SUPER-NAFTA
As
one
news report puts it: "Though Nafta has made Mexico the
second-largest trade partner with the U.S., it's not enough.
Fox envisions the free-flow of workers and a common currency
among the US, Canada and Mexico." But it won't happen overnight:
"Our idea," says Fox, "is to sell a long-term project where
we can move upward from a trade agreement to a North American
common market, which implies much more than just trade." Indeed
it does. If NAFTA is seen as the first step along the road
to economic and political union, then Fox is preparing to
take the second step toward what some – including apparently
Senor Fox – envision as the United States of North America:
Mexico's new leader cites the example of the European Union,
where the wage gap between Germany and Spain was closed as
a prelude to opening the floodtide of immigration. A far wider
gap would have to be closed between the wages of Mexican workers
and those in the US, Fox averred, before a North American
EU could become a reality. He has proposed the creation of
a North American redevelopment bank – in effect, another
foreign aid program – that would supposedly foster the
growth of Mexican entrepreneurship. In addition, both Fox
and Hillary Clinton have an interest in the so-called "microcredit"
concept, in which banks' traditional "discrimination" against
poor credit risks is replaced with government-subsidized "loans"
to poor would-be entrepreneurs supposedly lacking only in
capital. The record of this idea has been abysmal in the US,
but the rhetoric of "empowerment" is so overpowering that
such trivialities as the laws of the market, never mind those
governing human nature, are swept aside – and not just
on the Mexican side of the border.
DUBYA
AND LA RAZA
In
a speech to National Council of Raza, George W. Bush called
for "a
new culture of respect" at the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS). The INS, he explained to the 1,200 Latino activists
meeting in San Diego, California, "is too bureaucratic. It
is too stuck in the past." The past – you know, back
when the US actually had control of its southern border..
Deftly sprinkling his remarks with Spanish phrases, Bush criticized
the INS for taking as long as five years to approve citizenship
applications – and pledged to spend $500 million to speed
up the process. Along with those pandering and painfully obvious
TV ads featuring his nephew Georgie, and talk of replacing
Trent Lott with Ricky Martin in Philadelphia, the GOP is doing
its part to further the merger north of the Rio Grande. At
the La Raza conclave, Dubya dragged out Georgie P. Bush and
brayed that "we're proud to have Spanish blood in our family"
– a gesture that seems to subtly echo Fox's call for
a pan-American union. We're all just one big happy family
after all.
THE
PAN-AMERICANS
In
a prescient article predicting "The
Next Mexican Revolution" published in 1996, Andrew Reding
foresaw not only that Fox would be the rising star of Mexican
politics, but also heralded the Pan-American concept as a
policy proposal gaining strength in the US as well as Mexico:
"A
helpful complement, if the US can be persuaded it is in its
own long-term interest, would be to form a European-style
regional development fund to improve communications and transportation
infrastructure in Mexico, making the country more attractive
to private investment. Either way, only a true partnership
can transform NAFTA from its present anemic state into an
effective competitor to the European and east Asian economic
blocs."
BUILDING
BLOCS
Make
no mistake: this "bloc" transcends economics and promises
to become a full-fledged de facto political union. The coming
merger is most immediately noticeable in the realm of foreign
policy. Whereas under the PRI, the Mexican government was
always quite critical of US intervention in the region, Fox
is likely to execute an abrupt about-face: although he questioned
the process of drug-certification that is, for Mexico, a painful
yearly ritual – and a complete fraud – Fox is on
board regarding US plans for Colombia. At his first post-election
news conference, he made it clear that Mexico looked forward
to a future as the American hegemon's junior partner and hemispheric
cop. Fox, according to news
reports,
"promised
changes in Mexico's foreign policy of strictly opposing intervention – even by international organizations – in other countries'
domestic conflicts. 'We can't just limit ourselves to unrestricted
respect for other countries' decisions, without denouncing
rights abuses or major crimes,' Fox said."
A
FOX IN THE WHITE HOUSE
The
installation of Fox in the Mexican White House, coinciding
as it does with the passage of the $1.3 billion "Plan Colombia"
to bolster President Andres Pastrana's tottering government,
sets the stage for a wide-ranging military operation conducted
throughout South and Central America, ostensibly targeted
at the mysterious "drug lords" – but in reality aiming
at the extension of the North American "bloc" by force of
arms.
IT'S
AXIOMATIC
The
idea of economic integration, a buzzword right up there with
"globalization," is an ideal condition of an absolutely free
market. The free passage of goods across borders without taxes
or tariffs or indeed barriers of any kind is an idea on which
all economists, even the few who advocate some protectionist
measures, can agree. But to equate the passage of goods with
the free passage of people is to fall into the error many
alleged libertarians make, who look at the immigration question
ahistorically. Naturally, libertarians are not very strong
on history, existing as they do in the rarefied realm of High
Theory, where A is always A and Axioms reign supreme. In such
a world, specifics don't matter: it doesn't matter what nationality
you are, or where you live, or what your history is –
somehow, and more than a bit ironically, libertarians have
talked themselves into believing that we are all the same.
THE
CAUSE OF AZTLAN
In
that case, why not just open the borders and let the Mexicans
retake the American Southwest? That indeed is the dream of
the original founders of the La Raza ("the Race") organization,
who in their radical student days called for a separate nation
of "Aztlan" in the American Southwest, as a kind of payback
for the Mexican-American war. They vowed to take back California
– and, with Republican help, they may yet succeed.
HISTORY
IS A HATE CRIME
Well
then, what's wrong with merging with Mexico, anyhow?
Although this is what an open borders policy would amount
to, in practice, Libertarians (capital-L) will rarely admit
to the logical implications of their "open the borders" principle.
But even given such a rare admission, I can just hear some
Libertarian windbag raising this question, with the sly implication
that opposition to merger amounts to "racism." In our culture,
where "racism" is defined as the idea that cultural differences
exist, history itself is a hate crime. To even recall that
Mexico's 1910 "revolution" gave birth to a highly-centralized
authoritarian one-party state, while ours gave birth to a
constitutionally-limited government – to even think
these thoughts is probably punishable as a "hate crime" in
Canada, where poor Dr. Laura has been declared persona
non grata.
IN
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
For
the past 71 years, Mexico has been in the grip of an unholy
alliance of PRI party bosses and the drug cartels that thrived
under their protection. Exhausted, and pushed to the brink
of social revolution, the struggling Mexican middle class
is looking to the north for its salvation. Economic integration
and eventually political absorption into the North American
colossus – or falling back into the Third World, along
with Colombia and Peru: these are the only two alternatives
that the voters who elevated Fox to power see for themselves.
Who can blame them for seeking to maximize their freedom and
throw off the rule of authoritarian thugs who murder their
political opponents and make off with the national treasury?
But the merger would not rid them of their problem –
it would merely import it into the US. The political culture
that gave rise to the PRI in Mexico – the traditions
of the 1910 Revolution, the caudillo or leader principle,
the complete absence of the concept of property rights, properly
understood, the persistence of the feudal mindset – would
soon reproduce itself (is, indeed, reproducing itself) in
the US.
NOT
FOR EXPORT
The
American Revolution, whose victory inaugurated our old Republic,
is not for export. It cannot be imposed, by fiat or force
of arms, on a foreign people. Its principles, and the institutions
that grew out of them, were rooted in the rich soil of a freethinking
dissenters who came to the New World as colonists, not conquerors
or slaves. The American Revolution grew out of specific –
indeed, historically unique – circumstances; it was generated
in a political culture as different from the Mexican mindset
as it is from the Japanese or the Russians. As long as that
political culture founded on individualism, political liberty,
and the subordination of government to the people persisted,
our old Republic remained intact: the infusion of a large
immigrant population with no history or experience in the
exercise of real democracy, no understanding of the American
concept of limited government, would sweep away the last vestiges
of republican government, drowned in a veritable tsunami of
multiculturalizaton.
REPUBLICAN
WHIPLASH
Back
in 1996, Republicans were telling us that the speeded-up citizenship
applications approved en masse by the Clinton administration
was part of an election year ploy by the Democrats. Today,
Bush is pledging to accelerate the process, a reversal of
such stunning angularity that one can only wonder if some
Republicans are suffering from a severe case of immigration
whiplash.
AN
OPENING FOR BUCHANAN
This
whiplash is sure to create a backlash – one made to order
for Pat Buchanan to take full advantage of. As the only candidate
(so far) who has paid attention to this vital issue, Buchanan
stands to get his poll numbers up if he can counterpose his
America First foreign policy to the Pan-American Bush-Fox
vision of a multiculturalized United States of North America.
This requires, however, a clear stand on the Colombian intervention,
which will be the linchpin of a growing US-Mexican convergence,
and some critique of the internationalization of the "war
on drugs" in which Colombian peasants and the people of Burma
are blamed for the drug habits of American teenagers.
POLYGLOT
EMPIRE
Every
empire is, by definition, "multicultural," and to make this
a virtue is to elevate one of the cardinal principles of imperialism
to the canon of received wisdom. Looked at from this perspective,
the new "Hispanic" flavor of the GOP takes on a somewhat sinister
aspect. As we shickey boom boom to the crooning voice
of Ricky Martin at the Republican convention, and Dubya speaks
to the American people in a foreign tongue, I can't help but
wonder if they aren't priming us for something big.
Esthetics aside, the choice of the popular Puerto Rican entertainer
is significant, on some level, in the sense that here is someone
born on the last remnant of our old colonial empire. As Ricky
shakes it to that Latin beat, the music drowns out all possible
objections, we celebrate the "diversity" of the ever-expanding
American Empire. But will Republicans sing along?
THE
BIG GAMBLE
I
don't think so. Bush is alienating his base and taking a big
gamble that he can win over Hispanics, traditionally a Democratic
constituency – who are not necessarily pro-open borders
or even pro-immigration. Naturalized Americans who went through
the long legal process of applying rightly resent the illegals,
and recent polls show that 84 percent of Hispanic voters are
inclined to vote for Gore. Bush is going out on a limb –
and Buchanan is gleefully getting out the chainsaw. If, at
the end of this election, Buchanan costs them the White House
– and succeeds in building a populist alternative to
the GOP – then the Republican leaders will have no one
to blame but themselves and the dotty neoconservative theoreticians
who got them into this mess in the first place.
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