Mexico and U.S.: Close, Yet Somehow Distant

By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 05, 1997; Page A14

MEXICO CITYThe gringoaccented U.S. businessman who introduces himself
to radio listeners here as Burton Helms epitomizes all that Mexicans
abhor in their northern neighbor: dubious intentions, patronizing
arrogance, sly interventionism.

The advertisementa blatantly nationalistic plea by Mexico's formerly
staterun telephone monopoly for customers to shun foreign competitors in
the newly privatized telephone marketpokes fun at various U.S. policies
considered distasteful to Mexicans, from the HelmsBurton trade sanctions
against companies doing business with Cuba to the U.S. drug certification
process for foreign countries.

With its buffoonish gringo character, the ad illustrates the conflicting
attitudes Mexicans and Americans sometimes have toward each other and the
complex, often contradictory relationship that is evolving between the two
countries.

President Clinton is to arrive here today on the first Mexican visit of
his presidency to find a neighbor that seems ambivalent if not
antagonistic toward the often overbearing giant to the north.
Governmental relations generally are cordialand relations between
Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo seem warmbut feelings are
cooler on the streets and in the legislatures.

As the United States and Mexico become more culturally, economically and
politically intertwined, they are simultaneously more divided over
immigration and drug trafficking with resentment building on both sides
of the border. While their fortunes often seem nearly inseparable, there
is rarely a sense of shared problems or common future, except in academic
circles and at high levels of business and government.

"Clinton comes confident that he is considered a 'friend' because he has
rescued us twice, no matter what the [U.S.] Congress thinks," said Marco
Rascon, an outspoken congressman from Mexico's leftist opposition party,
in a recent newspaper commentary. "Clinton represents those who propose
intentionally provoking a crisis in Mexico to generate a 'conditional
rescue,' which effectively results in the U.S. imposing its own conditions."

Such bitterness might surprise Clinton, who stuck his political neck out
to push for passage of the controversial North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), who stitched together a $50 billion bailout when the
Mexican peso collapsed in late 1994 and who battled congressional efforts
this year to decertify Mexico as a cooperative partner in the campaign
against drugs.

But far from receiving plaudits, the United States gets pounded daily in
the Mexican press and on the floor of Congress here.

"There's a lot of irritation against the U.S. government," Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, the centerleft Party of the Democratic Revolution candidate
for mayor of Mexico City, said in an interview.

When Mexican officials visited the White House to help plan Clinton's
visit, they recommended that he tailor his speeches to winning the
support of the Mexican public, partly by drawing a clear distinction
between his proMexican attitudes and the supposedly antiMexican actions
of the U.S. Congress, according to Mexican officials.

Zedillo, in a session with U.S. reporters on Friday, conceded that
relations in "recent weeks were not particularly smooth."

"The key challenge for the president is to repair the breach," said a
White House official, noting the frayed feelings and lingering distrust
between the two countries. After a stormy winterduring which Mexico
arrested its antidrug czar on narcotics charges while the U.S. Congress
thrashed Mexico in the certification debate and enacted more stringent
immigration lawsenior officials in both governments are eager to
emphasize their friendship.

"There's a tremendous amount of commerce and other links, but it's not
the kind of family or personal relationship . . . that is fundamental in
a meaningful and deep relationship" built a mutual trust, said Thomas F.
"Mack" McLarty, the president's special envoy for the Americas.

"We have to jumpstart the confidence level," Foreign Minister Jose Angel
Gurria told reporters Friday. "We have to get working together again."
Ten bilateral agreements are to be signed during the visit, the cornerstone
of which is the scheduled release of a joint assessment of the drug plague.

How have relations become so ambivalent when NAFTA has boosted
U.S.Mexican trade almost 60 percent in three years, making Mexico the
thirdlargest U.S. trading partner; when the popularity of things
Mexicanfrom food to music to professional baseball playersis booming in
the United States; when record numbers of Mexicans and other Hispanics
are moving to the United States and exerting more influence over
U.S. politics; when Mexican workers in the United States, both legal and
not, are sending billions of dollars back to their home country
every year?

At the heart of the bumpy U.S.Mexican relationship are the issues of
drugs, immigration and official corruption.

Clinton's aides have admitted that they are concerned about potentially
devastating photo opportunities in which Clinton is shown with his arm
draped around a Mexican official or business leader who could be
associated a few months later with drug trafficking. A senior White House
official noted, however, that "Mexico isn't the first place where we've had
that concern."

U.S. officials all but ignored the issues of drugs and corruption during
the 198894 administration of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari,
who was universally praised in Washington for liberalizing the Mexican
economy.

Today, however, with Mexican drug cartels and transporting an estimated
70 percent of the cocaine and other illegal drugs consumed in the United
States, U.S. officials have been forced to confront the drug problem more
vocally.

Corruption accompanying the escalating power of the drug mafias is
spilling onto the U.S. side of the border. NAFTA also has many U.S.
detractors, who complain that it has opened the border to drug
traffickers and illegal immigrants while pushing jobs south to Mexico.

The voterrich border states of California and Texas, which often suffer
the consequences of drug and immigration troubles, drive U.S. policy. On
the other side, nationalistic Mexicans expect their president to defend their
national dignity and rebuff what they see as U.S. strongarm tactics and
discrimination. The resulting clash is more often political than
ideological. Officials often have found it easy to blame their neighbor
for difficult domestic problems.

Zedillo said on Friday that many of the most complex issues are blurred
by "a lot of noise" from extremists. "It is inevitable that in a
relationship as intense and complex as the one we have, that voices which
are not necessarily rational are heard from time to time," he said.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company