Word: mexicanization
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...behind and turn it into the New Frontier. The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) prospectors saw in the opening of the border a chance to make a killing by taking factories that would otherwise head to Malaysia and plunking them down right across the border, where the average Mexican worker earns slightly more in a day than an American makes in an hour and where the highways run all the way to Canada...
That means that both countries are growing more dependent on this relationship every day. Mexicans all across the interior follow the North Star chasing the jobs. There are now four or five cities the size of Cleveland, Ohio, sitting right next door, and 25 years from now as much as 40% of the entire Mexican population may be living on the border. The region is Mexico's economic engine, a huge commercial classroom where the unskilled workers who were making gauze eye patches in 1980 now make ATMs and modems and the most popular Sony color TV sold...
...often said the border is its own country, "Amexica," neither Mexican nor American. "The border is not where the U.S. stops and Mexico begins," says Laredo mayor Betty Flores. "It's where the U.S. blends into Mexico." Both sides regard their sovereign governments as distant and dysfunctional. They are proud of their ability to take care of themselves, solve their problems faster and cheaper than any faraway bureaucrat. The Brownsville, Texas, fire trucks answer sirens on the other side; in Tijuana, Mexico, health clinics send shuttle buses every morning to meet people coming over for everything from dentistry to dialysis...
When President George W. Bush held his first official t?te-?-t?te with then Prime Minister Paul Martin, in the Mexican city of Monterrey in January 2004, he called Martin a "straightforward fellow." Two years later, Bush used the same phrase to describe Stephen Harper at their get-acquainted chat in Canc?n, Mexico. Awkward coincidence? Maybe, but the U.S. President evidently regards straightforwardness as the highest praise he can bestow on his counterparts--at least until he decides it no longer fits the bill...
...message control isn't a policy. Last week's three-way Canc?n summit, hosted by Mexican President Vicente Fox, made clear that if Harper really wants to put distance between himself and his predecessors, he still has work to do. His tough rhetoric on the disputes dividing Ottawa and Washington sounds similar to the Liberals' line. Speaking at the closing press conference about the softwood-lumber wrangle, he warned that Canada will use its "legal options" if it can't get the U.S. to release duties impounded from Canadian lumber exporters. And, he added darkly, Canada is "running...