FOUR KEY TOPICS THAT DEFINE U.S.-MEXICO AGENDA

The new presidents of Mexico and the United States are simultaneously
beginning their administrations. It is worth noting that Mexican President
Vicente Fox has a clear, popular mandate, while George W. Bush occupies the
White House under a cloud of suspicion, having lost the popular vote but
having won the election, thanks to five U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Yet, the real news lies elsewhere: Never has the relationship between
Mexico and the United States been closer. After a century and a half of
often regrettable confrontations, Presidents Lazaro Cardenas and Franklin
D. Roosevelt took a new path. When Cardenas' government nationalized U.S.
oil companies in Mexico in 1938, Roosevelt did not send in the Marines.
Instead, he negotiated, and Mexico agreed to compensate the oil companies.
There have been other problems between Mexico and the United States since
then, but it will always be possible to resolve them through negotiation.
In general, this principle has predominated, and it is one that suits both
countries. Canny, old Don Luis Cabrera, an early 20th-century agrarian
theorist, stated it well when he said: "On the battlefield, the gringos
will always defeat us; at the negotiating table, we always have the advantage."

Four principal items define the Mexico-U.S. agenda. All four will come up
when Fox and Bush meet Friday in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Drugs. The elimination of the insulting U.S. annual process of
certification and decertification is the first step toward better antidrug
collaboration with Mexico. It is impossible for the United States and its
estimated 14.8 million illicit-drug users to judge or condemn countries
like Colombia and Mexico that are only responding ("Long live the free
market!") to North American demand.

Beyond this unbearable Manicheism lies a proposal by Jorge G. Castaneda,
Fox's foreign minister: Evaluate what has worked and what has not worked in
current strategies; consider how the markets can be influenced and price
mechanisms juggled to make narco-traffic less lucrative, and thus lessen
both profits and corruption. On the other hand, U.S. demands against capos
and their mafias in Mexico should be matched by U.S. action against drug
lords and their mafias in the United States.

At the end of the road, there is only one solution to this terrible scourge
that affects us all: Legalize, or decriminalize, the use of drugs. The
problem is, this would have to be a global decision, without exception. The
benefit is that even though drug addicts would continue to exist, no one
would become rich through their sufferings. That is what happened when
Prohibition was repealed in the United States in 1933. There continued to
be drunks, but there were no more Al Capones.

Labor. The flow of Mexican workers to the United States is the result of
two factors: the absence of employment in Mexico and the need for labor in
the United States. Our workers do jobs that no one else wants to do.
Without them, there would be less food, services and fiscal resources in
the United States. Mexican-American workers pay taxes and contribute $28
billion annually to the U.S. economy. They also send $6 billion home annually.

But beyond the economic data, these workers are exactly that -- workers,
not criminals. They are bearers of human rights and culture. They deserve
protection and respect. They deserve, in the case of the undocumented, a
new U.S. amnesty law, and while the two new governments are negotiating new
accords, they should consider a program modeled on the German gastarbeiten,
or guest-worker program.

In any event, the indispensable presence of the Mexican worker in the
United States should not be subject to the internal gyrations of the U.S.
economy. In California, former Gov. Pete Wilson used immigrant workers as
scapegoats for the state's difficult transition from a military-based, Cold
War economy to a post-industrial, high-technology one. Alan Greenspan,
chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently said the United States needs to
import workers to keep its economy, which in 2000 reached its highest
degree of expansion in 50 years, growing. Now, with the United States at
the portals of a mini-recession, what will Greenspan say? What will Bush
say with respect to the power of the migratory work force? And what will
Fox say, considering that his long-term objective is that, in a globalized
world, not only merchandise should circulate freely, but also people; not
only things, but also workers?

Trade. Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has become
the eighth-largest exporter in the world, with a jump in exports from about
$40 billion in 1993 to $110 billion in 1999. In the last six years, trade
between Mexico and the United States has grown 113 percent, making Mexico
the second-largest trade partner of the United States, after Canada.
Bilateral trade between Mexico and the United States grows at such a high
rate that, by 2004, it should exceed that between the United States and Europe.

How will the U.S. mini-recession affect its economic relationship with
Mexico? The wave of layoffs in the last few weeks has already hit
DaimlerChrysler of Mexico. During the last few days, while visiting Los
Angeles and New York, I witnessed once again the dynamic of the North
American economy: The velocity of technological development is so
impressive that it can be said that the United States is entering a period
of fewer employees and better employment. Yet, there remains enough pent-up
demand to absorb the unemployed. Nonetheless, an economic sneeze in the
United States can mean pneumonia for Mexico.

At the Iberoamerican Forum held in Mexico City last November, Mexican
entrepreneur Carlos Slim rightly underscored the U.S. economy's need for
Latin American markets that can absorb its products. That requires, added
Slim, long-term financing for Latin American countries guided toward the
creation of infrastructure, housing, agricultural production and the growth
of goods and technological services. That is, the United States requires
ever more prosperous, well-nourished and educated Mexican and Latin
American markets in order to ensure its own economic health.

Energy. This theme may dominate the Bush-Fox meeting in view of the growing
energy crisis in the United States. Prices go up, and energy declines.
California seems on the verge of being left in the dark. An enormous
blackout threatens the Northeast this summer. The need for electrical power
grows at the rate of 6 percent annually in the United States. Bush will
propose a common North American energy market. Fox will offer a new vision
of border cooperation concerning electricity and natural gas, which could
end up forcing Mexico's Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission to be
both public and efficient.

Fox's electoral triumph gives Mexico democratic honorability in the eyes of
both the U.S. government and the American people. If with the governments
of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which cast so much authoritarian
suspicion on Mexico, Mexican diplomacy won its victories with bravura
alone, today, more than ever, we can negotiate with the gringos with pride,
discretion and legitimacy.