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 Editorials | Opinions | January 2006 
Talking Mexican Politics
 Ruben Navarrette Jr. - San Diego Union-Tribune
| | A Mexican looks to the front of the queue as he joins hundreds of others in line to register to vote in Mexico City January 13, 2006. In stark contrast with Mexican voters abroad who have turned their backs on their homeland's July presidential election, hundreds of Mexico City residents are flocking to register to vote two days before the deadline to do so. (Reuters/Andrew Winning) |
I've had Mexicans tell me that they really don't understand Mexican Americans. For one thing, they can't figure out how it is that a group of people who think and behave like any other group of Americans still consider themselves Mexican.
Well, we're even. As a Mexican American, I don't understand Mexicans - especially when it comes to la politica (politics).
I mean, if you're going to create political reform then, by all means, go ahead and create political reform. More power to you. But don't pretend to create reform while under the table you're doing everything you can to preserve the status quo and your place in it.
Take, for instance, all the hoopla about how the Mexican Congress has passed a law allowing Mexican expatriates in the United States to vote in the Mexican presidential election in July without the inconvenience of first having to return home.
This is a good thing. The migrants have earned the right to cast ballots, having sent home more than $16 billion in remittances last year alone. That sum is the country's largest source of foreign income, surpassing the take from an industry near and dear to Mexico's heart: petroleum.
It's also a step in the right direction. For decades, when a migrant left Mexico, the rule was: out of sight, out of mind. The thinking was, if you were going to insult Mother Mexico by fleeing to the United States, you were on your own. Increasingly, that's no longer the case. Now the Mother expresses concern for her lost children and tries to protect them from afar.
But then why would the Mexican Congress include in the same reform law the equivalent of a poison pill: A prohibition on any campaigning, rallies or fundraising by presidential candidates on foreign soil? And, of course, by foreign soil, the Mexican Congress could only have meant one thing: the United States. Bear in mind that the majority of folks in Congress belong to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which held the presidency by hook or crook for more than 70 years before Vicente Fox and the National Action Party, or PAN, took the presidency in 2000.
It seems the PRI doesn't really want its paisanos in the United States to learn much about the candidates, the issues or the upcoming election. Learning breeds excitement and excited people are more likely to exercise their right to vote. And that's the last thing the PRI wants. It doesn't have many friends on this side of the border. Over the last several decades, many of the people who fled Mexico did so to escape the inequity and injustice that were byproducts of corrupt PRI regimes.
Be that as it may, that's now the law: No campaigning outside Mexico, as Fox and other candidates have done in the past. Political parties that violate the edict risk incurring hefty fines imposed by the Mexican elections commission.
Yet, at the same time, in states such as California, a lot of people - both natives and immigrants - are interested in who will be elected the next president of Mexico. So how do the parties spread their message into the United States without breaking Mexican law?
One answer is the California Debates. These were five separate debates recently held throughout the Golden State between representatives of Mexico's three largest parties: the PRI, the PAN, and the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD. As if to emphasize that these events were not meant to persuade Mexican voters, but rather to inform American audiences, all the debates were in English.
The questions touched on everything from the North American Free Trade Agreement and energy policy to the reform of Mexico's criminal justice system and statutes regarding property rights. And, of course, there was plenty of talk about immigration. One of the best comments came from the PRI's representative, former ambassador Roberta Lajous, who stressed the importance of knowing when and how to critique U.S. border-control policy and of being careful with one's language - something that Fox often isn't. One of the most troubling came from the representative of the PAN, Sen. Hector Osuna Jaime, who insisted that while the U.S. had the right to control its borders, immigration had become an issue of human rights - including the right of migrants to feed their families.
See, there it is again. Americans have a different notion of rights in general, and human rights in particular, than do some Mexicans. It's like the people of these two countries are speaking different languages. And I don't mean Spanish and English. That makes it hard to understand one another, which is all the more frustrating given that we're stuck with each other. |
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