Mexico in a Changing World
WITT, ADDISON DE
Challenge and Response Mexico in a Changing World By Addison De Witt Guadalajara I? the not-so-remote bad old days of Presidents Luis Echeverría Alvarez and José López Portillo, it was...
...A recent study analyzed such material, published between December 10,2001 and January 6,2002 in 10 north-of-theborder newspapers—eight in the United States and two in Canada...
...Echeverria had the notion that Big Business should be government business...
...On the down side for Mexico were Internet access (27.4 per 1,000 people, for a 49th place finish), women in the economy (60th), influence of organized crime (64th), and the average number of days it takes to open a new business (71 st...
...Farther afield, the same study found all Mexico-related articles in the Japan Times dealt with economic matters...
...If nothing else, the diversity of the press coverage of Mexico shows how difficult it is to get a handle on the country these days...
...The biggest boost to Mexico's image as a world power came at the Monterrey Summit...
...For the curious, it should be noted that the three stars in the survey were Finland, Iceland and Singapore while chronic laggards were Bangladesh and Zimbabwe...
...Because he was miffed by Mexico's April 19 vote at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva...
...Is anti-Americanism on·the decline...
...A completely different slant was found in Miami, a city with a large, mainly non-Mexican Latino population...
...The struggle against poverty is a struggle for peace and justice...
...A normally critical Mexico City weekly described him as "a mediator of international stature on issues of global relevance...
...The uneven nature of the "Mexican miracle" prevents it from being an obvious "10" in the colloquial sense...
...All this has cooled the desire of Mexico's Leftists (particularly strong in Echeverria's time) to see their country as a paladin of the developing nations...
...An arrangement was finally worked out whereby Castro agreed to leave immediately after his speech...
...They have also targeted the vigilantism of such programs as Operation Safeguard in Arizona, Operation Rio Grande in Texas and Operation Guardian in California, declaring that these have resulted in the death of 1,236 Mexicans, many from hunger and thirst in the desert...
...In the Los Angeles Times, representing a city with a huge Mexican-American population, there was a two-way tie (at 20 per cent) between Mexico's economy and its commercial relations with other countries...
...Larson and Negroponte in Monterrey, and O'Neill in Washington, made it plain that the U.S...
...Fox distanced himself from the Castro-Chavez faction and managed to reestablish his cordial personal relationship with Bush (overshadowed by 9/11...
...Victoriano Huerta...
...According to his detractors, his new pragmatism has bred disingenuousness...
...The latter reject this rosy view, insisting that the global operations of Wal-Marts will wreak havoc in the mom n' pop business sector of host countries and lead to a system of international peonage...
...Without rejecting global capitalism, for instance, he made it clear that he wants it to have a human face...
...Some have accused Annan of rhetorical overkill, but he set the tone for the meeting by declaring that "after the Monterrey Summit, the world will never be the same...
...If Mexico's performance at Monterrey is an augur of its future international posture, there is reason to be optimistic about world development...
...The Cuban leader informed him of a last-minute decision to come to Monterrey, news Fox swallowed like bitter-tasting medicine...
...That simple representational portrait has now been replaced by what to many is a bewildering impressionist creation...
...Canada displayed a greater consensus about Mexico than the U.S...
...Does Mexico still champion Fidel Castro...
...The growing complexity of Mexico's position is a reflection of changing global conditions...
...But it represents a big step forward from the dismal situation of yesteryear...
...In the early years of the last century, everybody saw revolution...
...Castro, who termed the world economy "a gigantic casino," found a kindred spirit in Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's populist president...
...This commits the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies to aid in stemming the flow of illegals...
...Castaneda is hated with particular fervor by the dwindling Castroite Left, whose members view him as a figure with all the least appealing qualities of Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold...
...Another highlighted Japan's wish to negotiate a bilateral NAFTA-like agreement between the two countries...
...On the night of April 22, matters took a dramatic turn...
...One example had to do with the Japan National Oil Corporation's desire to obtain exclusive rights to seek new oil deposits in Mexico...
...Meanwhile, with its move away from the rigid economic control of Echeverria, the oil dependency and reckless public spending of Lopez Portillo and the corruption-cum-cronyism of Salinas de Gortari, Mexico has moved up the international economic ladder...
...recession on Mexico, and a group of general pieces...
...At the seat of the Federal government, the Washington Post's runaway Mexican topic was immigration (31 per cent), trailed by drug trafficking, oilandthenebulous general category in a three-way tie (15 percent...
...Challenge and Response Mexico in a Changing World By Addison De Witt Guadalajara I? the not-so-remote bad old days of Presidents Luis Echeverría Alvarez and José López Portillo, it was fairly easy to describe Mexico's global stance: stridently nationalistic, pro-Third World, anti-yanqui, and ostensibly in favor of guerrilla liberation movements—while waging a vicious low-intensity "dirty war" against its own would-beChéGuevaras...
...Take the press...
...Cuba was the only country that refused to sign the Monterrey protocols, but Chavez recommended that world development "change course" and called upon the Monterrey powers to pronounce a "world social emergency" and create a gigantic "Humanitarian Fund...
...Negroponte, a hawkish former ambassador to Mexico with wide Latin American experience, has left talon marks wherever he's been assigned...
...In the New York Times, the top subject (28 per cent) was oil prices, followed by a three-way tie (at 12 per cent) involving cultural themes, the effect of the U.S...
...They claim that while internationalism of this variety may cause short-term dislocation (downsizing among executives, relocation of firms to foreign countries, low wages among workers in Third World nations), it will eventually generate a prosperity that lifts all boats...
...In the Muslim world, there were 14 Mexico-related articles in the Teheran Times during the designated time frame, all economic in nature...
...Addison De Witt is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist who lives in Mexico...
...Some may be surprised that Mexico's per capita income, standing at 40th of the 75 countries studied, is a source of optimism...
...Porfirio Diaz...
...wants no part of a UN commitment to reduce global poverty by having member nations earmark 0.7 per cent of their GNP for that purpose...
...But his statement that "no Mexican functionary" told Castro to stay away was immediately challenged by Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's Parliament...
...After previously abstaining when Cuba's human rights record came up, this time Mexico voted with those asking for an improvement...
...Indeed, many of Fox' countrymen hope the skills he displayed at Monterrey will be replicated in Mexico City during the remainder of his term...
...At the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey this past March 18-22, Castaneda sought to quell rumors that he had asked Castro not to come...
...In this cage of snarling lions, Fox has executed some deft whip-and-chair maneuvers...
...Well yes, but the three cheers have definitely been reduced to two...
...There it was apparent that the country is now being seen as an honest broker between the "globalophiles" and "globalophobes," as the bitterly contending factions are continually referred to in the Mexican media...
...Fifty per cent of the Miami Herald's Mexico stories concerned immigration, some of them showing the lack of enthusiasm often exhibited by affluent Cuban-American Republicans for additional waves of Hispanic immigration...
...At the opening of the gathering, Fox declared: "We cannot permit limited well-being nor risk living in a world marked by exclusion and injustice...
...Second place was also a draw (at 15 per cent)—between the increase in Mexico's minimum salaries, which impacts on remittances from family members in the U.S...
...At least they resist Stalin's heroic malapropism that "the sharks of finance capital are stretching their tentacles across the Caucasus...
...The Taliban may be on the run in Afghanistan, but the fundamentalist hydra is sprouting new heads in most Muslim communities elsewhere...
...The National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) serves as a watchdog on human rights violations against Mexican border-crossers...
...Increasingly, the friendly Chés and Fidels of that world are being replaced by the sort of men who tortured and castrated the Afghan Marxist leader Mohammad Najibullah before putting him to death...
...At home he is under fire for his free-swinging style, he is in conflict with prominent figures of his own National Action Party (PAN), and he recently had his knuckles rapped by CNDH...
...today it is facing 11th-century fanatics equipped with the most sophisticated 21 st-century technology...
...For Mexico, the brightest spots were GDP (where it placed 10th, just behind Brazil and ahead of Spain), per capita income ($8,914 annually), deficit-or-surplus as percentile of GDP (a modest -1.1), costs of institutional change, and domestic competitiveness...
...Though both were wrong, their agendas were clear...
...The variety that emerged is astonishing...
...The former are advocates of transnational big business along the neoliberal model...
...That is false," said Alarcón to a reporter for a Mexico City weekly...
...Pancho Villa-Venustiano Carranza-Alvaro Obregón vs...
...If our planet is a stage and Mexico is a player, we should think in terms of a performer who was once a juggler and, à la Sammy Davis Jr., has broadened his repertoire to include singing, dancing, celebrity mimicry, and serious dramatic roles...
...The last was a dramatic improvement from the Echeverria, Lopez Portillo and—after the early luster faded—Salinas eras...
...Nowadays Mexico-oriented articles and editorials are shaped as much by what might interest readers as by actual events...
...At the same time, the Fox administration has shrewdly avoided any appearance of that deadliest of political sins: excessive subservience to tío Sam...
...Sensing betrayal of a historic relationship, Castro called Mexico's vote "the last straw...
...In an attempt to deal with the controversial issue, President Fox, the most pro-American chief executive since Miguel Alemân (1946-52), has initiated the so-called Regional Development Program for the Northern Border...
...It examined how they were functioning in key areas like per capita income, education, gross domestic product, percentile relationship of surplus or deficit to GDP, costs of institutional change (how political upheavals have affected corporate planning), domestic and general competitiveness, environmental laws, tax evasion, popular confidence in political leadership, social spending, the quality of technology (including cell phones, personal computers, Internet access), and use of the Internet in business...
...The human rights agency, acting on a complaint by Mexico City columnist Carlos Ramirez, chided Fox for so pointedly "recommending" that the press portray his administration in a more favorable light...
...In a seven-minute address that for him was probably of record brevity, Castro had insisted: "The consensus the world's masters are try ing to impose upon this conference is that we (the developing nations) should resign ourselves to humiliating alms...
...Though he conceded that Castro had "an absolute right" to attend the conference, he protested that "this surprise, at the last moment, creates many problems for me"—an obvious reference to security considerations...
...In the middle range were protection of intellectual property (Mexico was 44th), government interference in business (41st), antimonopolistic policy (38th), computer ownership (44th, at 51 per 1000 people), and the confidence of people in their government (43rd...
...By contrast in Chicago, where there are fewer Hispanics, the Tribune concentrated (23 per cent) on Mexican culture— folkways, cuisine, etc...
...As I noted in a previous article ("Mexico On a Tightrope," NL, November/December 2001), he is a one-time radical gadfly and NAFTA critic who has come to recognize that the real world is not all black-and-red...
...Compare that with Castro's sour observation that "the present world economic order constitutes a system of plunder and exploitation...
...The two men who came away from the conclave with the most prestige were UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and President Fox...
...Why did Castro first produce the taped conversation now...
...In the immediate postmillennial era, a hundred flowers of polycentrism have bloomed...
...Before an audience of international journalists, Castro played the tape of a telephone call from President Vicente Fox...
...Close study of the elements that account for Mexico's present economic ranking shows a puzzling mix of strengths and weaknesses...
...in the 1970s, noisy neutralism...
...Symbolic of the trend away from simplistic radicalism and toward a more sophisticated approach to Mexico's world role is Foreign Secretary Jorge G. Castafieda...
...President George W. Bush and his entourage were scheduled to arrive that day and the two motorcades actually passed each other in the street...
...But there is both more and less to this than meets the eye...
...He did so despite making it clear that he had little sympathy with the views of the two U.S...
...There the big obsession was oil, with 46 per cent of the Toronto Star's stories and a whopping 66 per cent of the National Post's related to that commodity...
...Again yes, but—to echo Evelyn Waugh—"up to a point...
...A recent report on global competitiveness, issued by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with Harvard's International Development Center, covered 75 countries...
...Their attitude was highlighted by Larson's churlish comment that "we're not here to participate in a beauty contest...
...summit delegates, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Alan P. Larson and Ambassador to the United Nations John D.Negroponte, or Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill...
...This evolution has not gone unobserved by Mexico-watchers...
...and the "dirty war" of the 1970s, about which bitter memories clearly linger...
...Equal skepticism greeted Castaneda's assertion, made through a spokeswoman, that "there was no pressure, influence, appeal, suggestion or insinuation by the United States that the Cuban President not participate in the summit...
...Carranza-Obregón...
...As for the "up to a point" department, over the years a good deal of Mexico's anti-Americanism has derived from human rights violations against Mexicans try ing to enter the United States...
...It certainly won't be for Fox...
...In Monterrey, however, he seemingly could do no wrong...
...Only yesterday the West's enemy was Machine Age Marxists (who at least paid lip service to ideals of progress...
...still, immigration coverage was not far behind (18 per cent...
...Commission officials have been especially vocal since 9/11, pointing out that security fears generated by the terrorist attack have resulted in a 25.2 per cent increase in unacceptable acts against Mexicans...
...Lopez Portillo believed Mexico was going to float to First World affluence on a sea of oil...
...A week before, an article in the Gulf-based Arab News noted that India's cement industry fears competition from the Mexican leviathan Cementos de Mexico (CEMEX...
...An intriguing prediction, appearing December 18,2001, was that "Mexico could cease being a Latin American nation...
...During the 1910-20 decade of revolutionary strife, with rare exception North American news stories about Mexico focused on the desperate struggles of Francisco I. Madero vs...
...or Villa-Emiliano Zapata vs...
Vol. 85 • May 2002 • No. 3
