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"Manana
Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans" by Jorge G.
Castaneda; Alfred A. Knopf: 294 pp., $27.95
———
Mexicans,
like their Spanish forebears, love to quote proverbs as
a way of underscoring eternal truths and imparting folk
wisdom to younger generations.
Jorge
Castaneda cites one of these popular adages not once,
but twice, in his timely, perceptive new book, "Manana
Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans," to illustrate
what he believes are some of the cynical, corrupt and
backward-looking attitudes that are preventing his
countrymen from living up to their vast potential. The
saying is, "El que no transa no avanza" —
"Whoever doesn't trick or cheat gets nowhere."
And
that's only the start of the damning evidence that this
former foreign minister of Mexico, visiting college
professor (Princeton, Berkeley) and senior associate of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace assembles
in persuasively making his case that Mexico must shed a
slew of historically ingrained, counterproductive
practices in economics, politics and culture if it
someday is to take its place among the world's leading
nations.
"This
is not a book about the Mexican national
character," Castaneda writes in his preface,
disavowing the approach of such famous cryptologists of
the Mexican "soul" as Graham Greene, D.H.
Lawrence, Octavio Paz and Sergei Eisenstein. "It
seeks to explain why the very national character that
helped forge Mexico as a nation now dramatically hinders
its search for a future and modernity."
At a
glance, greatness would seem to be the logical destiny
of a country blessed with the world's 12th-largest
economy, an abundance of natural and human resources, a
rich ethnic history and close proximity to a gigantic
trading partner north of the Rio Grande.
But,
Castaneda says, for generations Mexico has squandered
these advantages.
It has
done so, he asserts, by cultivating a political culture
that shuns direct confrontation and the open,
sometimes-bruising, free exchange of ideas and opinions
that is democracy's lifeblood. Its ruling class, with a
few notable exceptions, hides its true intentions, and
its internal conflicts, behind an elaborate, ritualistic
charade of outward courtesy and euphemistic rhetoric
that mainly serves to preserve the status quo and
postpone serious debate on pressing problems.
Similarly,
he writes, the country's business elites — with
telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, the world's
richest man, perched atop the modern Aztec pyramid of
crony capitalism — conspire with politicians to keep
their iron grip over monopolies or quasi-monopolies in
critical industries such as oil, media and
telecommunications.
"Risk
aversion," he stresses, is the economic equivalent
of the "conflict aversion" that taints Mexican
politics, and it's causing Mexico to fall further behind
rising powers such as China and India as well as
regional rivals like Chile and Brazil. Whenever foreign
companies try to elbow their way in as potential
competitors, Mexico's corporate denizens exploit
old-time fears of the Other, playing up images of
outside powers threatening to contaminate the fatherland
and enslave its workers.
Castaneda
concedes that such anxieties, historically, have been
understandable in a country that was founded on the
conquistadors' brutal conquest of America's indigenous
people, and later invaded by the French and the U.S.
Army.
But
today, he insists, these phobias have become a huge
liability to ordinary Mexicans' improving their material
lot. He cites public opinion polls to demonstrate that,
for all the cross-border chatter about U.S.
discrimination against Mexican immigrants, Mexicans
themselves are collectively far more xenophobic toward
immigrants than their U.S. counterparts and have largely
opposed granting admittance or basic rights to foreign
workers.
The
book's tough-love tone is supported by Castaneda's
precise, systematic mustering of hard facts from
scholarly studies, public opinion surveys and the like.
His authorial manner suggests a lawyer arguing before an
international tribunal, and the book sometimes reads
more like an indictment than a native son's amicus
brief.
But if
the tenor of "Manana Forever?" occasionally
veers toward the Inquisitorial, Castaneda, a frequent
contributor to the L.A. Times' op-ed pages, also takes
pains to brighten his dark narrative with considerable
wit and humor, as in the title of his first chapter,
"Why Mexicans Are Lousy at Soccer and Don't Like
Skyscrapers."
The
paradox, and tragedy, of these stumbling blocks to
progress, the author says, is that Mexico has, in many
ways, become a middle-class society and a representative
democracy, "albeit an imperfect one."
In recent
years, extreme poverty has declined, and income
inequality has diminished. Home ownership, college
enrollment and Internet use are on the rise. The murder
rate, although swollen by narcotics gang warfare, is
considerably lower than in countries such as El
Salvador, Russia and South Africa.
What
hasn't improved is respect for rule of law and taking
responsibility for the difficult obligations that a
middle-class democracy demands of its citizens, in
return for greater freedom and better living standards.
Although
"Manana Forever?" offers a precise critique of
that dilemma, it supplies little in the way of workable
prescriptions. It doesn't suggest any real alternative
to an all-out embrace of the fully globalized,
free-trade economic model. Nor does it propose any
methods for streamlining Mexico's bloated constitution,
which is addled with scores of amendments that are
merely sops for special-interest groups.
Even so,
this important book, by an exceptionally shrewd,
sophisticated and deeply knowledgeable analyst, deserves
a place on the short shelf of classics about modern
Mexico that includes Alan Riding's "Distant
Neighbors." And it holds out a glimmer of hope that
it's not yet too late for genuine reform. As Castaneda
puts it, "The nation's traits have changed over
time, as its citizens adapted to constantly evolving
external and internal circumstances; they are not set in
stone."
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