HART'S BOOK PREDICTED U.S. ATTITUDES TOWARD MEXICO

From: "Empire and Revolution," by Dr. John Mason Hart
University of California Press, 2002

Introduction: Imperial Ambition

Page 3

"The evolving patterns of American behavior in Mexico have reflected and anticipated the interactions of U.S. citizens in other Latin American and  Third World societies. By the end of the twentieth Century, U.S. interests had stretched to Eastern Europe and Russia, and the business and technical juggernaut envisioned by the American elite in the 1860s had tied Mexico to their interests through fiber optics and international electric power grids.

"Despite this long history of interaction, the vast majority of Americans maintained a remarkable indifference to their neighbor. In consequence, elite interests in the United States disproportionately influenced U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico. A pervasive American belief of their personal superiority over Mexicans and entrenched economic insularity created that sense of distance and continued to prevail in the last decade of the twentieth century despite the development of closer business and political ties.

"In spite of the intense and long-standing relationship between Mexico and the United States, the domestic "War on Drugs," and working-class Mexican immigration, documented and undocumented, dominated public awareness of Mexico. The indifference of the great majority of Americans has left bilateral affairs in the hands of economic and political elites who are less than representative of  American diversity, especially in the development of democratic institutions and respect for Mexican sovereignty."

"Indeed, the overwhelming evidence points to a compulsion on the part of the American elites toward external wealth, global power, and deeper personal contacts with other peoples, often in order to "save" them. This compulsion was first expressed internationally in Mexico."