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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.
MEXICO AT THE CROSS ROADS
FEB 21, 2009 - 6:51PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
All posts by this author
“Poor Mexico“ the nation’s nineteenth century dictator Porfirio Díaz supposedly remarked, “so far from God and so close to the United States!” His lament continues to strike a chord today. Mexico remains fundamentally connected to its neighbor to the North both by economic and cultural ties. A substantial number of Mexicans work in the United States and the remittances that they send home play a significant role in the Mexican economy. American brands and popular culture are everywhere in Mexico. Hollywood films are released simultaneously here and in the USA, and the country is considered a prime market. Mexican TV also screens plenty of American material. The billboards of Mexico City are advertising 90210 and Gossip Girl just like the billboards in LA. For this reason a trip to Mexico to discuss issues of Soft Power, cultural and public diplomacy inevitably raises issues about the United States and its regional image. It was not always easy listening. I traveled to Mexico City in November 2008 to take part in a conference on public and cultural diplomacy at the Matías Romero Institute – the think tank and diplomatic academy attached to the SRE (Mexico’s foreign ministry). The conference organizer – Mexican cultural diplomacy scholar, César Villanueva – also arranged for me to speak to his international relations class at the Universidad Iberoamericana, and to meet with some of the scholars working on issues of public diplomacy. It was my first visit to Mexico, and besides the intellectual engagement with the PD issues raised it was a delight to eat real Mexican food, see some of the Aztec and colonial sights, and get to know some of the art history of the country, including the amazing muralists and the ubiquitous, macabre images of mortality which so transfixed British literary visitors like Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, and Malcolm Lowery. It was a powerful experience just to walk though the pulsing Mexico City streets, to see the diversity of Mexican faces, and to recognize in them the profiles I recognized from Aztec and Mayan sculpture and textbook reproductions of Diego Rivera paintings. Like the first time I looked from an Italian train window and realized that the Tuscan landscape really does feature the impossibly precipitous hills and wind stunted trees, I had an exhilarating feeling of the sudden collapse of the distance between art and reality. I am here and it is all real. While I had come to talk about the history of American public diplomacy many of my discussions came back to the question of Mexico’s place in the world and the best strategy and themes for its future public diplomacy. I asked the students at Iberoamericana what they thought could be a source of Mexican soft power. They came back with “our friendliness,” ”Corona Beer,” ”our painters,” ”our cuisine” and then ran out of steam. Our other discussions raised such names as the great comic actor Cantinflas and contemporary star, Salma Hayek. Frida Kahlo was not favored as Mexican aficionados consider…... FULL TEXT
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 Read Comments:
Luis Sanchez T. on March 10, 2009 @ 7:35 am:
I have resided next to one of Mexico's great spring break resorts for many years. My experience is that approximately 80% of the spring breakers are Chicanos. These are people of Mexican decent who were born in the USA. These wild and crazy young people were not raised in the conservative households of Mexico where the mother stays home and looks after them, but rather in the USA with both parents working to pay the rent and no one looking after the children. The problem is clear.
Cesar Corona on March 24, 2009 @ 12:43 am:
Thank you for the inspiring post about your visit to Mexico.
Mexico's identity is lost somewhere between Latin America, North America, indigenous Mexico and Spain, but my impression is that after our independence war (1810-1821), the United States has had the most significant impact in Mexico's quest for an identity, both positively and negatively. My ancestors officialy named the country "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (United Mexican States) and declared it a federation of states (although Mexican states were already part of a unit under Spanish rule) following the model of the USA. The independence of the USA was a motivation for our independence, but soon we also learned to mistrust our Northern neighbors after the invasion of 1846-1848 and the loss of a big portion of our territory to them. Nowadays, we're surrounded by products, films, music, tourists and ideas from the USA which strongly influence Mexicans, again, both positively and negatively.
Despite having a 1'969 mi long border with around 250 million legal crossings per year (1), Mexicans and US citizens don't really know each other. I personally have experienced the "your little country is so cute" experience with US tourists in Mexico and a very frustrating team work project with a US student in McGill University (Canada), who wouldn't take my point of view seriously because I came from the "third world". I think there's nothing like individual contact to enrich the perception of people from other countries, but in cases like these I think some public diplomacy coming from the efforts of national governments would facilitate interpersonal relations.
Your experience with students in Universidad Iberoamericana (the best Mexican private university under my opinion), where after sharing a few ideas for Mexican soft power they "ran out of steam", is repeated the same way in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and ProMéxico, the governmental agency in charge of the image of Mexico abroad and foreign trade. During 2006 and 2007, the MFA started a program to withdraw Mexican membership to many International Governmental Organizations, following presidential orders to save money. They weren't aware that much of Mexico's soft power derives from our presence and participation in the multilateral arena and an international prestige build during decades. Luckily for Mexicans, they stopped the program on time, but now, even though we kept memberships, our participation in these fora has seriously decreased. I also followed the work of ProMéxico in Expo 2008 Zaragoza (Spain), which was an ideal venue for a powerful display of Mexican public diplomacy, especially because the Government of Spain gave Mexico the priviledge of being the most important participating country among 104 others. Expo 2008 Zaragoza was a cultural event about water and sustainable development, but ProMexico came to promote investment in aeronautic, automotive and tourism industries, and what's even worse, presented Mexicans with false results (interestingly I clearly detected some propaganda techniques). Some journalists called Mexican participation in this international exhibition "another lost opportunity". In a few words, Mexico still doesn't understand what public diplomacy and soft power are and what they're for.
I'm also amazed to hear that in Mexico City you got to eat real Mexican food, especially because you work (and I assume you live) in Los Angeles, the second city in the world with more Mexicans only after Mexico City (2). I guess that even in Los Angeles there's no much cultural exchange between Mexicans and US citizens, which presents another opportunity for public diplomacy strategies.
I agree with your perspective of structuring Mexican public diplomacy based on Mexico as a cultural crossroads, but currently the tendency among government officers is to forget about the culture and portray the country as a modern place to invest and do business. For me, this is to neglect much of our strength and dignity as a country, just to get fast money at any cost. No wonder why spring-breakers are allowed to disrespect our country and destroy whatever lies between their hotel room and the club, as long as they pay good tips.
I think the most important step to portray Mexico abroad is to first understand what we are and where we come from. Then we'll know where we're going to and will use public diplomacy tools more wisely. Sometimes we need to see our country from abroad to understand ourselves.
Next time you visit Mexico I would like to invite you to exchange points of view with students and teachers in my university: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (the most important Mexican public university). I have the impression that you'll get very different perspectives compared to your visit to Universidad Iberoamericana.
Again, thank you for telling us about your experience in my country.
César Corona
(1) http://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/eng/eborder_mechs.html
(2) http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563055_2/los_angeles.html
Nataly on September 5, 2009 @ 10:42 am:
The article is very interesting. I enjoyed it very much. Really Mexico is influenced by the USA greatly but we shouldn't forget that it influences the third part of all the world almost in the same way or a little bit less. As for me, I have friends from Mexico. I've never been to it but i've read a lot about it (found a lot of interesting books at the book search engine http://ebook-search-queen.com ). I believe that they will preserve their identity. I think Mexican culture is too great to be forgotten or assimilated.
Juan Estrada on December 1, 2009 @ 2:27 pm:
Thank you for your article. The final punch line is hilarious! Mexico (and all the nations) should start thinking in marketing terms under one umbrella only. Mexico's image abroad is the responsibility of ProMexico, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Tourism. We Mexicans should create a Mexico brand as a whole, and we are not doing it because there is a believe that marketing is manipulative. We are doing great things under the administration of Calderon, but we should too start changing our image as a stigmatized nation (Swine flu, drug war, kidnaps, violence, corruption, poverty, etc.) These topics are better press than our cultural heritage, writers, actors, painters, beaches, weather, architecture, labor, handcrafts, etc. etc. etc. and if the Government do not address this issue and retaliate this negative, stereotype, stigmatized, pre-conceived image first it is going to be hard to attract more foreign direct investment and tourists, as well as creating a better image to Mexican products and citizenship overall. Someone said: "Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing". I am a lawyer, and I don't "object".
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