Research Papers / Mexico - United States: Trading Partners, but not Allies (research) [2]

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Mexico - United States: Trading Partners, but not Allies

2. US-MEXICO COOPERATION THROUGH KEY PERIODS

Despite the fact that the United States and Mexico do not consider themselves allies, they have been able to achieve a high degree of cooperation throughout key points in history. During World War II, the Cold War era, and post 9/11, the two countries have been able to put their differences aside and enjoin with each other in a cooperative attitude. In the time since NAFTA has been implemented, there has also been a renewed sense of the need to cooperate. This chapter investigates US-Mexico cooperation during key periods in history.

2.1 US MEXICAN CONNECTION DURING WORLD WAR II

Very few Mexican citizens physically fought in World War II, but the nation as a whole supported the United States in its fight against Axis powers. Although President Lazaro Cardenas had declared that Mexico would keep their neutrality in the 1930s, in the years just before 1940 a great deal of political conflict developed between the political groups in Mexico, political conflict which mirrored the conflict in the world at large. As tension developed between the Mexican Conservative candidate, Juan Almaza, and the Mexican Industrial Revolution (PRI) candidate, Avila Camacho, the United States became concerned that fascism or communism might take hold in the nation. As a result, the United States offered Cardenas both public aid, and clandestine aid. As the campaign to lead Mexico progressed, so did the nation's economic difficulties. As economic difficulties in the country approached epic proportions, the United States attempted to help the Cardenas regime by giving Mexico US backed government loans, and by purchasing silver from the government.

In 1938 Cardenas took the step of nationalizing the Mexican oil industry . This was another attempt to solve the nation's economic problems. The United States was willing to accept nationalization of the oil fields, provided that the nation of Mexico would compensate the companies that were multinational and had been involved in oil production in Mexico. Typically, when a country nationalizes their oil, it removes all private companies from ownership. Thus, it was important to cooperation between the nations that Mexico offered to compensate the multinationals that would be deprived of their investment.

Between the time that the oilfields were nationalized and new leadership was elected, Germany and Japan, two of the Axis powers, attempted to buy Mexican oil. However, the deals soon fell through; the Mexicans were asking for raw materials in payment rather than for cash, and both Germany and Japan were unable to unable to provide the materials to pay for the oil. When Camacho was elected President in 1941, he offered Mexican oil to the United States rather than continue to sell oil to the Axis and fail to receive acceptable payment.

Camacho, the President-elect, did not take the vow of office until December 1940 despite the fact that the election took place in July. During the gap, Mexico was wracked with internal political difficulties. The defeated electoral candidate, Almaza, continued to contest the election while his right wing forces solicited the help of Almaza's followers in the United States. Under Almaza's prompting, US followers began to buy guns and to conduct subversive activities in Mexico, activities that were directly against the election of Camacho. The issue became so serious that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent the FBI and provided military intelligence to assist Camacho and the Mexican Army as they attempted to put down Almaza's followers.

Part of the reason for this largesse was based in a larger fear. Roosevelt was aware of the difficulties that Cardenas had encountered with his efforts to sell oil, and he was vitally aware of what could happen if the instabilities of the Mexican government allowed the Nazis to gain a foothold in Mexico. As it was, Roosevelt believed that German spy rings were already operating in the nation, and he was concerned for the United States should the Nazis become too firmly engrained in Mexico. At the same time, Roosevelt's advisors suggested taking a less aggressive role towards Mexico, rather than just demanding that the country evict the Nazis. The State Department warned Roosevelt that he should show an attitude of tolerance towards Cardenas; the Mexicans had supported the Germans during World War I and the United States could not afford to be placed in the position of defending its borders from attack from the south. The United States offered to support Cardenas and Camacho against Almaza and his followers, provided both Cardenas and Camacho would support the idea of "hemispheric defense."

In supporting Cardenas and Camacho, the United States received a guarantee of support for the hemisphere; Cardenas and Camacho received a guarantee that Almaza would be put down. The situation forced Cardenas and Camacho, who were political enemies, to endeavor to work together for a unified solution to the Almaza problem. Salinas pointed out that this exchange only highlighted the vast ideological differences and life approach between Mexico and the United States. Mexico seemed oblivious to the danger from the Nazis, and was very involved in its own political machinations, while the United States was concerned with efforts to defend the entire hemisphere.

Once the election was over, the two countries began discussing trade and cooperative agreements of various types. The ongoing dispute over railroad access was settled; a dispute over use of water from the Colorado River was resolved; border issues were agreed upon; and the United States agreed to provide loans to Mexico through the resource of the US Export-Import bank. The United States, on the other hand, received Mexican cooperation on the issue of hemispheric defense.

Other military issues related to hemispheric defense were not as easy to resolve. In particular issues related to the oil fields and their valuation kept showing up. The Mexicans were unwilling to take the word of the United States on other issues and in fact insisted on much of the informal discussions being memorialized. According to Salinas there were eleven major issues that Mexico pressured the United States to capitulate on. The United States continued to be concerned with defense while the Mexican government tended to be concerned only with effects on Mexico. However, this attitude was to change once Pearl Harbor was attacked. It is at this point that the Mexican government appeared to realize for the first time that there was a danger from the Germans and Japanese to the Mexican people.

In the few years that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Mexican government was more willing to allow the United States to 'interfere' in its military business. They agreed to allow the United States to fly war planes into their air space, to put up radar, to allow un-uniformed US forces on Mexican soil, and to use Mexican airports as landing zones while on missions, particularly to and from the Panama Canal, which was under US control. In return for the Mexican concessions, the United States helped modernize the Mexican weapons, helped train Mexican troops, and even fielded a Mexican air squadron that saw battle. According to Lenchek raw materials from Mexico eventually filled 40% of the United States need for raw goods, essentially allowing the Americans to keep going in their war effort.

Once the Mexicans realized it was unlikely they would be directly attacked, they become more conservative in their dealings with the United States and reverted to their former military stance. The standoff continued until 1942, when Axis forces sunk the Mexican oil tanker the Potero de Llano. The incident was enough to infuriate the Mexicans, who finally declared war on the Axis powers. It was at this point that the Aztec Eagles, the Mexican squadron of P-47 Thunderbolts, was authorized for action supported by the United States. Thirty one pilots flew in the squadron, and five died for the Allies.

2.2 US MEXICAN CONNECTION DURING THE COLD WAR ERA

By the 1960s, the United States considered the political situation in Mexico to be "complicated". Intelligence analysts were becoming concerned about the role of communism in Mexico, and about Mexico's increasing relationship with Cuba. The same protests that were pervading American culture were also taking place in Mexico. The perceived complexity of the situation was determined in part by the way that the two nations looked at life in general. Although the United States and Russia were the two main players in the Cold War, the world in general was being held hostage to the polarity established by the two countries. Other nations of the world were convinced that the globe was on the brink of destruction; as Sloan put it, "Within this context, the superpowers engaged in a global struggle for nothing less than 'the soul of mankind,' each advancing their own agendas for the betterment of all."

The United States demanded the right to progress and insisted that progress involved using capitalism to modernize. This process also required bringing poor nations into the global economy and helping the poor people of third world nations to raise their standard of living and quality of life in the same way. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, believed that poor people of the world needed help, also. Instead of using capitalism to improve the standards of life, however, they believed that communism was the key to improving the quality of life. Though the end goal was the same, the ideologies that were being used to justify the actions were absolutely at opposite ends of the spectrum. The nations of the world at the time were in continuous fear that the difference in ideology would deteriorate into a show of military and economic power that would envelop poorer and less developed nations.

Mexico at the time was one of the poorer and developing nations. More importantly perhaps was the fact that it was sitting literally on the coat tails of one of the Cold War principals. Mexico was one such nation. Although the United States believed that the Cold War was an all or nothing battle, a world wide fight to keep the world safe from communism and all that the term entailed, Mexico as a whole did not regard the situation the same way. America may have believed it was on an ideological journey to keep the world "free", but Mexico struggled just to feed its citizens. Any ideological discussions took second place to the harsh reality of the struggle of daily living.

Americans were fighting the evil Russians, but the Mexican government could overlook Russia's ideologies in the reality of life. Thus the Cold War was not a crusade, but rather a battle of two powers who had so much money that they could muster the military power to trounce less well developed countries. The harsh reality, however, was that no nation, particularly one so close to the borders of the United States, could afford to ignore the possibility that the country would get involved with military actions with its nemesis. In understanding the politics of the time it is important to understand that fears of the Cold War pervaded every facet of society, in every nation that had access to international information. Nations were scared, and we must be clear that it was not just Russia that they were afraid of. It was Russia, it was America, and it was the clash between the countries that concerned the other nations.

During the Cold War, countries tried to put their relationships in context of what was normal. Eventually countries were forced to begin to learn with the tension of the Cold War, rather than just pretending that the situation would just go away. As countries began to understand that the Cold War would not just dissipate or dissapear, they began to express their feelings about the process of the Cold War.

Sloan argues that as nations and their peoples began to discuss the policies that were involved in the Cold War and to examine the conditions that had led to the Cold War, they began to develop a context of the War. In developing that context, they learned how to survive and even prosper from the multiple viewpoints. As the topic became more familiar to more people, some of the mystique disappeared. Ironically, neither the United States nor Russia found it easy to deal with other nations being "in their business." As Sloan states, " ...Third World peoples appropriated the rhetoric, ideologies, and symbols of the Cold War for their own purposes. In doing so the multiplicity of texts within the Cold War context fractured the bipolarity the superpowers had worked so assiduously to maintain." According to Sloan, the Mexicans came to regard the Cold War in much the same way they regarded the Mexican Revolution: as an ongoing struggle between the people and [their] oppressors. The dialogue reached a peak in 1968, the year that Mexico hosted the Olympic games.

In understanding the overall context of Mexico's involvement in Cold War politics, it is important to remember first that youth in general had a great deal to do with politics of the time, both in United States and in Mexico. Political rhetoric was soundly rejected by youth and replaced with their own, not always logical, understandings. In the case of Mexico, youth adopted their own generalized understanding of communism, while rejecting the rhetoric of the United States. In general sympathies of the average Mexican citizen rested with communists, rather than what they perceived to be the American Imperialists. Sloan suggests that some of the reason that this occurred might be attributed to the manner in which Communists pushed their agendas. While the United States pushed the capitalist/imperialist ideology as a single front, in what amounted to a take-it-or-leave-it fashion, the Communists would work with groups and align with them in various alliances and forms of alliances in order to advance their agenda. Citizens were not, therefore, required to accept all of a package or reject it all. The Communists gave plenty of leeway in their approach to life. The Americans, on the other hand, maintained a united front. This concept simply did not work in Mexico.

In Mexico, the Communist Party was perceived as one way to get close to one's people, la gente. It spoke of solidarity and a love for the family of man. The ideology of the time suggested that any organization which purported to represent 'la gente' would garner public support. In America, the Hippies worried about the "people," while politicians worried about "issues." In Mexico, however, the situation was different; both the politicians and the youth culture worried about the 'people.' The net affect lent legitimacy to the arguments of the Mexican people that Communism more nearly represented their lives and society.

There was a great deal of controversy over the interchanges between the United States and Cuba. Castro had been elected and had converted the country to Communism. Given the closeness of Cuba to the physical boundaries of the United States, it caused the politicians in the United States a great deal of concern. It left the Mexican government in quite a different position, however. The United States saw Castro's Cuba as an absolute threat, while the Mexicans saw the conversion of the Cubans to Communism as more nearly resembling the Mexican Revolution. Complicating the situation, however, was the location of Mexico in relation to the United States. Mexico found itself caught between the physical boundaries of the Imperialist United States, and the ideologies of Cuba's Castro. When the United States began to pressure Mexico to cut its ties with Cuba, Mexcio reacted very strongly. America went so far as to try to have Mexico expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS) after the country refused to cut ties with Castro.

Eventually, though Mexico had refused to sever its ties with Cuba, the President de Mexico issued a statement that indicated that the Cuban Revolution needed to be accomplished without outside interference, much in the same way the Mexcians had accomplished their own revolution. The statement was intended to give the Americans the impression that the nation was supporting their ideological point of view. As time went on and students and young people continued to rebel, the Mexican government gradually came to utilize Communism as a scape goat, insisting that Communists had infiltrated the country and caused disquiet. As Sloan poitned out, "The United States and the Soviet Union filtered national events for the purpose of surveillance and control. Mexicans did this as a means to advance their own agendas."

2.3 POST 9/11

Valeriano & Powers (2008) have stated that "Interstate relations between the United States and Mexico are fracturing" in a post-9/11 world. They cite three reasons for the fracture: the attacks of 9/11, immigration complaints emanating from the United States, and the rise of Mexico's democratic institutions. Valeriano and Powers insist that prior to 9/11, relations between Mexico and the United States were very collaborative. Since the attacks, they insist, interactions between the countries are now negative rather than optimistic. Indeed, they posit, attitudes between the countries are now the lowest that they have been since the Mexican-American War of 1848. The source of this negativity, they report, is not due to any one event. It is due, rather, to a combination of factors that have been building for years.

Issues began, they insist, with the war on drugs. The war on drugs, they believe, focused attention on the border between the two countries. After 9/11, however, that border focus has resulted in the belief by many Americans that terrorists can come over the border from Mexico, hidden in the vast numbers of illegal aliens that are believed to be crossing the borders regularly. This places Mexico in the uncomfortable position of denying that terrorists are inside their borders and headed for the United States, while at the same time being very concerned that this situation might possibly occur. Hakim asserts that one of the byproducts of these discussions is the inescapable conclusion that the United States has stopped trying to accommodate any of Mexico's needs, in the spate of concerns relating to the border between the two countries. While the topics of border control, narcotics trafficking, and access to terrorism are multifaceted, and even interrelated, the topics all condense to the same concept: the United States regard's Mexico's borders as a threat, and Mexico's needs are getting lost in the shuffle of border-related topics. The net result of the situation is the same dichotomy that has been noted when discussing the other issues.

2.4 NAFTA AND BEYOND

According to Wise, the post-NAFTA environment between NAFTA and the United States can be characterized by the description 'uneasy, uncertain, and unpredictable.' Wise asserts that the dichotomies which have always been present in Mexico have become even more pronounced. The difference between Mexico's well to do and poor is very pronounced, and the contrast between the modern and the ancient is equally clear. Even the political system has its dichotomies; Wise suggests that it is typical to see a member of one of Mexico's oldest political families side by side with a member of a technocratic bureau.

Wise suggests that the nation of Mexico is hovering between the old and the new, and the country will eventually go one way or another. Either the old-fashioned system will prevail, or will the new, democratic system prevail? NAFTA has helped to point out all of the possibilities that are available in the modern world, and that will be available to Mexico should development continue. Yet at the same time, it may well have simply succeeded in point out to the general populace what change will bring. It remains to be seen whether this nation, whose residents have been so concentrated on reform, will chose to stick with a democratic model or will regress into the land of "what is familiar."

2.5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This chapter began with the contention that the United States and Mexico do not consider themselves allies, but have managed to cooperate when history demanded. Throughout World War II and the Cold War, the countries were able to put their histories aside and cooperate. The investigation has shown, however, that after 9/11 and post-NAFTA, the situation is somewhat different. Instead of pulling together and emphasizing similarities, the countries have instead fallen prey to their differences. Whether or not they will not be able to pull together and recover enough to face common enemies remains to be seen.

During World War II, we saw that conflict between the political groups in Mexico mirrored the general upheaval in the world at the time. The Mexican government was going through reelection. The Mexican Industrial Revolution (PRI) candidate, who lost the election, caused a great deal of political concern, not only inside Mexico but for the United States as well. The failed candidate's ties to foreign powers led the United States to make decisions that it might otherwise not have made. The United States offered the departing president public aid for Mexico, and also inserted clandestine aid to attempt to help alleviate difficulties within the country.

As Mexico's economic difficulties increased, the United States provided more financial aid. Government backed loans provided a great deal of support, as did the purchase of Mexican silver by the United States government. The governments of Mexico and the United States were able to reach agreement on the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry after Mexico agreed to pay foreign companies that were being evicted from the oil fields. Even though Germany and Japan had tried to buy Mexican oil, they were unable to pay for it using the agreed-upon medium. The Mexican government chose to sell the oil to the United States, in order to ensure they would get paid. The United States, for its part, agreed to support the departing Mexican president and the President Elect in return for Mexico's agreement to support defense of the hemisphere.

Until Germany attacked a Mexican oil tanker, the nation of Mexico did not seem to understand the dangers of World War II. While the United States concentrated on the dangers without, Mexico concentrated on the dangers within. Although the two countries were able to work out a basic operating agreement to provide hemispheric defense, the United States was forced to give in on a wide variety of other issues in order to win Mexico's support. In addition, once the danger of attack seemed to pass, Mexico seemed to largely lose interest in defending the hemisphere. The incidents of World War II served to define the dichotomy of the difficulties between the two nations, with Mexico concerning itself with Mexican interests while the United States concentrated on hemispheric protection.

The same pattern repeated itself during the Cold War era. The United States came down firmly in support of a democratic and capitalistic economy, but Mexico supported Communist Cuba and the socialist way of life. However, Mexico regarded the battle as being more of one of survival, rather than of ideology. Mexico was realistic enough to understand that it could not afford to clash with the United States given that they shared borders. It would make no sense, from the Mexican perspective, to support Russia even if they agreed with them from an ideological perspective. The Mexicans, however, regarded the Cold War from the same perspective as they regarded their own Revolution; it was an ongoing struggle between people and their oppressors. The sympathy of the average Mexican rested with Russia and Cuba, yet they were forced to support America in order to remain physically safe.

Eventually the President de Mexico issued a statement that indicated that the Cuban Revolution needed to be accomplished by Cubans, for Cubans. The statement was carefully chosen and was intended to give the Americans the impression that the nation was supporting their ideological point of view. However, the Mexican government did this to support and advance their own agendas rather than out of any sense of obligation for the United States or the rights of Cubans. In that sense we see again the reflection of the support of the Mexican agenda rather than the international level of support that the United States espouses.

Post 9/11, the mood between the two countries has remained very pessimistic. The United States concentrates on border issues which they assert affect the international community, while Mexico concentrates on its peoples. The dynamic of the situation between the two countries sets up an uncomfortable circumstance that interferes with relations between the two nations. The United States believes that Mexico allows terrorists to take advantage of their somewhat liquid borders, and Mexico believes that they are being accused of harboring terrorists. The United States regards the borders of Mexico as a threat, and as a result, they are unwilling to work with Mexico on any of that country's needs. The net result is a reflection of the same dichotomy already discussed.

Finally, the implementation of NAFTA has served to reinforce all of the conditions already discussed. The difference between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' is quite pronounced. This dichotomy exists in other areas as well, including the differentiation between old-fashioned Mexican political families and modern technocrats who are genuinely interested in the Mexican people. The reasons that the United States and Mexico have been able to achieve a high degree of cooperation and integration in trade but not in the military domain have been defined. It is clear a difference in ideology guides the levels of integration and cooperation between the nations.