Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants, by Jorge G. Castañeda, The New Press, 2007, 222 pp., $25.95 hardcover
While in the United States and Mexico it would seem that conventional understandings of national sovereignty, national security, national economy, and national culture have remained static over the past century, the data on Mexican immigration to the United States show that radical change in these areas has occurred right before our eyes. Yet U.S. and Mexican political debates on immigration continue to reflect a hazardous blend of nativism, national identity, and a wide variety of social and economic myths masking greed, racial qualms, and political irresponsibilityeven as the human integration of the United States and Mexico has already taken place.
Ex Mex addresses this irony, drawing from Jorge G. Castañedas experience as Mexicos foreign minister during the first years of former Mexican president Vicente Foxs administration. Written in English by a prestigious Mexican intellectual, the book explicitly seeks to contribute to a new U.S. public debate on immigration. Castañedas aim is to provide the reader with an accurate, readable, current, well-informed, and solidly grounded, though fundamentally single-sided [Mexican] basis for understanding one of the most crucial, controversial, and complex issues in the United Stated and Mexico today. And Ex Mex does exactly that.
The book can, however, be somewhat off-putting. Except for a couple of mild self-criticisms, it is filled with the authors self-importance: References abound to his intellectual production, his accomplishments as foreign minister, and his personal talks with George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, and Fox. One could not expect less from Castañeda, once upon a time the unappointed enfant terrible of Mexican diplomacy in Cuba and Central America, a well-known public intellectual in English and Spanish, and, not least, a former presidential candidate. Indeed, humbleness is alien to Castañedas narrative style, and yet this reviewer advises patience: Ex Mex is an important, insightful book.
The analysis begins with the decline of circular Mexican migration in the early 1990s. Following the 1986 amnesty sponsored by the Reagan administration, President Clintons immigration policies made it harder for Mexican workers to enter the United States. But they did not stop migrating; they just stopped returning home as often, or at all. In 1986, Castañeda shows, Mexican-born U.S. residents represented between 4.3% and 5.3% of Mexicos population and about 1.7% of the U.S. population; by 2000, with the decline of circularity, those numbers had shot up to 10% and 3.2%, respectively. Paradoxically, it was U.S. immigration-control policies, by making the return trip so hazardous, that contributed most powerfully to increasing the United States Mexican-born population.
Castañeda also describes some of the qualitative changes in Mexican migration: More women are migrating; more people are migrating from Mexican states that were not traditional sending areas; and more of them are arriving not only in California, Illinois, and the Southwest, but virtually everywhere in the United States. The impact of this massive human integration, Castañeda argues, has irreversibly changed the politics, economics, and cultures of both Mexico and the United States. He follows up this discussion by detailing his own plan for a new U.S.-Mexico relationship, a plan that seemed promising and innovative when he became foreign minister in 2000. He describes his attempts, even after 9/11, to work with the Bush administration on reaching a comprehensive migration-reform agreement that, he hoped, would include a U.S. guest-worker program for up to 500,000 workers per year, combined with increased law enforcement and migration control on both sides of the border.
In this regard, the book is a source of important, if biased, testimony: Castañeda was at the core of these discussions at the outset of the presidential terms of both Bush and Fox. One need not share the authors proclivity for self-aggrandizement to acknowledge that he was, and is, one of the few members of Mexicos political and intellectual elite who truly understands the sometimes bizarre workings of U.S. politics, as well as the unique relationship between the neighboring countries.
The story he tells is therefore an interesting and colorful one, filled with accounts of the hypocrisy and miscalculations of Mexican and U.S. high officials, and with his own characterizations of the key players. He portrays Fox as a kind of noble savage, a man with good intentions but with a clumsy or null capacity to act. Powell comes across as Mexicos faithful if inefficient friend, and his boss, Bush, as another noble savage (perhaps more savage than noble) who, despite his good intentions, is hypocritical and rather unreliable. In the midst of all this the book portrays Castañeda as a kind of Mexican Winston Churchill who courageously fights against all odds for a decent political outcome.
Castañeda takes us on a step-by-step narrative of the various strategies he used in his attempt to reach a comprehensive agreement that would include border enforcement in Mexico and justice for Mexicans in the United States, all the while facing both Mexican and U.S. opposition to his guest-worker proposal. In all this, his testimony is lucid and valuable for scholars, policy makers, and the general public. Ex Mex ends with an outline of two possible futures. One entails business as usual, the same old game of pretending to do something while doing as little as possible. In this scenario, the re-emergence of U.S. nativism, together with a deepening economic crisis, could produce dangerous social conflicts on both sides of the border.
The other possibility is Castañedas proposal: a comprehensive bilateral immigration reform, with guest-worker programs included. For this to work, Castañeda argues, Mexico would have to commit to both seriously discouraging out-migration and linking Mexico-U.S. migration to the two countries security concerns. That would mean economic and social incentives for Mexicans to remain in Mexico, penalties for people who decide to leave, and increased Mexican law enforcement along its northern and southern borders. All these measures would upset Mexicos traditional notions of sovereignty and revolutionary nationalism.
However necessary these measures, Castañeda holds that there is no need to even consider them if the United States is unwilling to radically transform its understanding of Mexican migration. Washington would need to somehow legalize current Mexican undocumented workers and offer clear, viable paths to citizenship for those who decide to stay. Castañeda argues that the United States should take a serious look at its own self-interest in promoting the prosperity of the entire region, and devote significant resources (à la the European Union) to developing Mexico. Of course, he is well aware of the difficulties of reaching such a commitment, but his is a pragmatic and worthy suggestion. Many could disagree, but not with Castañedas call to, as it were, change the channel: Any proposal would be better than the current Tom and Jerry paradigm, in which domestic security agencies continuously chase their illegal prey.
There is one issue, nonetheless, that is largely missing from Castañedas discussion. He is clear that in order for a comprehensive reform to be accepted in the United States it would need to be linked to security, but he scarcely deals with drug trafficking. Worryingly, the perceived link between drug trafficking, terrorism, and migrationand its demagogic manipulation by politicians in both countrieshas the potential to become a dangerous equation: Mexican = Terrorist. Castañeda would do well to seriously consider the possibility of this nightmare.
Unfortunately, despite the books many insightful ideas and testimonies, it faces a difficult destiny, given that different U.S. audiences could easily dismiss its argument. The academic left, which used to love the güero bueno, now hates whatever the güero malo writes. Not much to do about that. Meanwhile, conservative academic and public opinion may find Castañedas call for a mutual commitment and comprehensive reform too radical to swallow, and it could consider his call for a dialogue of equals irreverent. Indeed, Castañedas book provides plenty of proof that for mainstream U.S. politicians, any attempt at dealing with Mexicans as equals in rights, intelligence, interests, and obligations is still a cultural (maybe even racial) taboo. Finally, the overwhelmingly culturalist, identity-centered concerns of U.S. politics and academia would miss the identity anguishes and essentialisms that are absent from Castañedas book. Whether or not one agrees with Castañedas prognosis, Ex Mex ought to be commended for demarcating the discussion within the plebeian but meaningful and unavoidable confines of realpolitikcentered on lasting justice and equality for Mexican workers in the United States, leaving questions of cultural identity for Mexicans to work out.
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo is Professor of History at the University of Chicago and Associate Professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City. He is the author of six books, including the forthcoming Historia y celebración. Manual de uso (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2008).
