FOUR WAYS U.S. CAN DEEPEN TIES

MEXICO CITY--The new presidents of Mexico and the United States are
simultaneously beginning their administrations. The most visible
novelty is 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.

The more constant 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 importing
country--the United States and its estimated 14.8 million illicit-drug
users--to judge or condemn countries--Colombia and Mexico--that are
only responding ("Long live the free market!") to North American demand.

Beyond this unbearable Manichaeism 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--until now, a very weak--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 U.S. Mexican workers pay taxes and contribute an
estimated $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 gastarbeiter, 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 mutations 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 U.S. needs to import workers to keep its economy, which in 2000
reached its highest degree of expansion in 50 years, growing.

Now, with the U.S. 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%, 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 is enough
pent-up demand for workers 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 aimed at the creation of infrastructures, housing,
agricultural production and the growth of goods and technological services.

The United States requires ever more prosperous, well-nourished and
educated Mexican and Latin American markets 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% 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 government 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.