Name: Distant Neighbors
ISBN: 9780679724414

Alan Riding

A study of Mexico--political, social, cultural, economic--by a journalist who was for the past six years the New York Times bureau chief in Mexico City. With portraits of Mexico's top leaders, about a nation whose stability is vital to our national well-being.

A Portrait of the Mexicans

Distant Neighbors

Gavin

I am not surprised that Riding left Mexico after writing this. The first chapter's brutal generalisations feel like something from the 1930s - Ruth Benedict shit. 

  Because of the risks involved in defining oneself, most important academic treatises about Mexico have been written by foreigners...

In its soul, Mexico is not—and perhaps never will be — a Western nation. But by trying to make the country more superficially democratic, more Western, more “presentable” abroad, the system’s roots in the population have weakened. It has become less truly democratic because it is less representative of real Mexicans. The more the system responds to the Americanized minority, the more blatant will be the contradictions within the country...

more evident than in Mexico’s almost aggressive sense of nationalism. The threats, attacks, invasions and occupations that have come from abroad since the time of Independence are more than sufficient to justify Mexico’s unspoken xenophobia... Feeling imprisoned historically and economically by the United States, Mexico has used a series of lesser political issues as loudspeakers for its nationalism. Its strong influence over local media and the discipline of its political apparatus enable the government to switch on nationalist “shows” at its convenience: issues that in one year become tests of national honor may be ignored the next year. Major “victories” have therefore been recorded on problems of little consequence to the United States and of great symbolic weight to Mexico... A drought that severely damaged Mexican agriculture in 1980 was attributed by some officials to hurricane seeding by the U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. On this occasion, embarrassed Mexican diplomats conceded privately that the nationalism was misplaced and the media “show” had taken off on its own. The following year, no credit was given to the United States for an excellent rainy season.


Mexico alone is truly mestizo: it is the only nation in the hemisphere where religious and political—as well as racial—mestizaje took place; it has the only political system that must be understood in a pre-Hispanic context; and its inhabitants alone are still more Oriental than Western

Some ridiculous apophasis too:

  Conversely, the wife, who as an object of sex is considered an aberration from feminine perfection, must be humiliated, since a husband’s faithfulness or excessive affection would imply vulnerability and weakness

Whether or not this neo-Freudian analysis is wholly valid, the male-female relationship in Mexico is often marked by tension and distrust.


I wondered how he could keep up this level of English disdain for 500 pages but he rights himself and goes on to give a good, value-laden potted history of 3000 years of the territory. Big focus on incredible inequalities and "internal colonialism".

Dozens of remarkable details, like the folk hero Pancho Villa slaughtering Chinese civilians; or the left populist Echerverria who killed hundreds of leftists. 

  soon became apparent that much of the crime, in the main holdups and kidnappings, was being carried out in Mexico City by current and former members of the local police

on numerous occasions each year, politicians—men and women—will line up for hours in the hope of receiving an abrazo from the President.

the INI moved to recover direct control over Maya, Tarahumara, Mixtec and Nahuatl radio stations thought to be too independent.

Given the fatalism of the Indians and the repression prevailing throughout the country, revolution could only begin in the middle classes.

Today, Mexicans resent the arrogance of many Spanish migrants, with their well-earned reputation for “exploiting” local workers, but they feel drawn to all things Spanish, from singers and bullfighters to food and wines. At a national level, even though Mexico is today richer, more populous and more influential than Spain, it continues to look, perhaps subconsciously, for the mother country’s approval.

I am surprised the PRI was so successful at suppressing the church:

  In 1992, Salinas restored Mexico’s diplomatic relations with the Vatican and relaxed controls on church activities. For the first time in seventy-five years, the clergy stopped being official pariahs.


He claims that the anti-Americanism was actually just an elite thing not shared by the populace (until 1990, when the elites started to kowtow):

  There is resentment bequeathed by the loss of so much territory in the nineteenth century and by U.S. military interventions as recently as 1916. There is resistance to the oppressive weight of continuing U.S. political and economic influence in Mexico. There is intellectualized contempt for the materialistic culture exported by the United States. And there is the reassuring belief that “clever” Mexicans can always outwit “naïve” Americans. But among ordinary Mexicans there is also admiration for the United States and, above all, for its organization, honesty and affluence.


Overall, tragedy piled haphazardly on tragedy.

  the country’s own historical record of defeats and betrayals has prepared Mexicans to expect — and accept — the worst. The official heroes — from Cuauhtémoc to Emiliano Zapata—have invariably been murdered, while the ideals enshrined in laws and constitutions have been universally betrayed. “The hero’s tomb is the cradle of the people,” the poet Octavio Paz


This was risible:

  [The US is separated by] language, religion, race, philosophy and history. The United States is a nation barely two hundred years old and is lunging for the twenty-first century. Mexico is several thousand years old and is still held back by its past.

A classic mistake, forgetting that nation-states are very new and simply not identical with their geography. (In what sense is the current administration or population the same as that of the Olmecs?)

This was wrong at the time:

  No former colony with a large indigenous population has ever climbed out of underdevelopment. No valid blueprint exists, no improvised plans seem to work. Even if Mexico’s political system survives in its present form, its managers harbored few illusions that the country’s deep social problems would be resolved before the year 2000: optimistically, it might resemble Greece; pessimistically, it will be more like India

(Canada.) Chile is now above a reasonable definition of middle-income, but this is mostly growth since 2000.

A Cold War book. Mexico is a different country now, more different than most countries 40 years on.

----

Some slang:

* "Priista": member of the PRI, previously the dictator party.
* "mordida": bite, small routine bribe
* "cacique": boss, chief, in particular the monopsonist exploiter of rural workers.
* "chingadazo is a heavy physical blow, and a chingadera is a dirty trick. A Mexican can warn, jokingly or threateningly, no chingues, meaning “don’t annoy me,” and if he loses out in some way, he will admit that me chingaron. It is high praise to describe someone as chingón—that is, he is clever enough to chingar others"

Diana Platgalve

Distant Neighbors explains a lot when it comes to Mexican politics and historical development up until 80s. I was somehow confused by author introducing Spanish language vulgarities already at the beginning, and a lot of subjects I felt were misrepresented (I.e.agriculture is more than corn and beans...).
Overall, it could be pretty actual representation of Mexican sentiment, especially when it comes to the current strained relationships between the United States and Mexico.

Distant Neighbors A Portrait of the Mexicans

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