The Economist.
NEXT week the leaders of North America’s two most populous countries
are due to meet for a neighbourly chat in Washington, DC. The re-elected
Barack Obama and Mexico’s president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, have
plenty to talk about: Mexico is changing in ways that will profoundly
affect its big northern neighbour, and unless America rethinks its
outdated picture of life across the border, both countries risk forgoing
the benefits promised by Mexico’s rise.
The White House does not spend much time looking south. During six
hours of televised campaign debates this year, neither Mr Obama nor his
vice-president mentioned Mexico directly. That is extraordinary. One in
ten Mexican citizens lives in the United States. Include their
American-born descendants and you have about 33m people (or around a
tenth of America’s population). And Mexico itself is more than the
bloody appendix of American imaginations. In terms of GDP it ranks just
ahead of South Korea. In 2011 the Mexican economy grew faster than
Brazil’s—and will do so again in 2012.
Yet Americans are gloomy about Mexico, and so is their government: three
years ago Pentagon analysts warned that Mexico risked becoming a
“failed state”. As our special report
in this issue explains, that is wildly wrong. In fact, Mexico’s economy
and society are doing pretty well. Even the violence, concentrated in a
few areas, looks as if it is starting to abate.
