Peretz on Mexico

Marty Peretz has an insane post on Mexico from his blog, The Spine. Here it is in its entirety (I'd love to post the comments, too, which are well worth the reading, but it's already long enough):

"Burn me. Don't treat me like this. Do not spare me." Berthold Brecht's books were not included in the Nazi book-burning pyres, and this is how he responded to the omission in one of his many great anti-Nazi poems, "The Burning of the Books." (I do not recall many great anti-communist poems by Brecht at all. But I do remember "The Solution," with its grim satiric suggestion that the "...government/ dissolve the people/and choose itself another.)

Well, any country that doesn't have a special envoy designated to it by the White House will feel that no one in the present administration cares for it. And, if a special envoys are the currency of a country importance, why shouldn't their absence be a sign of insignificance.

Today's Times carries a spooky story by Randal C. Archibold about drug cartel violence spilling over the Mexican border into America and, of course, "alarming" the U.S. This recalls Pancho Villa's raids across the frontier in 1916. Which further recalls the failed retaliatory missions of General Pershing and Lieutenant George Patton in 1916 and 1917.

Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor.

The present political strife between the two countries is actually economic. But it is not wholly subsumed under the labels of "free trade" or "protectionism."

The fact is that Mexico is also a failed state, not like Pakistan, mind you. But a failed state, nonetheless, and its failures are magnified by its immediate proximity to the U.S. Its failures will increasingly cross the national boundary, like the drugs and the people, two very different manifestations of our intimacy. The fact is that America is threatened by a failed state, and the only way of dealing with that failure is to make it a success. Which requires not only a special envoy but much more.

The last time Peretz was calling Mexico a failed state, the only evidence he mustered was the fact that Ernesto Zedillo and Jorge Castañeda are working at American universities. I'm not sure whether putting forth no evidence whatsoever marks an improvement or a decline. I am, however, intrigued by the argumentative tactic he employs in writing, "Mexico is also a failed state, not like Pakistan, mind you." The fact is that Gancho is an extremely profitable company, you know; not like Microsoft, mind you. And no you can't see any accounting statements.

For those looking for a more objective analysis: at 11 per 100,000 residents, Mexico's murder rate is lower than that of El Salvador, Colombia, and Brazil, and is one quarter of the figure in Detroit and Baltimore. The region of the country --Juárez-- most resembling a failed state has been made infinitely (and perhaps temporarily) safer by a state action, the deployment of 7,000 army troops late last month. Mexico's divided government has passed half a dozen major reforms in the past two years. The nation's economy has not cratered, neither because of drug violence nor because of the world financial crisis. Government institutions --from schools to Congressional sub-committees-- continue to function. Mexico meets almost none of the criteria that Fund for Peace uses to identify failed states, which is probably why 104 nations were measured as closer to failure than Mexico in last year's study.

On to Peretz's inappropriate blanket statement about the "characteristic deficiencies" of a Latin society: he doesn't offer a single piece of evidence to support the ills he mentions (something of a pattern), and they are easily refuted by someone with a working knowledge of the nation, (though in the interest of space, I'll only mention two). Catholic dogma? Mexico's separation of church and state is much stronger than that of the US. Priests weren't even allowed to vote a generation ago, and the Church suffers under (and often slips around) a prohibition against all political speech. Gay marriage and abortion are permitted in certain entities. The Church is a respected institution, but I know nobody who looks to the Church as their primary moral compass, and I live in the conservative, PAN-voting North. Authoritarian government? Unless he's talking about the residents of Oaxaca and Puebla, there's simply nothing to support this. Just last week, a political rival of the president's was telling him to be a man, and no threats were made on his family. His house wasn't seized. Beltrones merely provoked a call from the Interior Secretary to show greater respect for the presidency. I don't even recall AMLO ever calling Calderón's government authoritarian. (He prefers "mafia.") Calderón's major problem isn't a surfeit of authority, but a lack of it.

And lastly, the inspiration behind the post, the idea that Mexico needs a special envoy: Why? Peretz says that all the other global trouble spots have one, so Mexico might take it is an insult if they weren't included. When your argument boils down to something used by excluded schoolchildren, you know it's weak. And as a regular reader of various Mexican media, I feel relatively confident saying that the appointment of a special envoy is far more likely to insult Mexican sentiments than the failure to do so. Beyond Mexico's feelings, what could said envoy do to improve the situation? Other envoyed nations --Iran, South Asia, and the Middle East-- all include major, legitimate political actors with whom the US has troublesome if not hostile relations. In those regions, the envoy's goal is to untangle a history of deceit and distrust in order to uncover and build on some mutual interests. That's not missing in Mexico. Our interests are quite simple, and they coincide; we both want Mexico to be safer, and the drug gangs to be weaker (although I do think our interests diverge a bit in how quickly and to what degree the gangs disappear). The US already has a million different points of contact with the Mexican government in which it can work toward this. What would a Mexican George Mitchell accomplish that we are unable to do today?