Even before his historic election to Mexico's presidency in July, Vicente Fox startled U.S. observers when he vowed to govern on behalf of 118 million Mexicans--the 100 million in his country and the nearly 18 million of Mexican descent in the United States. Not surprisingly, the promise, along with Fox's vision of a more open U.S.-Mexico border, heightened anxieties that Mexican immigration poses a threat to U.S. national integrity. Fearful that Fox's transnational talk might spark anti-immigrant feelings and call Mexican Americans' political loyalties into question, some prominent Latino advocates and academics criticized Fox's rhetoric as ill-conceived. Yet, broadening the definition of "Mexican" is more likely to advance the Americanization of Mexico than it is to give Mexico greater clout in the United States.
Vicente Fox Blesses the Americanization of Mexico
For decades, Mexico disowned its migrants as renegades who had turned tail on their country and culture. They were "pochos" (watered-down Mexicans) who had cashed in their souls for material possessions. Although Mexico benefited from the escape valve that allowed it to lose large numbers of unemployed and underemployed citizens, the migrants were glaring symbols of their homeland's failures. Although Mexico usually condescended to its kin north of the border, it would occasionally intervene on their behalf whenever it appeared that their mistreatment harmed Mexico's national pride.
Only when Mexican Americans began advancing politically and economically did Mexico begin to take a sympathetic view of its diaspora. Beginning in the late 1970s, then intensifying under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the late 1980s, Mexico developed a two-pronged public-relations strategy to capitalize on Mexican American progress. To reach U.S.-born Mexican Americans, Mexico courted Latino organizations and granted heritage awards to accomplished Mexican Americans. To appeal to Mexican-born immigrants, Mexican consulates strengthened their community-outreach efforts and encouraged newcomers in the U.S. to demand their rights. In so doing, Mexico aimed to nurture sympathetic views toward itself among the growing Latino American electorate and to urge migrants to keep sending money back home.
Estimated at $8 billion annually, the remittances Mexican immigrants send home have reshaped the popular image of Mexican Americans in Mexico. In many villages, U.S.-based immigrants have gained social and political influence by virtue of their financial generosity. In his inaugural speech Dec. 1, Fox referred to them as "our beloved migrants, our heroic migrants." As did his predecessors, Fox pledged that Mexican consulates will become "the best allies of [immigrants'] rights."
