Blog #5: US-Mexican Relations

Why didn't the US take the other half of Mexico?Taking the northern half was, as Spanish teacher Arturo would say, "Pan Comido."Imperialistic sentiments were on the rise in late 19th-century America;it seems geopolitically silly that we would spend our efforts acquiring remote little islands, like Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, or Hawaii - especially when there was much contiguous land left to conquer (albeit from other westernized nations, rather than from purely-indigenous peoples). Canada was basically too vast for Britain to defend, and Mexico was a piece of cake, as the US-Mexico war demonstrated, as related in several articles, namely “” Polk’s War Message,” and “US Interventions in Mexico 1806-1876.” With its tradition of internal instability, making Mexico a second Puerto Rico probably would not have been much trouble for the US - we sent troops over the border frequently, and, during the Profiriato, the US was so heavily invested in Mexico that we might have been the majority shareholder in the state [we certainly held a plurality of investment in Mexico]as related in the Oxford History of Mexico chapter on the Mexican Revolution: Sons of the Sierra, as well as in Mark´s lecture on that era. So, it seems to me that it would have been feasible, over a wide range of times, to conquer Mexico in its entirety. Not that Hitleresque territorial ravenousness would have been the morally-right course of action, but the US had the capability, and a good bit of disposition too. So, whether we should have or not, I wonder why the US didn't annex the rest of Mexico - it would have, if nothing else, made more sense than territorially investing in Alaska, or the Philippines - geopolitical leftovers at the ends of the Earth. And financially, during the Profiriato, it might be even literally accurate, at least in an industrial-financial sense, to say the US owned Mexico.

I think that is precisely why the US never bothered to try militarily-annexing the other half of Mexico; financially, it was already ours – why bother being belligerently obvious about our hegemony? The explanation I fathom is that the US government was astute enough to realize the advantages of informal economic empire, over formal territorial empire. In the early 19th-century, either we did not realize this advantage, or it did not exist in the environment of the day, and anyway, it was not yet in vogue. The 13 East-Coast ex-Colonies vigorously annexed the middle latitudes of the North American continent, enlarging the territory of the US by an order of magnitude, at the expense of Spain/Mexico, Britain/Canada, and of course, the indigenous. By this trajectory, the whole Western Hemisphere should be flying the Stars and Stripes by now. Why aren't they, I wonder? Imperialist sentiment hasn't waned - Teddy Roosevelt loved bullying Latin America with his big-stick navy, Woodrow Wilson thought he knew what was best for everyone on Earth, later presidents felt no qualms about effecting anti-communist regime changes, and the Bush-43 administration neo-conservatives have based their careers on creating a preponderance of US military power over the rest of the world. So, why, in the long list of pompous US administrations, has no one, for better or for worse, tried to annex Latin America?

I feel that the overarching trend in imperial relations since the late 19th century [US-Mexico relations included] has been shaped primarily by a preference for investment shares over territory. The community of European Powers propped up China's Qing dynasty [as opposed to toppling that house of cards], so that the would-be-conquerors would not have to deal with the drudgery of day-to-day administration [leaving that (and the blame for imperfect performance therein) to the Chinese themselves], and so that Western powers would not have to shoulder the burden of providing for the commonweal of hundreds of millions of new citizens. For the same reasons, the British left the conquest of India "half done," I would say (in a territorial sense): 550+ independent states were left standing on the condition that they understood who ruled the waves [and their foreign affairs]. The treatment for imperial over-stretch is to soften imperial goals from concrete annexation, to subtle hegemony. This is the only light in which the continued independence (if only nominal) of significantly-less-powerful states, such as those of Latin America vis-à-vis the US, makes much sense.

This focus on limiting imperial overstretch heralds an era of increasing government responsibility for the well-being of the citizens of the state. Back when the US was a forested land of independent farmers and Davie Crocket-like cowboys, annexing 100-million 3rd-world Mexican peasants would not have sounded like a horrible idea [at least not within the narrow realm of selfish US interests]. However, with the increasing responsibility of the government for citizens, starting with New Deal public works programs, and increasing with social security, public education, and possibly, in the near future, socialized healthcare, the addition of new citizens is a hefty expense for the state. Few in the US would cheer to hear that 100 million poor 3rd-worlders have been added to the education, healthcare, and social security rolls. The current prevailing attitude in the US chafes at the idea that there are a few million undocumented foreigners in the US, using [with trepidation, if at all, for fear of deportation] public services. It would be the sum of all anti-immigrationist fears if one day, the US decided to annex the other half of Mexico - and thereby make every Mexican a US citizen, with a carte blanche to cross the border, live in the north, and reap the services of the US state; the Culture of Migration in Mexico, as detailed by Cohnen’s article by that name, would be greatly broadened and streamlined; migration north of the Rio Grande would be no more difficult than internal migration within Mexico, but for a little additional distance. Most in the US would be revolted by such a proposal - even just on selfish, possibly nativist, or even just financial, grounds, never-mind what the Mexicans themselves might want. With the rise of the welfare state, formal empire has become prohibitively expensive (not merely the military drain it became evident as in the early 20th-century). For a wealthy, xenophobic, welfare-state, formal, integrated empire is politically impossible. Annexing the southern, more-densely populated half of Mexico would have meant annexing lots of indigenous villages into US society. My Zapotec weaver amiga, Veronica, and her family,are always welcome in my house, but as far as the prevailing sentiment in the US is anti-immigrationist, and as far as it operates axiomatically by a 1st-world standard ofliving, formal empire is not something the world-hegemon has an appetite for (financially or socially). A preponderance of military & economic power is checked by a nativist distain for potential new (often relatively poor) citizens. Whereas the US once was poised to consume Mexico in its entirety, although the brute capacity to do so has not evaporated, the appeal of such an option has.The United States is ideologically much like the Profirian city, demarcated in Mark’s “The Emerald City” article: we want our world to be prosperous and organized. Accepting a lot of new citizens, unscreened for socioeconomic or education status, would temporarily decrease the legibility of US society, and do so to a degree that most US citizens would not accept. As seen in the “Farmingvile” film, may North-Americans vehemently reject the presence of hard-working laborers, even if solely on the grounds that they are undocumented, have side-stepped the ubiquitous bureaucracy of the US government, and therefore, are stray marks on the human landscape of the area, decreasing the legibility of US towns. That may strike me as being a miniscule negative point, made up for by a single hour’s worth of labor, but my opinion is not universally shared in the US; here, Profirian legibility is valued very (too?) highly. Formal conquest is messy – as demonstrated by the varying views presented in “Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico;” it is not something a wealthy, legibility-addicted social-welfare state has an appetite for.Today's is a world of informal, financial empire. The 19th-century marked a turning point in Mexico's strategic concerns. In the first half of the century, she was in danger of military conquest; ever after, the snares of economic hegemony have tied her. Imperialists have refined their techniques beyond the brutal method of direct conquest. Cortez has evolved into a coorporate executive – literally, as in Preston and Dillon’s “Opening Mexico” article, it is stated that, before becoming 2000-2006 president of Mexico, Vincente Fox was an executive at the US-based multi-national corporation, Cocla-Cola.

-Justin-