Sutherland on Mexico

In response to my thoughts about Mexico, Howard Sutherland sent me two articles he’s written on this subject in recent years:

I replied:

It’s not that I wasn’t aware of Mexico’s aggressive actions against the U.S., obviously; it’s that, with recent reading I’ve been doing, thinking more systematically about this, I’ve realized the full extent of what they’re up to. It’s a paradigm change, from “illegal immigration” to “illegal immigration as part of a Mexican war on the U.S.”

Mr. Sutherrland wrote back:

It is a fight on several fronts. The illegal invaders themselves are the spearheads—and there is now no part of the country where they are not present in ever-increasing numbers. There is also legal immigration—far, far too much of it. I haven’t checked the figures lately, but I’m pretty sure Mexico is not only the leader in sending illegal aliens, but legal immigrants as well. How many even of the legal ones are people who are likely to improve the United States from Americans’ point of view (the only perspective that should matter)? Family reunification probably accounts for most of the legal Mexican immigration. How much of that is to join Mexicans who entered the United States illegally in the first place? Family reunification is almost as suicidal as birthright citizenship (which only abets it). Then there are the hostile attitudes and actions of the Mexican government. Fortunately, even the MSM is beginning to notice the extent of Mexican meddling in the United States—an astonishing phenomenon given the overwhelming disparity of power between the countries. Last, and worst, is the complicity of American government at all levels (feds are the worst) in these Mexican encroachments. Fox is a villain of this piece, but the greater villain is President Bush. One can argue that Fox is acting in the perceived best interests of Mexico and has no duty to take the interests of the United States into account. What can one say of Bush?

So really it is illegal invasion and legal immigration as Mexican imperatives—to relieve pressure on Mexico’s ruling oligarchy, and to harm the United States. That last is almost always a pleasant prospect for a patriotic Mexican. Resentment of the gringos up north is part of the national fabric, and painful memories of Texas in 1836, Chapultepec in 1847, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and Veracruz in 1914 are carefully preserved and passed on. In Mexican orthodoxy, of course, the Mexicans were nothing but innocent victims of gringo imperialism in each of those defeats.

Mexico has a lot of historic problems, but I think two predominate. Having the United States, a rich, successful (in material terms, at least) non-Latin American society, right next door is irresistibly conducive to humiliation and resentment. Mexico has become a parasite on the United States, and parasites are never grateful. On another front, much more than other Latin American countries Mexico has made a point of utterly rejecting its Spanish colonial heritage. This had led to anti-clericalism, but also means that when the Mexicans look for past glories, they cannot celebrate Cortés or any other conquistador or viceroy, however worthy. They have to look farther back, to half-clad human-sacrificing, cannibalistic pagans—and pretend to themselves that those old Indians were worthy warrior-ancestors. They have to turn their backs on their European heritage in a way that Argentines, even Cubans, find absurd. Then they have to reconcile the fact that those storied Indian ancestors’ empires were utterly destroyed by a few hundred Catholic Spaniards—more humiliation. Mexico is a hard luck country, and it’s our hard luck to be next door.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2006 12:32 AM | Send