SAN DIEGO -- I've
had Mexicans tell me that they really don't understand Mexican-Americans.
For one thing, they can't figure out how it is that a group of
people who think and behave like any other group of Americans
still consider themselves Mexican.
Well, we're
even. As a Mexican-American, I don't understand Mexicans -- especially
when it comes to la politica (politics).
I mean, if you're
going to create political reform then, by all means, go ahead
and create political reform. More power to you. But don't pretend
to create reform while under the table you're doing everything
you can to preserve the status quo and your place in it.
Take, for instance,
all the hoopla about how the Mexican Congress has passed a law
allowing Mexican expatriates in the United States to vote in the
Mexican presidential election in July without the inconvenience
of first having to return home.
This is a good thing.
The migrants have earned the right to cast ballots, having sent
home more than $16 billion in remittances last year alone. That
sum is the country's largest source of foreign income, surpassing
the take from an industry near and dear to Mexico's heart: petroleum.
It's also a step
in the right direction. For decades, when a migrant left Mexico,
the rule was: out of sight, out of mind. The thinking was, if
you were going to insult Mother Mexico by fleeing to the United
States, you were on your own. Increasingly, that's no longer the
case. Now the Mother expresses concern for her lost children and
tries to protect them from afar.
But then why would
the Mexican Congress include in the same reform law the equivalent
of a poison pill: A prohibition on any campaigning, rallies or
fundraising by presidential candidates on foreign soil? And, of
course, by foreign soil, the Mexican Congress could only have
meant one thing: the United States. Bear in mind that the majority
of folks in Congress belong to the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI, which held the presidency by hook or crook for
more than 70 years before Vicente Fox and the National Action
Party, or PAN, took the presidency in 2000.
It seems
the PRI doesn't really want its paisanos in the United
States to learn much about the candidates, the issues or the upcoming
election. Learning breeds excitement and excited people are more
likely to exercise their right to vote. And that's the last thing
the PRI wants. It doesn't have many friends on this side of the
border. Over the last several decades, many of the people who
fled Mexico did so to escape the inequity and injustice that were
byproducts of corrupt PRI regimes.
Be that as it may,
that's now the law: No campaigning outside Mexico, as Fox and
other candidates have done in the past. Political parties that
violate the edict risk incurring hefty fines imposed by the Mexican
elections commission.
Yet, at the same
time, in states such as California, a lot of people -- both natives
and immigrants -- are interested in who will be elected the next
president of Mexico. So how do the parties spread their message
into the United States without breaking Mexican law?
One answer is the
California Debates. These were five separate debates recently
held throughout the Golden State between representatives of Mexico's
three largest parties: the PRI, the PAN, and the Democratic Revolutionary
Party, or PRD. As if to emphasize that these events were not meant
to persuade Mexican voters, but rather to inform American audiences,
all the debates were in English.
The questions touched
on everything from the North American Free Trade Agreement and
energy policy to the reform of Mexico's criminal justice system
and statutes regarding property rights. And, of course, there
was plenty of talk about immigration. One of the best comments
came from the PRI's representative, former ambassador Roberta
Lajous, who stressed the importance of knowing when and how to
critique U.S. border-control policy and of being careful with
one's language -- something that Fox often isn't. One of the most
troubling came from the representative of the PAN, Sen. Hector
Osuna Jaime, who insisted that while the U.S. had the right to
control its borders, immigration had become an issue of human
rights -- including the right of migrants to feed their families.
See, there it is
again. Americans have a different notion of rights in general,
and human rights in particular, than do some Mexicans. It's like
the people of these two countries are speaking different languages.
And I don't mean Spanish and English. That makes it hard to understand
one another, which is all the more frustrating given that we're
stuck with each other.
©
2006, The San Diego Union-Tribune
