Ties that bind
The U.S.-Mexico agenda can’t be solely about border security and the drug trade.
“Mexico Runs Away From the Truth,” the headline on a New York Times editorial charged last week. The editorial accused President Enrique Peña Nieto of trying to gloss over a damning report produced by a team of international experts regarding the apparent massacre of 43 college students in 2014.
During a visit to the Chronicle editorial board last week, Mexico’s finance minister did not seem to be running away from the truth. Although Luis Videgaray Caso noted that criminal justice issues are not within his purview as finance minister, he acknowledged that his country has a serious problem, not only with the human rights atrocity involving the students but with the perception that Mexico is a lawless and violent place.
“We have a perception problem, because we have problems, a lot of problems,” he said. “The fact that these problems are discussed openly, I think is a very constructive process.”
Nor did Videgaray run away from the big, bad American billionaire who promises to build a huge border wall once he takes up occupancy in the White House. “We will not be bullied into paying for the wall,” he said, using language a bit more diplomatic than former President Vicente Fox used a few weeks ago.
Beyond those two contentious issues, Videgaray was eager to discuss the mutual benefits of our connectedness, benefits quite familiar to the Texas business leaders he was scheduled to meet during his visit to Houston and Dallas. Mexico is second only to Canada as a destination for U.S. goods, and Texas runs a trade surplus with its increasingly prosperous southern neighbor. “Capital moving to Mexico is driven by decisions being made here in Houston,” the finance minister observed.
What’s more, sales to Mexico support an estimated 6 million American jobs, according to a report from the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s Mexico Institute. As Videgaray noted, approximately 40 percent of the products made in Mexico today include parts that come from the U.S. Many consumer goods, including cars, TVs and computers, cross the border more than once during their production.
Like the finance minister, Texans and other Americans who appreciate the value of a bilateral relationship between neighbors find Donald Trump’s border talk an annoying distraction. Much more constructive are discussions and potential agreements regarding a host of issues common to neighbors sharing a border of almost 2,000 miles, a border crossed by more than $1.4 billion worth of goods every day, as well as 3,000 people, 12,000 trucks and 1,200 railcars.
Given our shared cultural, familial and historic ties, in addition to the economic ones, the U.S-Mexico agenda can’t be solely about border security and the drug trade. Those issues can’t be ignored, obviously, but the focus for the next American president and members of Congress has to be trade and investment, mutual environmental challenges, shared investment in border infrastructure, as well as a shared approach to solving knotty immigration and crime issues.
Border infrastructure is a good example of shared responsibility. As Videgaray pointed out, trade has increased five-fold in recent years, but investment in roads, rail and bridges, high-tech inspection equipment and personnel has not increased. He mentioned pilot programs on the border at San Diego/ Tijuana and Laredo/Nuevo Laredo that rely on joint customs inspection, thereby speeding up cross-border commercial traffic exponentially. Working in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mexico is hoping the joint-customs approach becomes standard all along the border.
Mexican officials have to face up to the possibility of government complicity in a human rights atrocity that has outraged a nation. They can’t run away from the truth.
In this country, with the election season approaching its fervid peak, candidates and election officials need to be held to a standard of truth, as well. The truth is, U.S.-Mexico ties are venerable and deep. Our mutual problems are more manageable, our mutual opportunities more promising when we work together. Walls, literal and symbolic, are mutually degrading.