Random Readings Redux: Bulldozing

Still on vacation, but here's a ditty from last year that might help you win a few bar bets. For example, which country -- Mexico or the United States -- has a higher percentage of illegals living in the other? And which is more intolerant of foreigners working within its boundaries?

Almanaque México-Estados Unidos
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Fondo de Cultura Económica (2005)

A U.S.-Mexico almanac that sets a few records straight
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT

As almanacs go, Sergio Aguayo’s one-man effort runs a few hundred agate-type pages behind the CIA World Fact Book, and falls as many witticisms shy of Poor Richard’s. 

But as a corrective to the ignorance-driven nonsense that dominates so much casual conversation about the United States and Mexico, “Almanaque México Estados Unidos” is nothing short of heroic. Aguayo has put together 310 pages of facts and data about both countries, much of it presented in comparative terms and all of it communicated in an easy-to-follow format.

Its aim is noble: a better cross-border understanding.

Readers of this almanac (and, yes, you really can “read” this one, the cumulative effect of the binational information serving as something like a story arc with character development) will find themselves not just learning what they didn’t know, but also unlearning what they thought they knew.

To wit: Mexico can claim two Nobel Prizes — Octavio Paz in 1990 for literature. And the other? No, it’s not Mario Molina for chemistry in 1995; he accepted the award with his U.S. passport, Aguayo tells us on page 15. In 1982, Alfonso García Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament.

The longest river in Mexico, it turns out, is also one of the longest in the United States — the Rio Bravo/Grande (pg. 12). And in the United States? The Missouri, at 4,087 kilometers. (Admit it, you thought it was the Mississippi. So did I.)

Aguayo, a weekly EL UNIVERSAL columnist and frequent television commentator, teaches foreign relations at Mexico City’s Colegio de México. As a prominent pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, he was one of the first to see the merits in accepting the solidarity of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations, at a time when they were still mostly seen as buttinskis. He is, most agree, one of the good guys.

Hence this book. Aguayo begins his introduction with a banal truism — “The relationship between Mexico and the United States has a vital importance for both countries” — and follows up with an understatement: “In spite of that, myths and stereotypes proliferate that must be fought with reliable facts.”

I’m not sure that facts alone will get the job done; they seldom seem to get in the way of a confirmed bigot or know-it-all. But they’re a good starting point, and Aguayo seems to have selected many of his facts for their ability to upset apple carts.

An early section of the almanac consists of polling information on Mexican and U.S. attitudes about themselves and each other. While national newspapers here tell us that the United States is populated almost exclusively of xenophobes who resent the presence of Mexican workers in their country, the information on page 22 of the almanac tells us something else.

While 80 percent of Mexicans believe that scarce Mexican jobs should go to nationals rather than immigrants, less than half (49 percent) of Americans believe that. As Aguayo puts it in one of the short explanatory commentaries he scatters throughout the book, “In Mexico, anti-foreigner sentiment imbues society with intolerance. Americans, on the other hand, are more open to diversity.”

Stereotypes are bulldozed down by facts throughout the book.

Example: Mexico spends not that much less on education as a percentage of GDP as does the United States (5.9 to 7.3) though with considerably inferior results, as Aguayo points out (pg. 263). Another example: The two populations place virtually equal importance on the family with 95 percent of Americans saying it’s “very important” compared to 97 percent of Mexicans (pg. 31).

Aguayo also sees stereotype-busting in what he calls “surprising” figures revealing much more emphasis on the importance of hard work in Mexico than in the United States (pg. 33). “These numbers go against the myth of the Mexican with his sombrero and serape dozing as he leans against a nopal cactus,” he writes.

Actually, that particular stereotype strikes me as too outdated to need busting. In the United States, at least, all but the most off-the-wall extremists seem to recognize the Mexican’s capacity for hard work.

More revealing to me was the data on attitudes toward work itself. Workers in both countries care most about good pay, but it’s only the U.S. side of the ledger that ranks high in importance such job aspects as potential for “achievement” and “interesting work.” Demanding a rewarding, self-fulfilling job, it seems, is a luxury of the richer nations.

Some of the revelations are curious. The percentage of Mexicans who “profess a religion” is higher than the percentage of Mexicans who consider themselves religious (pg. 34), which probably tells us something about the power of a dominant, even if unofficial, Church. And speaking of religion, in the Voltaire-lived-in-vain category we find that a full three quarters of folks in both countries believe there’s a hell. And they’re not referring to the Periférico in the early evening.

The sections on the economies, the militaries, and education are studies in inequality. The Harvard University library, for example, has more than three times the volumes as the top 10 Mexican higher education institutions combined. But it’s worth knowing that the collection at Aguayo’s Colegio de Mexico, a relatively small public university, has one of the best collections in Latin America, with 780,000 volumes (pg. 267).

Shall we talk about the difference in military spending? No need to, but we can assume this is an area where Mexico is proud to lag far behind.

Some of the eye-popping differences between the two nations are less related to the well-known economic disparity. Child-raising is one. In the U.S. independence is considered desirable in children, but not in Mexico (pg. 36). Mexicans, however, value obedience in their children twice as much as Americans. (This is a good time to point out, though Aguayo doesn’t, that this kind of poll information by nature homogenizes varying points of view. Don’t hold anybody in either country to what surveys say they think.)

A shocking instance of cross-border inequality is the prison population. In 2000, there were 633 U.S. citizens in Mexican jails. At about the same time, there were more than 34,000 Mexicans in U.S. jails. Even given the 10-1 difference in immigrant population, that proportion is out of whack by some 600 percent. What’s going on? Here I wish Aguayo’s commentary were expanded. The relatively tiny number of U.S. prisoners in Mexico is due, he writes, “to the efforts that Washington makes to bring its citizens home to carry out their sentences in U.S. prisons.” I can’t help thinking there’s more to the disparity than that.

Any hope of clearing up the ongoing mystery of exactly (or even approximately) how many U.S. citizens live in Mexico is dashed on page 188. “The number is unknown,” Aguayo writes bluntly. We get a U.S. State Department figure of 1,036,300 U.S. citizens “in” Mexico in 2002. INEGI, the Mexican government’s statistics bureau, puts the number at 342,000. But the National Migration Institute issues only a few hundred declarations of landed immigrant status to Americans each year.

The implication is all too obvious. “(U.S. citizens) stay here to live without obtaining the migratory status called for by Mexican laws,” writes Aguayo. “In other words, we’re looking at undocumented U.S. citizens living in Mexico.”

Keep that little tidbit handy for your next discussion of the “crisis” of illegal immigrants.

The almanac isn’t available in English, but even if your Spanish is limited you’ll get plenty out of it. Most of the book consists of names and numbers anyway. Plus you get so much contact information — phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web sites for hundreds of government and non-government organizations in both countries — that it’s worth the 250 or so pesos for the instant rolodex alone.