Mexico’s Position Questionable
Its approach to the War in Iraq has thrown a wrench in its bilateral relations with the U.S.
By Rubén Navarrette, Jr.

For the United States, dealing with Iraq was easy. The challenge will come in dealing with Mexico.

Relations between our two countries have never been smooth (Note: The American Southwest used to be under different management). But nor can anyone remember the relationship being this tense and mutually frustrating.

And to think, these were supposed to be the best of times. When Vicente Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive and the grandson of an Ohio businessman, clinched the Mexican presidency in July 2000, many thought that Mexico and the United States would fit together como anillo al dedo (like a ring on a finger.)

Fox fed that perception by promising to look out for the
interests of the 20-22 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States. His was a bold vision—to unite Mexicans on both sides of the border. Yet that was easier said than done. These are two distinct tribes separated not just by a border but by 150 years of
bad blood, hurt feelings, and competing nationalism.
One imagines that couldn’t have been further from Fox’s mind as he stood on the White House lawn next to President George W. Bush in early September 2001. The guest of honor at Bush’s first state dinner, Fox beamed as his amigo Jorge declared that the United States had no more important relationship in the world than the one with Mexico. Fox also addressed a joint session of Congress.
With Mexico’s stock soaring, it seemed likely back then that Fox and the Bush administration would get what they wanted from Congress: a “regularization” deal between countries affording millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants some form of legal status.

Then came the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left Americans frantically searching the globe for friends and allies. They waited for Mexico—its neighbor and trading partner, the country with which they had been told they had this most “important” of relationships—to publicly declare its support, pledge its solidarity or offer its oil or other resources. And they waited. And waited. Y nada.

In the Mexican Congress, nationalistic politicians demanded that Mexico resist being a pawn of the United States and stay neutral in the war between the Americans and Al Qaeda. There was even internal conflict within the Fox cabinet, with some advisers urging that Mexico should
support the United States and others insisting that it declare its independence.

Finally, nearly a month after the attacks, and after everyone from the French to the Japanese had rushed to the Americans’ aid, Fox returned to the White House to offer his country’s support. He was received graciously, but there was no mistaking the look on President Bush’s face. It was one of utter disappointment over a friend’s betrayal.
The administration acknowledged further disappointment recently when Fox tried to undermine its efforts to win United Nations approval for military action against Iraq. As a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Mexico argued that Iraq be given more time to disarm. And even after a U.S.-sponsored war resolution was withdrawn, Fox wasn’t ready to call it a day. Instead, just hours before the bombs began to fall across Baghdad, he gave a national address on Mexican television where he said he “regretted the road to war” and lamented that the nations of the world lacked the “creativity to keep the peace.”

That went over big in a country where polls taken a week into the war in Iraq showed 90 percent of Mexicans opposed to it. But it didn’t go over nearly as well in the United States, where many Americans have come to realize that—in the new Mexico, as in the old—friendship and loyalty are one-way streets.

Americans are right to be upset by Mexico’s behavior and to question how a country that uses the U.S. economy as a pressure valve by exporting millions of Mexican workers and then collects $10 billion annually in remittances could so cavalierly declare its independence from the United States.
Fox must be kidding. This notion of Mexico freeing itself of the United States is just wishful thinking. Of course, the same may be said for those Americans who insist that we can do without Mexico. Not likely—at least not until Americans learn to rough it without their Mexican short-order cooks, hotel maids, agricultural hands, construction workers and nannies.

Recent scenes from the battlefield have convinced some Americans that they won’t have a stable relationship with regions like the Persian Gulf or Middle East until they ease their dependence on foreign oil. Now all they need to understand is that, before they can enjoy any stability in their relationship with Mexico, they have to kick their addiction to domestic labor.