01 December 2012, 09:22 AM IST
Mexico's newly-elected president Enrique Pena Nieto will assume office today (Saturday). The event will probably not even make the briefs column in India's media. And why would it;it barely makes a blip here in the United States, a country five times its size which this week went bananas over a $580 million Powerball lottery to the exclusion of all other news. "Mexico ... so far from God, so close to the United States, " one of its early leaders is said to have lamented about the nation's proximity to its giant neighbour that causes it to be largely overlooked in the rest of the world. Even in the Americas, Mexico has been overshadowed by Brazil, and for the past few years, the only headlines it makes is on account of drug violence that has claimed more lives this past decade than conflicts in the Middle-East or on the India-Pakistan border, which is relatively a haven of peace.
Still, there is a degree of political and economic certitude and stability in Mexico that is absent in our western neighbour, Pakistan. Much of it has to do with the fact that Mexico has calmly hitched its star to its giant northern neighbour while proudly maintaining its ethos and independence. The fact that it puts trade and commerce - and not religion and history - front and centre is one reason why Mexico and the United States have made out much better than Pakistan and India. After all, Mexico can legitimately have historical and geographical grievance against the US, which someone once said is "one of the finest countries anyone ever stole". Large parts of what constitutes US today was either Mexican territory or was independent. Besides, the two countries also have water disputes going back more than a century.
But these are minor wrinkles in a relationship hewn from extensive people-to-people contacts and trade, even if they are blighted to a degree by illegal immigration and drug smuggling. The United States is Mexico's largest trading partner;Mexico is the US's third largest trading partner. North of the border, Canada and the US are also each other's largest trading partners. Three-way trade between the NAFTA trio is close to a $1 trillion, far more than India's trade with the rest of the world, forget Pakistan and SAARC countries. Heck, more goods are traded across the USMexico border every single day ($1 billion plus) than India and Pakistan do in an entire year. Mexico probably sells more salsa and guacamole to US than the entire trade between India and Pakistan.
You can see the hum of commerce across 20 commercial border crossings spanning the four American states and six Mexican states that come up against each other at their 3, 169 km border. How many Indian and Pakistani states lean on each other and how many crossings do we have on our border which is almost of the same length? Check the maps and do the math. Mexico has 52 consulates and missions in the US, almost one in every major city and state. The US in turn has 25 consulates in Mexico. Mexicans made up 11 per cent of the US population, and in four states - California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas - Mexicans constitute more than a quarter of the population. Some 25 American cities have more than 100, 000 Mexicans each, including a million plus in Los Angeles and half-a-million each in San Antonio, Houston, Chicago and Phoenix.
Small wonder then that Pena Nieto's first visit abroad as president-elect, even before he took office, was to Washington DC for a meeting with President Obama. Nor is this regional traffic one-way : Obama's first visit abroad after he was elected first term was to Canada to meet Prime Minister Stephen Harper. These three countries are so joined at the hip in terms of trade that everything else fades to the background. Back in the subcontinent, a Pakistani leader's first mandatory stops are Riyadh, Beijing, UAE, Washington DC and other paymasters.
Of course, American history is different from ours. The one missing combustible element here is religion. But the fact also is that Mexico does not see itself or position itself as a challenger or an equal to the United States. It is not a neurotic, insecure state built on the basis of faith and false piety. The Mexican military budget is one-hundredth that of the US expenditure even though it could have made out a case for more because of unresolved border issues and water disputes. Instead, it has built its relative economic well-being on exports of goods and services. To the north, Canada, a country so benign that the comedian Jon Stewart once joked he could take over the country in about two days, has also exported its way to prosperity.
Of all the blessings the United States has, none is better than its geographic position: located between two benign neighbours and two vast oceans, which is probably why it goes far and beyond in search of wars to fight. We are less fortunate. But some day, perhaps, when our neighbourhood is less obsessed with religion and history, our leaders, the moment they are elected, will devise a travel schedule that includes all the neighbouring capitals first. Don't hold your breath for it though.
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