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It's a good thing that Tony Garza, the new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, is a career politician. His skills as the former chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission and longtime confidant of President George W. Bush will come in handy as he navigates the chilly waters of U.S.-Mexico relations.
When Bush took office in early 2001, he proclaimed that no bilateral relationship was more important than that with Mexico. His first overseas visit was to Mexican President Vicente Fox's Guanajuato ranch, and Bush hosted Fox as his first official state visitor to Washington. On September 6, 2001, Fox addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, and in a TV appearance on Larry King Live he boldly proposed that the two countries institute sweeping immigration reforms.
That was five days before September 11, which has changed everything, especially U.S.-Mexican relations. Suddenly, immigration reform was unthinkable with homeland-security issues thrust to the forefront. It didn't help that President Fox waited four days before phoning Bush with condolences over the terrorist attacks.
AMBIVALENT FEELINGS. Relations between Bush and Fox seemed to go on ice. Few memorial wreaths were placed in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Author Guadalupe Loaeza tried to organize a friendly "we're with you" ceremony outside the embassy, but fewer than a dozen of her close friends and relatives agreed to show up. In a way, it was further evidence of the ambivalent feelings Mexicans still have toward their Northern neighbor 155 years after the last U.S. invasion of Mexico -- which resulted in the loss of half the country's territory.
Mexico's behavior certainly raised eyebrows in Washington. After all, the country's exports have tripled in nine years, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And Mexico received a U.S.-sponsored $40 billion emergency loan that helped it recover quickly after the 1994 peso devaluation. So, when the Fox Administration, now serving a three-year stint on the U.N. Security Council, indicated that it wouldn't support a new U.N. resolution backing the war in Iraq, its favorite-neighbor stature was further diminished.
"The honeymoon was ruined by September 11th," says Rafael Fernández de Castro, dean of international relations at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "But the bilateral relationship has been in the deep freeze for some time now because Bush has shown no interest in spending precious political capital on Mexico."
POLITICAL IMPERATIVE. Enter Garza, 43, who arrived in Mexico early this year on a mission characterized by plainspokenness. In a Feb. 21 speech to college students in the city of Puebla, he minced no words: "There's an old Spanish proverb: 'In good times, all your friends know who you are. In bad times, you know who your friends are.' We often talk about the special relationship between our countries. The real test of that is stepping forward for each other in difficult times."
Mexico held firm. Even after Washington abandoned efforts to win a new U.N. resolution, Fox went on national TV to emphasize that Mexico would have voted no. Why did he risk further irritating the Bush Administration? The one-word answer: Politics. Mexico holds midterm congressional elections in July.
Fox, who in 2000 became the first opposition President after 71 years of one-party rule, needs a congressional majority lest he become a lame duck for the remainder of his six-year term. And he had been hurt by a perception that he had embraced the Bush Administration without getting much in return.
GROWING ANTI-AMERICANISM. Like Gerhard Schröder in Germany, Fox adopted an arms-length stance toward Washington, and his gamble paid off. Polls show 85% of Mexicans back Fox's position on Iraq, and even his political opponents praise it.
By resisting Washington's "either you're with us, or you're against us" pressure, however, Fox also contributed to growing anti-Americanism in Mexico. A poll conducted by Mitovsky International since the war began indicates that only 26.3% of Mexicans view the U.S. favorably, vs. 55% in October, 2001. Worse, 28% of those polled said they viewed the U.S. with "hate". That's up from 19% just 18 months ago.
Now, some Mexicans fear retaliation in the form of truckloads of Mexican goods being held up at the border or U.S. agricultural officials barring the import of Mexican avocados because of, say, mysterious skin blemishes. Garza say the U.S. won't play those games, although he allowed in a breakfast with foreign correspondents on Apr. 3: "During the [U.N.] debate, there was a sense that reprisals were a possibility."
Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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