Toward a Contemporary Understanding of the United States-Mexico Border: A Preface

Abstract

VOL. 60, NO. 2, SUMMER 2001 The following essays focus on the United States-Mexico border at a time when the geopolitical frontier between these countries is becoming increasingly important. Mexico’s recent presidential election upset the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled for 71 years. The new president, Vicente Fox Quesada, brings a strikingly different posture to the office and reinforces an ideology that is already challenging current policy with the United States. Over the last few years Mexico’s economy has begun to stabilize, the country’s role as a major exporter in world trade has increased, and the split between Mexico’s rich, located in the prosperous northern border region, and poor, found in the south, exacerbates the urgency of changing relations with the United States. It should be no surprise, therefore, that President Fox is placing new emphasis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Of specific importance is Fox’s uncompromising attention on the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA continues to be debated in Mexico, as neoliberals and liberals argue about how to negotiate change in the agreement. But Fox’s advocacy for NAFTA is couched in strikingly new—and nationalistic—initiatives. One such proposition is a common market, which would open the U.S.-Mexico border and allow free movement of migrants along the entire frontera, as well as along Canada’s border with the U.S. (Borden 2000a; Economist 2000). This was met with polite skepticism in Canada and silence in the United States, but it signaled a new Mexican stance toward the powers of the north. Since his election Fox has been outspoken about his support for Mexicans in the U.S. and along the border. Unlike other presidents, he is courting Mexican Americans: he invited U.S. migrants and Mexican American leaders to Mexico, where he emphasized the need for migrant and worker rights in the United States (Borden 2000b). Fox’s emphasis on NAFTA and immigration strategically isolates the most important policy factors between the two nations: trade and Mexican labor migration to the U.S. President Fox recently dramatized these issues in symbolic visits to major border cities, such as Laredo, Nogales, Tijuana, and Ciudad Juarez, where he welcomed Mexicans returning home for holiday visits, calling them the real heroes of the nation, and emphasized their labor value for U.S. business (Rotstein 2000). Toward a Contemporary Understanding of the United States-Mexico Border: A Preface