Mexico’s bluster, Mexico’s pride

LET’S FACE IT, if an unarmed U.S. citizen had been shot in the back and killed by a Mexican federal agent at the border, the American public would be up in arms. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo would probably call for a punitive military expedition into Mexico, and television’s Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs would be right behind him.

So, on the one hand, the outrage being expressed by Mexican politicians and commentators over the fatal shooting Dec. 30 of an immigrant smuggler by a U.S. Border Patrol agent is not only to be expected, it’s justified. Yet the enflamed rhetoric coming out of Mexico cries out for a deeper analysis as well. The shouting that surrounds this incident fits into a pattern of anti-American bluster that Mexico’s elites use to distract their countrymen from the domestic troubles that push so many people northward in the first place.

In 1995, not long after California was embroiled in a nasty fight over Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant ballot initiative, I found myself standing in front of a very poor Catholic congregation in a tiny village in the Sierra del Tigre mountains in Jalisco, Mexico. The priest called me up to the altar and introduced me to his flock as a Mexican American journalist from California, where “our people are being persecuted.” He invited me to say a few words, from my own experience, about the anti-Mexican climate here. The intended moral, of course, was that as bad as things were in the village, they should be thankful they weren’t in California being mistreated by the Americans. The irony of a relatively privileged Mexican American being used as an example of the downtrodden to a group of indigent Mexicans was extraordinary.

The Mexican media has turned Guillermo Martinez Rodriguez, the 18-year-old smuggler who was killed by the Border Patrol, into an icon of Mexico’s campaign against the American proposal to build 700 miles of wall along the border. The incident has also provided convenient fodder for a resurgence of Mexico’s inverted nationalist rhetoric. The shooting of a man in the back for throwing rocks at border guards emblemizes Mexico’s feeling of humiliation at the hands of the United States. And, oddly enough, humiliation is not far from the core of Mexican nationalism.

Where U.S. nationalism is arrogant, self-righteous and fundamentally aggressive in nature, Mexico’s is more indignant, self-pitying and defensive. That’s because Mexican nationalism was largely forged in a negative context. While U.S. nationalism emerged out of a string of military victories against the British, the Indians and the Mexicans, Mexican nationalism arose out of the wounds suffered at the hands of Anglo Texan secessionists, the loss of nearly one-third of Mexican territory to the U.S. and defeat by the French in 1864.

For more than a century now, the ongoing migration of Mexicans northward to the United States has only compounded the national wound. That 9% of Mexican citizens have made the wrenching decision to seek a future abroad -- many times under the most difficult conditions -- cannot but be a source of embarrassment to Mexico.

Throughout its history, it has been easier for Mexico to deploy a defensive nationalism than to deal with its internal doubts, let alone admit its own culpability in the nation’s deep-seated corruption and mismanagement. So practiced is the Mexican political elite in raising its hackles over mistreatment of its citizens by the U.S. that when President Vicente Fox and his foreign minister did not at first react hysterically to the incident, they were accused of being submissive tools of the United States.

Even before the shooting incident, Mexican commentators were using inflammatory rhetoric to denounce the wall and suggestions to further criminalize the undocumented. One newspaper, El Excelsior, in Mexico City went so far as to compare such proposals to ethnic cleansing. Yet few Mexican politicians seem to see the irony of their pretending to protect the civil and human rights of Mexican nationals abroad when they can’t protect them at home.

Furthermore, far from helping emigrants, such rhetoric only leads to the deterioration of U.S.-Mexico relations, a situation that historically has resulted in increased discrimination in the U.S. against not only Mexican nationals but also Mexican Americans.

There is little doubt that the proposal to build a wall between the two countries is as insulting to Mexicans as it will be ineffective. And the killing of Martinez Rodriguez is a troubling incident that deserves investigation. But the Mexican political elite shouldn’t pretend that its rhetoric is going to persuade U.S. lawmakers to reject heavy-handed proposals to stop the illegal flow. And it is past time for Mexico to admit that its grievances with the U.S. stem less from concern for Mexicans who have sought a better life north of the border than with its need to defend its own wounded national pride.