That culture of resentment forms half of the dynamic Davidow sees at the core of the U.S.-Mexico relationship. The other half is the arrogant attitude of the United States–the bear in the title. (The porcupine represents Mexico’s prickly attitude toward its big northern neighbor.) The analogy struck a chord in Mexico when the Spanish-language edition was published last fall. (It hit U.S. bookstores in English last week.) The United States was “sick with arrogance,” Mexican historian Enrique Krauze commented, while Mexico was still mired in a “schizophrenic” mix of admiration and resentment. The book quickly sold out in Mexican bookstores, partly for its tart observations of prominent Mexican figures like former foreign minister (and NEWSWEEK columnist) Jorge Castaneda (“imperious and irascible”). It added to a growing debate about the need for a psychological change in the relationship.
It’s high time, Davidow argues. Mexico is far more important to the United States than “Kandahar or Basra or some other place that most of us had not heard of until yesterday,” he writes. Mexicans should be glad to hear that. Too often Mexico suffers from the capriciousness of U.S. policymakers, who turn their heads south only when it’s politically convenient. And Mexican leaders, Davidow points out, exploit wariness of U.S. chicanery for political gain. The result is an acute sense of mistrust.
Davidow’s 35 years as a government bureaucrat have obviously taken their toll; he argues that traveling around Mexico with an armed security escort is a welcome “luxury.” And the prose, while often lively, lapses into bureaucratese. But the inside looks he provides into such thorny cross-border debates as migration and the drug war–as well as the occasional gossipy nugget–are welcome. Clearly, Davidow has a nuanced understanding of the subject. The persistent distrust between U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement agencies that he chronicles resurfaced last week when the U.S. Treasury stopped cooperating with its Mexican counterpart because of a security breach.
Davidow was already gone when Bush proposed his immigration-reform package last fall. But by the time the reform goes through Congress, it may look more like the author’s proposal of residency-permit quotas for Mexicans. He also calls for a North American electrical grid and “automatic” extraditions of criminals between the two countries. Such measures would help ease both the resentment and the arrogance.
