In 2009, when Mexico’s middle class continued its steady expansion in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement and wealthy neighborhoods bloomed in many cities, it was a popular trope in Washington, D.C., circles that our southern neighbor was at risk of becoming a “failed state.” Since then, Mexico’s economy has become the 15th-largest in the world.
This growth isn’t just fueled by energy, manufacturing and tourism. A recent report detailed the boom of high-tech companies in Tijuana.
Yet to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mexico is still a nation run by “narco-terrorists” so dangerous that the U.S. should consider a military intervention, as he said in March. And Rolling Stone recently reported that former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump might pursue “battle plans” to “attack Mexico” if he were elected in 2024.
This is absurd. The rhetoric itself is dangerous. NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, and its successor — the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took effect in 2020 — made the three nations partners in a deep and profound sense. It is essential that a more nuanced understanding of Mexico emerges in the U.S.
This understanding should include an acknowledgment of the entrenched power of criminal drug cartels that are responsible for many of the more than 360,000 homicides — including of politicians, students, journalists and police officers — seen since 2006, when the government launched its most sustained crackdown. Cartel-related corruption and violence are major problems in Mexico. But this observation must be paired with two others.
The first is familiar: If Americans didn’t have such huge appetites for opioids, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other illicit narcotics, the cartels would be a fraction of their current size.
The second is less appreciated: With the presidential election of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party in 2000 — after 71 years of single-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party — Mexico accomplished “the rare feat of ending an authoritarian regime by voting it out of office,” in the words of Mexico scholar Joseph L. Klesner.
The achievement may be threatened by the February passage of “election reforms” at the behest of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that would cut the budget at the National Electoral Institute. Critics say the changes undermine democratic norms.
Americans should closely watch this threat and Mexico’s economy, not the cartoons Graham and Trump are drawing. A second six-year term for Obrador, elected in 2018, would be unconstitutional under Mexican law, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection isn’t assured. But the two must keep improving their relationship even if it may end next year. The nations’ partnership starts with theirs.
