We've all heard about Freedom Fries and insults toward French people on account of France refusing to follow the United States' leadership on war with Iraq. Will Mexico, our neighbor to the south, be next?
Actually, the real question is whether everyone in the United States with a Spanish surname will suffer the consequences of possible Mexico-bashing, since many people cannot distinguish among Hispanic ethnicities. (How many think Puerto Ricans are "foreigners," even though they're U.S. citizens by birth?)
What's provoking this speculation is Mexico's uncertainty whether to support President George W. Bush's pre-emptive war against Iraq and its crackpot dictator, Saddam Hussein.
The U.N. Security Council is bitterly split. As luck would have it, Mexico is one of the countries that would have had a vote on whether to approve any U.N. endorsement of a U.S. military invasion.
The prevailing point of view among people in Mexico is that the United States and France have so many political, historical, sociological and cultural aspects in common that there's no reason the two freedom-loving countries can't reach agreement on how best to deal with Iraq -- except that their respective leaders are being stubborn.
Recent polls in Mexico show as many as 90 percent do not want their representatives in the United Nations casting any vote that could be construed as support for the United States, even though a majority thinks France's opposition is motivated by petty politics rather than legitimate concern about war and terrorism.
Mexico's reluctance to support war encouraged U.S. anti-war activists, who last week delivered letters to consulates across the country urging the Mexican government to "stand firm against the pressuring of the Bush administration."
At one point, Mexico President Vicente Fox considered having its representative on the Security Council abstain. But U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said an abstention would be construed as a "no" vote.
In the end, Mexico was let off the hook when U.N. officials decided Monday not to take a vote, although the New York Times reported that Fox decided late Sunday on a "no" vote.
While Bush says there will be no retaliation against Mexico, Garza said Mexicans could wind up facing the same wrath as the French -- maybe more because the Hispanic influence in the United States these days is so much stronger than "la Francesa."
"Every day we hear about incidents of our people being mistreated somewhere," said Cesar Romero, a Mexican consulate spokesman. "But there's nothing especially unusual about the types of incidents or the number in recent days.
"I can't say they're related (to possible Mexico opposition to an Iraq war) in any way," Romero said. "But we've heard the same comments. We're waiting to see what happens."
Hispanic activist groups also are monitoring incidents, although they say they are most likely to come from people who already have irrational attitudes towards the Americas -- North, Central and South.
Such hang-ups were illustrated in a commentary published as far back as June 2002 by SierraTimes.com under the headline "Mexico is the Real Enemy Right Now." The Web site, which purports to represent the views of "real Americans," says Mexico is trying to subvert U.S. culture in ways Iraq never has.
"I haven't heard about any Iraqi attempt to change the American way of life to an Iraqi one, but I see many attempts by Mexicans to change the American way of life to a Mexican one," the site said, failing to realize that the Mexican/Spanish presence in the southwestern U.S. came first and is too strong to ever be eradicated by Anglos.
It went on to say: "What is President George Bush doing? Why ... he wants to attack Iraq. To get Americans ready to send their kids to kill and be killed, the administration is working overtime to demonize Iraq."
For people who prefer to "demonize" Hispanics, their views would be the same, even if Mexico marched in lockstep with the United States.
That's the ironic part. Mexico could have been persuaded to support the U.S. position.
Fox is a former Coca-Cola executive who views the United States more charitably than many other Mexicans. He is inclined to put two statistics -- 80 percent of Mexican exports purchased by the United States and 4 million Mexican citizens working (some without proper papers) in the United States -- ahead of his citizens' ambivalence toward Bush.
Fox has always wanted to make it easier for Mexicans to work legally in the United States. While Bush initially was sympathetic, U.S. paranoia following the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon ended any chance of immigration reform, which turned out to be a mistake.
U.S. officials should have reached an accommodation with Mexico. At the very least, this country would be safer having its borders watched by nations that feel a stake in U.S. interests, rather than ones that could care less if some hostile influence were to pass through and wreak havoc on Houston, Los Angeles or Seattle.
So will all this tension on both sides result in hostilities against Hispanics living north of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande?
I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and hope we've learned something from our history, where the tensions of World War II resulted in the extreme of internment camps for U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry. Personally, I don't want my tax dollars three decades from now going toward reparations for Muslims.
Nor do I want to be cashing such a check myself.
(Hispanidad is a weekly column about the culture of Hispanics and Latinos in the United States, written by Greg Tejeda, a third-generation Mexican-American. Suggestions for topics can be made to [email protected])
