Donald Trump’s rhetoric about illegal Mexican immigrants has raised global interest in the Mexican people and their culture. Most Indians probably feel a solidarity with them because of our common skin color. This essay is an account of my interactions with the Mexicans.
My first exposure to Mexicans took place when my company RCA established factories just south of the border in Juarez, Mexico, mainly in order to reduce the labour cost in assembling television-related circuits and components. I visited the RCA plant in Mexico for the first time in 1985 and immediately felt homesick; everything in the town – people, buildings, food, pollution, transportation, hot weather, street hawkers and panhandlers – all reminded me of India! I made several more visits while I was at RCA and enjoyed my visits.
I got intimately involved with Mexico and the Mexican way of doing things when I later worked at Sony. Part of my charter was to move some production lines for producing TV components from San Diego to Tijuana across the border and start an operation there. Later in my professional life I spent a year and a half, not only working but also living in Mexico; not in a border town like Tijuana but in an industrial city, Torreon, in the middle of the country.
I was impressed by the work ethic of Mexican line workers and their national pride. The first observation went completely against the stereo-typed image of Mexican laborers as being lazy, taking long siestas and drinking plenty of “cerveza” (beer). The workers were hard-working, disciplined and ready to obey their superiors without asking any questions. This was in sharp contrast to the unionized American workers I saw in RCA plants in USA.
Their national pride surprised me. I found that the most effective way to motivate Mexican workers was to stoke this pride. Instead of promising raises in salary or improving the plant working condition, one could simply say “You can prove that Mexican workers can not only do anything that American or Japanese workers do, but they can do it better!”
It was also very clear that the Mexicans were acutely aware of the perceptions “gringos” (Americans) had about them.
They even made fun of that. Most of them accepted it but a few clearly wanted to be like the Americans and had the necessary drive. I also found that Mexicans were clever enough to take advantage of their image of not being fluent in English. For example if they failed to do some task that I had suggested they would pretend that they did not understand me.
It was much later, when I was living and working in Torreon, that I got a deeper and more accurate understanding of Mexicans. First I realized that demographically Mexico is quite unique in the sense that it is sharply divided into two groups: the descendants of the Europeans – Spaniards, Germans, Italians and the like – who came along with the Spanish invasion and the ones who are truly indigenous and of Aztec Indian origin. Unlike most other nations the two groups did not quite thoroughly mix by interracial breeding.
The two groups are visually distinguishable: the first has fairer skin color and sharp Caucasian features while the second is darker and has a native Indian look. They are also segregated socially: the first group controls the country by holding important political positions, owning flourishing businesses and fertile farm lands and running key industries.
The second group basically serves the first group; by working for them in factories, farming, doing all kinds of manual labour-intensive jobs and paying taxes. They are usually poor and uneducated. It is a classic case of “haves” and “have-nots”, but very sharply divided along racial lines i.e. Caucasian versus indigenous Indians and with no inter-mixing.
I also realized that all the foreign companies that established manufacturing plants in Mexico to lower their labour costs were actually creating a somewhat artificial “middle class” with employees from both social groups and in fact helping bridge this gap. In particular all the “indirect” people (managers, engineers, accountants etc) enjoyed a certain social status and economic comfort that was rare before the invasion of the “maquiladoras” (the transplants of foreign companies). The lure of this good life, in turn, encouraged more Mexicans to get the necessary education and seek jobs at foreign factories. It was similar to what is happening in India today with IT jobs offered by American companies with good salaries.
Another surprising element for me was the lack of modern role models for the young people to idolize in any area: literature, technology, sports (in spite of their performance in soccer), art, music etc. There are plenty of heroes from the days of civil war and revolution, but there is hardly any famous person who the young people can look up to and say “I want to be like him/her”.
Finally, the Mexicans, being overwhelmingly Catholic, struck me as not only very religious but almost fatalistic. They are God-fearing to the extent of being completely passive and easily satisfied.
I think that it is a shame that Mexicans, by and large, have remained poor and uneducated people, best known for their illegal immigration into USA and the thriving drug business. There is no reason to believe that Mexican people cannot be as successful in all areas as people from any other country, especially having a country like USA across the border. People of Mexican ethnicity living in USA have proved it.
There are some obvious reasons for this failure such as mega corruption at the upper echelons – both in private and public sectors and a general lack of career paths. What is really missing is a passionate leader who can get to the root causes and inspire people. There is also a fundamental issue of lack of confidence among Mexicans in their own ability to succeed.
My guess is that every Mexican kid growing up suffers from an identity crisis. He does not know if he would belong to the elite class with money and power or if he is a commoner who would have to struggle through life. Typically he cannot decide and leaves his future in the hands of God! What I had originally thought as a national pride was really just a façade behind which everyone could hide.
I am sad to see what happened to Mexico over the past ten years or so. Most foreign companies who went there for cheap labour discovered that labour rates in China are a fifth of those in Mexico and they gradually folded their operations in Mexico in order to move them to China. The flourishing middle-class that was emerging from the presence of international companies started to disappear. There was a glut of workers who had no jobs, no security and no future. The drug lords moved in and filled the void, essentially recruiting this vast labour force to expand their empires and to cater to the ever increasing drug use in the USA.
I have mixed feelings about illegal immigration. I am certainly against the idea of supporting hundreds of thousands of people for their well being with tax dollars and enraged at the thought of criminals crossing the border into the US.
However I cannot really blame them. If my family was starving to death and/or living every day in fear of the drug lords, I would definitely think of fleeing to a neighbouring country, especially if it happens to be the richest and most prosperous in the world. There is also some poetic justice in the fact that many of American states once belonged to Mexico.
The Mexicans are desirable as a minority group because they are hard-working, family-oriented and believe in God.
The real solution to the illegal immigration problem would come if and when a strong visionary Mexican leader can build a prosperous country which is self-sufficient and a society that is envy of other countries. It is certainly possible.
Mexico has all the ingredients: natural resources, qualified people, good schools, proximity to USA, vast lands for farming and establishing factories, a language spoken by half of the world’s population, a central geographic location between the two Americas and a rich history to be proud of.
The writer, a physicist who worked in academia and industry, is a Bengali settled in America.
