cover image Disappearing Border: Mexico-United States Relations to the 1990's

Disappearing Border: Mexico-United States Relations to the 1990's

Clint E. Smith. Stanford Alumni Association, $12.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-916318-50-5

A former U.S. embassy official in Mexico and now a consulting professor of Latin American studies at Stanford University, Smith offers an accessible but textbook-like survey of major past and present issues that have arisen between the two neighbors. A reader wishing an introduction to the subject can learn much: how anti-Americanism weighs heavily on Mexican consciousness as a legacy from the Mexican War--known to our southern neighbors as the ``War of the North American Invasion''; how dictator Porfirio Diaz is seen as both a modernizer and, incorrectly in the author's view, as a sellout; how the U.S. saw post-WW II relations with Mexico as an issue of security rather than economic development. Smith provides brief sketches of the tenures of each of Mexico's presidents and reviews the country's long history of tensions with the U.S. over oil, drugs and natural resources. He takes on the racism underlying much criticism of Mexican immigration to the U.S. and suggests that the North American Free Trade Agreement is a step toward better understanding as well as an economic boon. Smith might have been more skeptical at times, rather than, for instance, accepting Mexico's claim that it will enforce high environmental standards. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)