BEAUTIFUL AND BELOVED MEXICO

January 25, 2010

MEXICO CITY -- After 25 years of internal struggle, I've finally learned to live in two countries. I don't have to choose. I work in the United States, a country that has given me all kinds of opportunities and that I have learned to admire. It's also where my children are. But I return frequently to Mexico -- where I was born and where my family still lives -- to replenish my soul. The problem is you can't live on only your soul. 
That is a well-known fact for over 100 million Mexicans who face a permanent economic crisis, an environment of narco-violence -- 5,000 deaths in the last three years -- and an H1N1 flu epidemic that has still not ended. 
Mexico, with its friends, loves and long dinner-table conversations, embraces even the most vulnerable and humble. Its people eat better, I'm sure, than those of most of the world. You won't find beaches and landscapes more beautiful anywhere else. And even so, Mexicans still contemplate leaving their country. 
Why? You don't have to think hard to find the answer. 
A recent survey (Pew Global Attitudes) found that a majority of Mexicans is not satisfied with the direction their country has taken. Some 81 percent believe that crime is a huge problem, 75 percent complain about the economy and 68 percent consider their leaders corrupt. 
That's nothing new. When I left Mexico 25 years ago, drug trafficking was not a central issue, though even then we complained about it. 
Moreover, my schoolmates and neighbors believed Mexico seemed continually to be lurching from one emergency to another. Once, President Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-1982), blinded by our recently discovered oil reserves, boasted in advance that Mexico would have to learn to administer its wealth. He was wrong. After that ridiculous and presumptuous statement, the country suffered terrible financial chaos, a deep devaluation of the peso and the nationalization of its banks. What kind of wealth is that! 
It was as if Mexico was a country of never-ending crises and we couldn't lift our heads out of pessimism. Some of the more courageous and optimistic decided to remain in the country to try to change it from the inside. Others, like me, thought we couldn't wait two or three decades for Mexico to change, so we decided to change -- countries. 
And we left. Many of us. In fact, last year the U.S. Census Office counted 11,412,668 people born in Mexico were living in the United States. 
Truly, no one wants to leave their country. Why would you leave behind your parents, your friends, the places where you grew up? You leave your country because something there is pushing you out. President Felipe Calderon admitted last October that the number of poor in Mexico grew from 14 million to 20 million. 
And there is also something else that pulls the emigrant away. Most Mexicans (57 percent) believe that one can live a better life in the United States. It is easy to understand why: On average, Americans earn four times more than Mexicans. 
Today's economic crisis has stemmed the flow of migrants from south of the border. Not long ago, around half a million Mexicans entered the United States every year. Lately, that migration has stopped and even slightly reversed. But that's just a temporary situation. 
As soon as America's economic recovery consolidates, millions more impoverished Mexicans will see their only chance for a decent life -- in the North. If not for them, then for their children. The emigrant leaves his own country because he would rather live in a nation that is already built than in another that is yet to be built. 
The United States was the first country to be hit by the current world economic crisis and will be the first to get back on its feet. So I predict that, in a little while, there will be a huge wave of migration from South to North. Latin America, sadly, will take many more years to pull itself up again. 
Mexico needs to create at least a million jobs annually to keep up with its growing labor force. But it can't. Young people can't find decent jobs and so see the North as their last resort. They don't want to leave, but they have to. 
Mexico is the land of promises. President Vicente Fox promised me, in an interview in 2000, that he would create the million jobs a year. He didn't fulfill that promise. Calderon vowed the same in an interview with me in 2006, but also hasn't kept his word. 
Beautiful and beloved Mexico, yes. But, for many Mexicans, it is remote, breaking down and holds no future.