José Díaz Morales, 1957), in which even traditional, adult singers like Pedro Vargas, Luis Aguilar, and Agustín Lara succumbed to the rock and roll trend. Critics were scandalized, decrying that these singers and composers of Mexican music had abandoned their values.

Yet the screening of U.S. films with young rock and roll performers in Mexico was a resounding success, inspiring people to seek out the dance moves and performances of their true American idols. We might especially note the incident that unfolded at the screening of King Creole (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1958), with Elvis Presley, at the “Las Américas” movie theater. People were so excited to see the King of Rock and Roll perform his smash hits that they started dancing, even removing some of the seats to make room. As a result, Presley’s films were banned in Mexico and

rock and roll was demonized as a bad and foreign influence on youth.

We should note that, at the time, Mexico was experiencing critical cultural polarization, with the proliferation of media, articles, and lifestyles imported from the north opening the floodgates of ever-sought-after “modernity,” clashing with the highly traditional and conservative society that sought to preserve its moral codes. Rock and roll was part of this imported modernity, despite its tugof-war with tradition and what was considered authentically Mexican.

By 1959, thanks to the inevitable success of rock and roll in the United States and many parts of the world, record companies in Mexico set out to record some of the youth bands that had begun to crop up a few years back. Young people who would play at parties and school gatherings started gaining traction at revue theaters and in emergent television programming. At the same time, certain radio stations with programming in English, which aired music hits from the United States, made space for these new groups that yearned to play rock and roll.

Most of the band names were in English, with the songs in English, too, but record companies requested that the songs be translated to Spanish. Singing in English limited comprehension to just a small sector of the audience. Furthermore, a government rule allowed just a certain percentage of songs to be aired in other languages. Thus, by the early 1960s, what came to be known as the golden age of rock-in-Spanish took off, though most of the songs were covers of U.S. hits.4 Thus, on the radio, one could listen to original songs in English but also to Spanish-language versions interpreted by Mexican groups and solo singers.

Another way of keeping up to speed with U.S. hits in Mexico was to read the popularity lists published in newspapers and magazines more-or-less regularly, with the most constant being Notitas musicales, which printed a list of the most popular songs in Mexico and the United States every month. This small-sized magazine published

By the mid-1950s, rock and roll, whose rhythm emanated from the United States, shook the world, and Mexico felt it, too. Rock became the rhythm of youth, sparking significant changes in lifestyles, belief systems, and dancing.

lyrics, too, which made it easier for readers to learn the songs.

I believe this to be the moment of highest musical confluence between the two countries, marking a clear phenomenon of appropriation and resignification as people yearned to embrace and experience the youthful modernity that had been imported to Mexico. In the early 1960s, a new rhythm from the United States started to make its mark in popularity listings: the twist, which was immediately incorporated in Mexican repertoires and recordings, but also in Mexican films, as people would dance the twist on screen, too.

The popular Mexican actor Cantinflas danced to Bill Haley & his Comets’ “Florida Twist” in the film El extra (Dir. Miguel M. Delgado, 1962). By then, Bill Haley had actually moved to Mexico. Likewise, Tin Tan and Resortes danced the twist in Pilotos de la muerte (Dir. Chano Urueta, 1962).

The formula of translating U.S. hits and then having local groups and solo singers reinterpret them persisted up until the mid-1960s, by which the emergence of more complex lyrics and musical genres put a brake on the translation trend.

By the early 1960s, many original bands had cropped up in Mexico, some with their own songs and names in English, but after the legendary Avándaro festival of 1971, rock and roll’s presence waned and became marginalized.

Though certain radio stations would continue to broadcast English-language music that was trending in the United States, disco was likely the most influential genre of the 1960s, bolstered by film and the discos that proliferated across Mexico, where people basically listened to imported music that had been recorded in the United States. Notable disco musicians flocked to Mexico to perform at night clubs.

Later, the emergence of the television channel mtv in 1981 revamped the impactful presence of U.S. American music in Mexico. Many musicians who had only been “imagined” through radio, recorded music, and publications up to that point would become real through the music videos that aired on television.

As part of the new opening to North America espoused by nafta, which transformed the commercial and cultural relationship between Mexico, Canada, and the United States, then department chief of Mexico City, Manuel Camacho Solís (1988-1993) fully authorized concerts in Mexico City, most of which would be rock and roll per-

The popular style known as Regional Mexican (Reg Mex), is actually not a genre with ties to Mexico and its regions. With a myriad of subgenres, this musical construct is a product of an active imaginary on both sides of the border.

formances. Up until that point, concerts had been subject to prohibitions, censorship, and other limitations, but this all changed when Mexico became a destination for U.S. tours. From then on, copious concerts and festivals ripened into a fruitful and permanent musical exchange between the two countries.

Today, the musical relationship between Mexico and the United States has reached new heights. Many Mexican musicians have moved to the United States, either temporarily or permanently. Furthermore, the constant tours and presentations for Mexican and Latin American publics are still on the rise, with avid audience members seeking entertainment with roots akin to their own.

Likewise, many artists’ children have been born in the United States and now seek to build their own musical careers. These youths are fostering a new identity, forged by their roots but also by their musical expressions.

To conclude, I would like to mention the popular style known as Regional Mexican (Reg Mex), which is actually not a genre with ties to Mexico and its regions. With a myriad of subgenres, this musical construct is a product of an active imaginary on both sides of the border, though it is most popular among migrants with Mexican roots in the United States. Reg Mex is a quest for one’s origins rooted in a nostalgic idealization of true Mexican identity, one that’s seemingly far-off, close as it may be.

Notes

1 “South of the Border (down Mexico Way),” a song by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr (1939), became a classical standard of popular music, with dozens of English and even Spanish versions becoming hits, as with Enrique Guzmán’s “Al sur de la frontera.”

2 In this article, I mention some of the events and situations that I deem significant to the musical relationship between the two countries.

3 Music in the two countries’ rural areas would require a different kind of analysis and methodological approach.

4 The presence of British performers like Cliff Richards, and of multiple popular songs from Italy, which seemed easier to translate to the Spanish, are also worth mentioning, though U.S. rock and roll was the most popular.

Mariana Flores*

Mexican Migration to the United States: Belonging, Identities, and Uprootedness A Literary Perspective1

The reconfiguration of the U.S.-Mexico Border in 1848 after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo led to the creation of the first migratory networks between Mexico and the United States.2 This, in turn, impacted the way Mexican literature constructed its own perspectives on migration.

To illustrate this point, we might highlight a then-incipient narrative form that addressed immigration in the United States: the corrido. This popular lyrical-narrative current emerged in both countries in the early nineteenth century. The genre reconstructed the precarious conditions in which Mexican immigrants found themselves upon being suddenly estranged and marginalized on their own turf after their land was annexed to the United States.

In the migratory context of these two countries, corridos pioneered the narration of migration and the condition of immigrants, casting light on injustice, tragedy, and persecution. Meanwhile, they also exalted the archetype of the migrant who not only avenges himself after being mistreated but also defends the weak in the United States: “I’ve gone into

*Mariana is a historian, screenwriter, and short-story writer; you can contact her at lamayaflores@gmail.com.

cantinas, punishing Americans. You must be the captain, the one who killed my brother. You caught him when he was unarmed, prideful American.”3

Mexicans’ literary writing in the United States during the nineteenth century was characterized by recurring

Diego Lozano / Unsplash.com

nostalgia. The group of writers behind this literature had experienced social, cultural, political, and economic fragmentation after the United States’ annexation of Mexican land. Later, from this period up until the early twentieth century, exiled and self-exiled Mexican intellectuals started moving to the United States in response to political instability in Mexico, as the armed conflict that sought to depose Porfirio Díaz led to the persecution of many Mexican citizens.4

El Sol de Texas (The Texas Sun), by Conrado Espinoza, is one of the first novels portraying migration to the United States during the Mexican Revolution. The novel was first printed in San Antonio, Texas, in 1926, amidst a thriving journalistic and literary Mexican migrant scene that had taken root in the United States.

Espinoza’s novel tells the story of a family that arrives in the United States in the hope of improving their lives. However, they face labor exploitation in the Texan fields. The main character then considers going back to Mexico’s countryside, noting that it’s better to be exploited by one’s own kin than by foreigners.5

In a similar tone, Las aventuras de Don Chipote o cuando los pericos mamen (The Adventures of Don Chipote, or When Parrots Learn to Suck) was published in the newspaper El Heraldo de México, recounting the abuses that Mexicans faced in the United States. This picaresque novel was published in Los Angeles in 1928 and wavers between comical satire and protest against the inhumane treatment migrant Mexican workers were subjected to. In the novel, Don Chipote and his friend Policarpio abandon their lives as farmworkers in Mexico in search of a more promising future in the United States, where they discover that Mexican workers are treated inhumanely and subjected to long workdays.

The literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tells the story of the then-incipient Mexican migration in the context of the new border, casting light on the disadvantageous working conditions that Mexicans faced, especially in the U.S. countryside.

The literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tells the story of the then-incipient Mexican migration in the context of the new border.

migration gained new meanings with the surge of the Chicano movement, which re-signified migration from the identity perspective in the context of the Civil Rights Movement.

These Chicano writers, of Mexican origin, tended to write about their Mexican roots and “gringo” (U.S. American) everyday life. Their uncertainty about whether they belonged to one culture or the other led to several specific adaptations and proclamations.

The first Chicano novel in Spanish, Y no se lo tragó la tierra (And the Earth Did Not Devour Him), by Tomás Rivera, was published in 1971. The novel portrays the daily lives of Mexican fieldworkers in the United States. Indeed, the main characters of Chicano novels tend to be representative of marginalized social classes and trades, questioning the concept of citizenship while problematizing the implications of what it means to be a Chicano in an immigration-heavy environment. These characters showcase the complexity of outsider citizenship with respect to the United States and Mexico.

The simultaneous rootedness and uprootedness, along with a certain nostalgia and the idea of the crossroads at the crux of being Mexican-American, would come to characterize Chicano works as a whole. Gloria Anzaldúa notes that one of the main features of Chicano writing, inhabiting two tongues as a product of the interstitial nature of the Chicano, gives way to subjectivities forged by migratory movement across the complex cultural relationship between the two bordering countries.

Seeking Identities: Chicano Literature and the Latin American Boom

By the mid-twentieth century, in the 1960s and 1970s, the literary narrative around the subject of Mexico-U.S.

While the first group of Chicano novels tended to emphasize preserving Spanish as the main language, the linguistic hybridity that characterizes this literature is undeniable. This is the first dissidence we can find in Chicano language: language itself. The writing is neither solely in English nor in Spanish, and it is impossible to textually transcribe. This feature has made an invaluable contribution to our way of addressing migration, the elements of the border, the mestizo, and bilingualism — but also gender and sexuality, as Gloria Anzaldúa would later prove.

Parallel to the Chicano literary movement, the Latin American Boom emerged as part of the project forging Latin America’s identity. The boom materialized the process of reinterpreting the region’s reality in contrast to that of other continents. It was mostly concerned with marking aesthetic, ideological, and discursive differences between Latin America, the European continent, and the United States, thus assuming a political and ideological position. Distance and specificity were set down in literature, highlighting certain features that Latin American countries shared in a continental effort to portray Latin America’s self-awareness.

This literary current boasts certain features that are relevant to understanding how both belonging and rootedness in certain territories are constructed, as its characters seek out belonging and reaffirmation through land and tradition.

This writing operates through myth, aiming to explain and situate the qualities that make Latin America what it is. That is, we may glean certain efforts to lionize what it means to be Colombian, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinean, while also transcending these labels in order to highlight the features that nations share.

The boom was the cause and consequence of the political effervescence in the region following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which unveiled a potentially different world order and the hope for political change, to which the writers of the movement subscribed. In its writing, the boom highlighted political positions and discursive and ideological contrasts to the United States.

Migratory Cartographies in New Latin American Literature

In the anthology Sam no es mi tío. Veinticuatro crónicas migrantes y un sueño americano (Sam Is Not My Uncle. Twenty-four Migrant Chronicles and an American Dream), published in 2012, Diego Fonseca and Aileen El-Kadi state,

Limiting literature to a national and regional project has stopped making sense, and instead literature has turned toward other concerns.

“There are no longer identities. Now there are identifications.”6 That is, we may simultaneously identify with various situations and contexts, but these would prove elusive, short-lived. Identity processes are in constant flux:

“You speak really good english. Where are you from?”

“Bolivia (Chile, México, Argentina, Cuba, all of the above).”7

This is an example of how new Latin American literature addresses the configuration and presentation of identities in migratory contexts, one of its main subjects. Given the great migratory movements of the late twentieth century, the representation of nomadic identities does not come off as fixed or exclusive.

From this perspective, Latin American writers no longer circumscribe themselves to a Mexican, Colombian, or Argentinean tradition the way the boom did. In fact, the main motifs in these new narratives involve globalization and contemporary migratory movement.

In 2015, the United Nations reported the existence of 244 million international migrants, and, in 2017, 258 million. The United States remains one of the main destination countries. Some 49.8 million migrants chose the United States as their destination from 1970 to 2017,8 one-fifth of the world’s migrants.

This change in global migration has led to a transformation of the U.S.-Mexico border and of the migration between the two countries. Migration has transcended the binational now that the United States stands among the top global destinations for all kinds of migration: labor, academic, qualified, and unqualified. Parallel to the shifts in Mexican migration, the country itself has also changed. Mexico is no longer a country that solely expels migrants toward the United States. Mexico is today also a destination and a transit country for migrants seeking the American Dream. Globalization has transformed migratory dynamics, and, in so doing, it has also altered our ways of narrating migration.

The writers that have followed the Latin American Boom all hold migration and mobility in common. Limiting literature to a national and regional project has stopped making sense, and instead literature has turned toward other concerns. Latin America fell out of fashion as a project that sought to define itself and to carve out a place for itself in the world; it fell out of fashion as a regional

or supranational project that aimed to configure a unique and specific identity.

In its stead, now there’s a need for polyphony as a way to make visible the multiple identities and identifications stemming from migration. This has awakened the need for a new Latin American narrative canon. New anthologies, such as McOndo, have emerged, with a myriad of authors engaging in dialogue in order to create a corpus and grant coherence to various texts with no apparent relationship among themselves. Cuentos con walkman (Stories with Walkman, 1993) also stands among the most relevant anthologies, as it contains certain principles regarding the new literature that has subverted the mestizo, global Latin America, born of television, fashion, music, film, and journalism — with writers no longer pressured to represent specific ideologies or countries. Similarly, we may look to the manifesto of the “Crack Generation.”9

The literary anthologies Se habla español: voces latinas en USA (Spanish Spoken: Latino Voices in the U.S.) and Sam no es mi tío (Sam Is Not My Uncle) both illustrate this new migratory reality with respect to the cultural paradigm that the United States has come to embody. They build uprooted characters who seem constantly displaced as they seek out the American Dream at all costs. These characters come off as critical of their origins and of the nationalism they’ve been raised with, but they also draw from memories and nostalgia as anchors that allow them to unfold within their own contexts.

Within these anthologies, a certain narrative shines through, describing various urban spaces without a coherent national line that would distinguish the author’s biography from what she writes. Thus, the narrated spaces and the ways of addressing the notions of place, belonging, and their articulation with the national acquire new ways of being told, and this, in turn, can be gleaned through a specific kind of writing.10

If we reflect upon how this narrative literature speaks to the migratory relationship between Mexico and the United States, we may note that it showcases the complexity of building identities as well as of the negotiations that migrant subjects carry out in relation to their countries of origin. Meanwhile, this cultural baggage allows one to adapt, to a greater or lesser extent, to one’s new context. That is, it adds complexity to what it means to be Mexican, expanding it beyond national belonging. The new narrative seeks to construct and represent heterogeneous, frag-

The new narrative seeks to construct and represent heterogeneous, fragmented, and specific identities.

mented, and specific identities. It answers questions like what it means to be a Mexican from Puebla, or a student in New York, or a lesbian, indigenous, and undocumented Oaxacan woman in San Diego.

Thus, the recent literature on migration to the United States has inherited an extraterritorial tradition that has left a cultural and political mark. Literature is no longer foreign to globalizing processes, and these issues include the reassessment of identity categories that have put people’s sense of belonging in crisis mode, affecting narrative tradition but also political or literary national projects.

Notes

1 This article is a product of the author’s master’s thesis, Migratory Culture in Twenty-First Century Honduran and Mexican Literature, and PhD thesis, The Cartography of Arrival in New Latin American Literature. Both are available at https://tesiunam.dgb.unam.mx/.

2 In 1836, Texas declared its Independence to become part of the United States. Then, in 1848, after the U.S. army defeated the Mexican army, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that officially ceded approximately half of its national territory to the United States, establishing the Rio Grande as the natural border.

3 Anonymous, “Corrido de Joaquín Murrieta.”

4 Ricardo Flores Magón, Mariano Azuela, Martín Luis Guzmán, and José Vasconcelos are among the most well-known authors of the “México de afuera” or “Outside of Mexico” generation.

5 Conrado Espinosa, El sol de Texas, in Kanellos, et. al. En Otra Voz: Antología de la Literatura Hispana de los Estados Unidos (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2002), p. 235-236.

6 Diego Fonseca and Aileen El-Kadi, eds. (2012), Sam no es mi tío. Veinticuatro crónicas migrantes y un sueño americano (Florida: Alfaguara, 2012), p. 6 (e-book).

7 Edmundo Paz Soldán and Alberto Fuguet, eds. Se habla español: voces latinas en USA. (Miami: Alfaguara, 2000), p. 10.

8 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Twenty Countries or Areas Hosting the Largest Numbers of International Migrants (millions),” https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/po pulation/migration/data/estimates2/estimatesgraphs.asp?0g0.

9 Jorge Fornet and Francisca Noguerol, “Narrar sin fronteras,” in Jesús Montoya and Ángel Esteban, eds., Entre lo local y lo global. La narrativa latinoamericana en el cambio de siglo (1990-2006) (Spain: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2008).

10 Gilda Waldman, “Desterritorializaciones (y reterritorializaciones) literarias. Apuntes sobre la literatura sin residencia fija en la actual narrativa latinoamericana: tensiones entre lo global y lo local,” in Verbum et lingua, no. 9, 2017, pp. 56-70.

Introduction

The Different Origins Of the Press and of Published Political Discussion in

Mexico and the United States

The only security of all is in a free press.

Thomas Jefferson

Each of the states is obligated to protect its inhabitants in the use of the freedom they have to write, print, and publish their political ideas without the need for a license, review or prior approval of the publication, as long as they observe the general laws in the field Federal Constitution of the United States of Mexico, 18241

The objective of this article is very modest: to develop an idea that might seem obvious but that, in the framework

*Juan Carlos is a researcher and the academic secretary of the Center for Research on North America, National Autonomous University of Mexico; you can contact him at jbarronp@unam.mx

of the 200 years of relations between Mexico and the United States, merits an initial review, with the reservation that there should be more deeper research into the matter in the future. That idea is that the media systems of the two countries were born and constructed in very dissimilar contexts, with different logics and dynamics,

Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor*

Bruno Martins / Unsplash.com

In the United States political discussion would take place in dozens of periodicals that would even be produced and used by different political actors, not only to express their ideas, but also as an entrepreneurial way of financing themselves.

marking substantial differences in their operations and socio-political importance.

Before taking up the matter at hand, it should be explained that this article is part of a developing theoretical proposal by the author, which has been called socio-cybernetic criticism. The idea is to study the functioning and mechanisms whereby the media system, in the United States mainly, and in the second place, in North America as a whole, seeks to strategically steer transnational virtual social interactions in cyberspace in North America and, from there, decisively influence the planet’s En glish-, Spanish-, and French-speaking populations. The media system is the product of the communicational interaction that does not take place in person in societies. Its functioning is not unilateral, but rather takes place in mutual interdependence and conflict with its surroundings, and the systems with which it interacts. It seeks to adapt to be able to continue and expand its power through transfers that occur in four programmatic fields. The first of these is that which codifies, regulates, and informs about what is happening.2

From this perspective, newspapers —which have been widely examined by communications scholars using different approaches that are not part of this reflection— can also be studied as an emblematic cultural product of the programmatic field that Luhmann called “news and reports,” which uses informational recursions to construct frames of preference about trivial events, giving them meaning.3 Simultaneously, from a critical perspective, it is a good idea to re-approach a moment of the historical process, particularly one that is distant and that is strongly symbolic, where a mass identification was created, for example, the different nationalisms, which have since then become strongly rooted, and then to deal with the impact these identities have had in the press. In this sense, it seems very difficult to follow proposals

like those of Adorno and think that today these national identities are transitory, but they are. And in times like ours, it is possible that they may be on the verge of great transformations, such as they were two centuries ago, although in a very different way.

Different Origins

To return to media systems, we can cite as contextual information and historical background that the use of the printing press for exercising journalism and the written publication of political opinions has a broad, diverse history in Europe that seems to date back to 1566 Venice. Since the seventeenth century, the first weeklies were produced in different Germanic cities and kingdoms, and in the Netherlands corantos or broadsheets were published daily. These were informational sheets that were precursors of newspapers. It is very possible that this was how the first Spanish-language official publications emerged as authorized reading material in the Spanish empire, both in Europe and its viceroyalties.4 In that same century, the first newspapers began to emerge in Great Britain, where, like in other European countries, pamphlets and gazettes began to appear, not as an official means of communication, but above all as a public space for questioning, for political discussion, and for criticism of those in government, a practice that since then has shown itself to be very profitable and which also led them to be the object of persecution, censorship, and closures.5

Starting from there, we could begin to infer how the importance of freedom of the press in the independence political discourse in the United States and in Mexico contrast with each other. In the former case, as we will see further down, political discussion would take place in dozens of periodicals that would even be produced and used by different political actors, not only to express their ideas, but also as an entrepreneurial way of financing themselves. This would lead to the first amendment to the Constitution in 1789 ensuring the freedom of expression with no regulation, following the principles laid down by Benjamin Franklin. To situate ourselves in the context, in that same year in France, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen established a similar kind of freedom of expression, but limited by the dictate that “its exercise shall not alter the order established by the law,” which

led to multiple lawsuits and administrative interventions to supervise and authorize publications’ content.6

In Mexico, seemingly following the French example, the obligation of states to protect their inhabitants so they could exercise freedom of expression was incorporated almost at the end of the 1824 Constitution. This included a potential, ambiguous caveat: “as long as they observe the general laws in the field,” as cited in the epigraph at the beginning of this article. We should also remember that, in contrast with the U.S. first amendment that links freedom of the press to freedom of religion, in the Mexican case, from the very first independentist harangues until 1857, the Catholic religion was a constituent part of the Mexican state, and therefore, the only one authorized to express itself legally in public.

Isaiah Thomas, the founder of Boston’s Massachusetts Spy in 1770, listed 350 existing newspapers in the United States in 1819. Of these, 300 were classified as federalist or republican. Key actors, including founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, participated actively in building printing presses and as media actors, at the same time that they were constructing the country’s political, institutional, and ideological bases.

Freedom of expression was not only an ideological issue, but also a very important economic matter. This is because the production not only of texts, but also of machines, installations, typefaces, ink, paper, etc., implied infrastructure, and often there would be disagreements precisely because of the publications’ partisan implications. This often led to the polarization not only of the politiciansbusinessmen, but also of the editors, writers, and even the workers.7 The companies that provided inputs, such as cotton and tobacco plantations for paper, the extraction and industrial transformation for making ink and machinery pieces, as well as the mail services and stagecoaches that participated in distribution, made this industry not only key for the country’s economic growth, but also an important promotor and potential raiser of consciousness of the political interests of those involved and of the links between political ideologies, production practices, and the consumption of cultural goods.

On the other side of the border, as Álvaro Fleites explains, in New Spain, the royal monopoly on the press made the publication of dissident writings virtually impossible.8 The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 even brought about

Fortunately for freedom of the press, but unfortunately in terms of the loss of human lives, the press in Mexico today has become a very diverse, combative ethical force, which carries out heroic measures in defense of the freedom of expression.

the destruction of the writings and works of the members of their order. Possibly as an echo of the publications that arrived from Spain, and due to the French invasion of the Spanish peninsula, political thought divided into three currents: the French-leaning tendency, the liberals, and the absolutists. It is often supposed that this could have influenced the thinking of the insurrectional movements like those headed by Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos. However, in 1810, in contrast with the hundreds of newspapers and thousands of readers in the Thirteen Colonies, the newspaper El despertador americano broke the monopoly of the royalist press, managing to print seven issues, and turned the already existing Gazeta del gobierno de México practically into a counter-insurgent medium. Later, publications like El telégrafo were created as part of the elites’ reaction to discredit and impair the rebellions that would follow.

Conclusions

The Mexican and U.S. media systems had very different origins and radically diverse system operations, which marked the history of both industries for the following two centuries. The U.S. industry started off from a tradition of discussion and polemics, seeking to create, cultivate, and convince demanding and pragmatic local political markets and businesses, which led it to become the media powerhouse that it is today. In Mexico, on the other hand, these practices and exercises in freedom of the press arrived much later. Mexican newspapers before independence seemed to be media for public relations that the elites used to inform their subjects.

Fortunately for freedom of the press, but unfortunately in terms of the loss of human lives, the press in Mexico today has become a very diverse, combative ethical force, which carries out heroic measures in defense of

the freedom of expression. Just in this century, Article19. org has documented the murder in Mexico of at least 153 journalists in circumstances possibly related to their work. One explanation could be that the local and national powers-that-be dream of returning to the origins when there was a monopoly of information and ethics. We must hope that our society is intelligent enough to never go back there. Things are not so easy on the other side of the Rio Grande either. Corporate media have built an oligopoly that seems very far from the ideals that helped give birth to that country’s media system. On the other hand, fortunately, just like in the past, hundreds of civil organizations and social movements treated like minorities keep up the work for freedom of expression from the rank and file and in their communities. They use information and communication technologies in new ways and in accordance with the political concerns and discussions of our time, within the challenges that contemporary surveillance capitalism imposes.

1 Art. 161-IV.

Notes

2 Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor, Sociocibernética crítica: un método geopolítico para el estudio estratégico del sistema de medios de comunicación no presencial en América del Norte (Mexico City: cisan, unam, Universidad de Zaragoza, 2018).

3 Niklas Luhmann, La realidad de los medios de masas, Javier Torres Navarrete, trans. (Mexico City: Anthropos; Universidad Iberoamericana, 1996).

4 Z. Simeček, “The First Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam Newspapers: Additional Information,” in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, vol. 50, fasc. 4 (1972), pp. 1098-1115.

5 Moira Goff, “Early History of the English Newspaper,” in 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection (Detroit: Gale, 2007).

6 Jorge Antonio Climent Gallart, “Análisis de los orígenes de la libertad de expresión como explicación de su actual configuración como garantía institucional,” Iuris Tantum. Revista Boliviana de Derecho, no. 22 (2016), pp. 236-253, ‹http://www.scielo.org.bo/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext &pid=S2070­81572016000200011&lng=es&tlng=es›, accessed May 21, 2022.

7 Stephen Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” in B. Brennen and H. Hardt, The American Journalism History Reader (New York: Routledge, 2011).

8 Álvaro Fleites Marcos, “La prensa novohispana y española ante la revuelta de Miguel Hidalgo (1810-1811),” Procesos históricos no. 32 (2017), pp. 3-24.

Embajadores de Estados Unidos en México Diplomacia de crisis y oportunidades (U.S. Ambassadors in Mexico: Diplomacy and Opportunities)

Roberta Lajous, Erika Pani, Paolo Riguzzi, and María Celia Toro, comps. El Colegio de México / Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores Mexico City, 2021, 369 pp.

Embajadores de Estados Unidos en México. Diplomacia y oportunidades (U.S. Ambassadors in Mexico: Diplomacy and Opportunities) explores U.S. diplomats’ careers in Mexico for its almost 200 years of independence. Compiled by Roberta Lajous, Erika Pani, Paolo Riguzzi, and María Celia Toro, the prologue is written by Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s current minister of Foreign Relations. Silvia E. Giorguli, the president of the El Colegio de México, contributes introductory remarks.

The book’s fourteen articles are the product of a collaboration between the El Colegio de México and the Ministry of Foreign Relations, which promoted the participation of researchers from both institutions, as well as academics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico

and the José María Luis Mora Institute for Historical Studies. The book commemorates the two centuries since Mexican Independence and the bicentennial of diplomatic relations between the United States and our country.

To begin, Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello reflects about Joel R. Poinsett, the first U.S. minister in Mexico during the presidency of Vicente Guerrero. The author describes the circumstances that led Pointsett to become an ambassador, such as the fact that he spoke the language, his interest in the country’s affairs, and his experience in Buenos Aires and Chile.

In the chapter about Nicholas Trist, Amy S. Greenberg describes the diplomat’s diligence and his influence on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which put an end to the war between Mexico and the United States with the transfer of almost half of Mexico’s territory to the U.S. She also underlines his efforts in negotiating the territory’s handover.

Marcela Terrazas y Basante focuses on the tenure of James Gadsden, who dealt with the aftermath of the war with the United States, Mexico’s loss of territory, and bilateral problems. She also describes Gadsden’s intention to increase his country’s land surface by taking advantage of the Mexican government’s weaknesses and demonstrates how slavery was revitalized in the U.S. as a result of the expansion of its territory.

Erika Pani describes both countries’ civil wars (Mexico, from 1858 to 1867, and the United States from 1861 to 1865) and how the different U.S. ambassadors (John Forsyth, Jr., Robert M. McLane, and Thomas Corwin) dealt with the challenges the conflicts brought. Among the most representative of these difficulties were the separation of Church and State, the end of slavery in the United States, the intention to open up trade for U.S. businesses, and the challenges of the Civil Wars themselves.

Emmanuel Heredia González details the seven-year mission of John W. Foster in Mexico. In particular, he mentions the consolidation of the U.S. community in the country and the strengthening of ties with Mexican society due to the possibilities of investment for U.S. companies, as well as the first steps toward bilateral treaties and the pacification of the international border.

Luis Barrón looks into the repercussions of World War I in Mexico as a result of its relations with the United States and how Ambassador Henry P. Fletcher managed to maintain cooperation between the two countries in the complex context they faced.

This book is a reference for understanding the current context of bilateral relations. It explains the interconnection between the two countries around issues such as border management, trade relations, migratory governance, and their positioning vis-à-vis the rest of Latin America.

Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow symbolized a break with the conflictive diplomatic relations, leading them toward understanding and cooperation, as María del Carmen Collado explains. Morrow was recognized for dealing directly with the conflicts that arose with attachés or the president himself, in addition to proposing reasonable solutions and using cultural diplomacy for bilateral issues.

In his text, Paolo Riguzzi enlarges on the actions and ideas of Ambassador Josephus Daniels when Mexico expropriated its oil, explaining how bilateral equilibrium was reached and stable diplomatic relations between the two countries were reinforced.

Blanca Torres details the work of George S. Messersmith as the U.S. representative in Mexico during World War II. Outstanding among his efforts were his contribution to increasing negotiating capabilities between the two countries during a war, under cover of a propaganda campaign, and how he attempted to reinforce economic and political ties and contribute to the beginning of a new era in international relations.

Soledad Loaeza presents the reader with the context in which Ambassador Francis B. White exercised his tenure, and the effects the Cold War had on bilateral relations. She highlights the costs for Mexico of the United States being a super-power and how cooperation between the two countries after World War II played out.

According to Ana Covarrubias Velasco, Tomas C. Mann was ambassador as the Cuban Revolution made the Cold War colder in the hemisphere. Covarrubias describes how, amidst regional and world instability and with on-going border problems, Mann maintained stable bilateral relations.

From the very beginning of his tenure, actor and diplomat John Gavin was not well received as ambassador by Mexico’s government, media, or scholars and experts. Miguel Ruiz-Cabañas Izquierdo explains that, although he tried to come to a stable trade deal, he had differences

with Mexico about how to deal with the Central American problems of the day, cross-border drug trafficking, or the economic crisis, such as Mexico’s foreign debt.

Roberta Lajous’s text deals with one of the greatest contributions to U.S.-Mexico trade relations, the North American Free Trade Agreement, attributable in large part to the work of Ambassadors John D. Negroponte and James R. Jones. She also describes Jones’s contribution to the 1994 bailout of Mexico and the process of trade integration that followed it, transforming bilateral relations.

Lastly, Mario Arriagada and María Celia Toro describe the mission of Ambassador Carlos Pascual, his interest in broadening economic relations between the two countries and improving the country’s security. In addition, the authors review the challenges Pascual faced in his fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, as well as the circumstances he dealt with due to the Wikileaks scandal.

The perspectives this book presents are diverse, given that the authors are historians, internationalists, or diplomats. This means that they delve into different areas of knowledge in their desire to look both at diplomacy and history to understand the seventeen U.S. envoys the book covers. Each chapter describes how diplomacy played a central role in the relationship between the two neighboring countries thanks to the ambassadors, representatives in times of change, since some of the most significant events in our country’s history took place during each of their tenures. The authors also go into detail about the diplomats’ origins, motivations, and respective careers, and, naturally, they also analyze how their backgrounds influenced their decisions.

This book is a reference for understanding the current context of bilateral relations. It explains the interconnection between the two countries around issues such as border management, trade relations, migratory governance, and their positioning vis-à-vis the rest of Latin America. Presenting a broad context of the tenure of each ambassador, it is well-structured, with each chapter focusing on a representative moment and, at the same time, divided into small moments that make up the most important actions by these foreign representatives in Mexico. Undoubtedly, this volume is a good starting point for learning and researching the history of U.S. ambassadors in Mexico.

Ana Luna Staff writer