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 News from Around the Americas | January 2006 
Mr. Mexico's Goodwill Crusade
 Ruben Navarrette Jr. - San Diego Union-Tribune
| | Rob Allyn looks at the view of downtown from the windows of his Dallas office. |
It wasn't surprising that the Mexican government would hire an American public-relations firm to improve its image in the United States.
Nor was it surprising that Mexican President Vicente Fox tapped Dallas-based political consultant Rob Allyn, to be Mexico's goodwill ambassador. Allyn worked on Fox's 2000 presidential campaign, after which a Dallas magazine dubbed the consultant "Mr. Mexico."
What was surprising was that a business deal resulted in so many people becoming so unhinged.
Suddenly, the Republican strategist is being inundated with angry and insulting e-mails, calls and nasty comments posted on Web logs. Immigration restrictionists are threatening to picket Allyn's office and asking that "patriots" boycott his firm. One zealot wrote Allyn to demand that the consultant "register as a foreign alien agent" and calling him "disgusting and treasonous."
From those cable TV shows that bottom-feed off the immigration issue, I glean that Allyn is doing a "PR campaign for illegal immigrants" and generating public support for a guest-worker plan backed by the Mexican government.
Not quite, Allyn told me from his office in Dallas. "We've been hired to promote the image of Mexico," he said, "and specifically to let people know the facts about the real Mexico and where Mexico stands today."
Besides doing media interviews, Allyn plans to organize trade missions between the two countries, produce media material to show progress in Mexico, and conduct polling to gauge attitudes in the United States.
If Allyn wants to know what Americans think of Mexico and Mexicans -- and for that matter, Mexican Americans -- all he has to do is read my e-mail. But it's not pretty.
In the words of one reader: "Mexico has nothing that any red-blooded American would want. Mexico is a filthy, unlawful country which is trying with all its might to influence the U.S. to change its laws to benefit illegals." Another reader complained about "illegal Hispanics" with their "high crime rates, lack of education, large families living on the taxpayers' dole, failure to assimilate, flooding our emergency rooms and depressing wages for poor working citizens."
Allyn, who is to earn about $720,000 for his efforts, should have asked Fox for more money.
The way the consultant sees it, "perceptions lag reality" and Americans don't know as much about Mexico and Mexicans as they think they do.
I'll buy that. But it works both ways. Mexicans don't know as much about the United States as they think. That goes double for Mexican presidents.
When I suggested that Fox had done himself no favors by labeling as "shameful" U.S efforts to curb illegal immigration, Allyn declined to comment, but said he'd pass on my concerns to his client.
So let me add this: Most Americans don't like it when Mexico meddles in the internal affairs of the United States -- especially because Mexicans bristle when Americans meddle in the affairs of Mexico and especially because there wouldn't be so many illegal immigrants in this country if the Mexican government took more seriously its obligation to provide opportunities for its people rather than relying on the billions of dollars that immigrants send home in remittances.
For Allyn, there's a lot of positive news south of the border, including "that Mexico is a democracy today, with clean elections, that the Mexican government has made huge progress in cleaning up corruption and that there is economic stability."
There's also trade. According to Allyn, Americans export $111 billion in goods each year to Mexico.
"Mexico is America's second-largest trading partner (after Canada). That's more than Japan. More than Germany. More than China," he said.
"Mexico is a huge customer for us. We should treat it with respect."
Good luck with that, amigo. For many Americans, Mexico serves only one purpose and that's to provide something to which they can feel superior. Consider the reader who, in a recent e-mail to me, referred to "our little brothers to the south."
While Allyn hasn't been hired to represent Mexican immigrants per se, he expects to go to bat for them. That's fine with him. He thinks the immigrants get a bad rap.
"I continue to be astonished at how people can work up so much animosity toward hard-working, family-oriented people who are enduring huge hardships to seek a better life," he said. Some of that has roots in something that has been part of this dialogue since the advent of immigrants: racism.
It's something Allyn acknowledges: "You can smell it. It's like bad art. You know it when you see it."
Mr. Mexico is right on the money. And often, those who can't see it just don't want to. |
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