IN SEARCH OF MEXICO: Latin America’s enigma
BY GAITHER STEWART “The old saying about Mexico’s ills still holds: “Pobre Mexico tan lejos de dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.” Poor Mexico, so far from God and so near the United States. (The aphorism has been credited to Porfirio Diaz, but some historians argue it was Simon Bolivar who coined the witticism, with all of “Latin America” as the victim instead of just Mexico.) For there is no better place than Mexico to see first-hand the negative results of the pact between American capitalism and the tiny “have” class of Mexican society that has exploited the country’s hard working people for one hundred and fifty years. John Mason Hart’s monumental Empire and Revolution that I once reviewed answers the question many Americans are asking today: “Why do they hate us so much?” At the outset Professor Hart, University of Houston, quotes a passage from Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes’ masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz, the gist of which is that one cannot commit what North Americans (and the Mexican elite) have committed against Mexico and expect to be loved…”
