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Mexico, 5/1/07
Key Lecture Points:
• The 2000 mile border between Mexico and the United States continues to be a point of debate. Thousands of Mexican laborers cross the U.S. border each year pay (some paying as much as $7000 to guides). These individuals help staff the agricultural, service and construction sectors of the U.S. economy and are an important component of the Mexican economy with their estimated $20 billion in remittances each year. But they also place a significant financial burden upon the state and local governmental infrastructures in the US. President Bush’s Immigration Reform proposal has angered many in his own party in that it would provide a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for Mexican (and other) workers in the US.
• The flood of Mexican labor into the US should be read as a result of the dynamics of the Mexican experience. Since the time of Spanish colonialism, Mexico has been characterized by a sharp disparity of income from the richest to poorest. 40% of Mexicans live below the poverty line, while Carlos Slim Helu was just declared the world’s second richest person. The divide has widened, particularly since the 1994 passage of NAFTA which undermined the Mexican agricultural economy and driven poorer farmers out of work and over the border.
• The 2006 Mexican presidential election revealed a sharpening political divide in the nation. Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon narrowly defeated his opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (the margin was .58%). Calderon faces the difficult task of boosting a struggling Mexican economy, where 25% of the labor force is underemployed. In addition, he must find ways to reduce the force of the lucrative Mexican drug cartels and address domestic strife in Chiapas and Oaxaca. He must do all of this while also facing the pressure from an emboldened Mexican Left and Obrador who declared himself the “alternative president” of Mexico.
For More Information:
• CIA Analysis of Mexico: www.cia.gov
• BBC Analysis: http://news.bbc.co.uk
Books For Further Reading:
• Preston, Julia. Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004. 594 pages.
Description: The Story of Mexico's political rebirth, by two pulitzer prize-winning reporters "Opening Mexico" is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make the transformation, the book gives new and gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of major episodes in Mexico's recent politics.
Click here to order.
• Joseph, Gilbert M. and Henderson, Timothy J. The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 2003. 792 pages.
Description: A detailed guide into the history and culture of Mexico through its history of uneven modernization, foreign influences, and history of economic and political evolution.
Click here to order.
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