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- [00:00]
Renata Keller
I have this nightmare that I never finished college or that someone's going to find out that I don't have the qualifications for this job and I'm like a total fraud.
- [00:09]
He Su Jo
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- [00:42]
Trey Farrow
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- [01:10]
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- [01:41]
Don Wildman
Hola Ollientes de American History hit Soy Don Wildman, your presenter. That's about it folks. As far as I'm able to muster from my Spanish one and two in high school, Americanos are famously weak in our foreign languages. And given our geography, it's kind of understandable. Two oceans and an expansive landmass. We could be forgiven for that, except for the fact that for hundreds of years we have shared a nearly 2,000 mile border with our Spanish speaking neighbor to the south, a nation utterly critical to our existence today. But U.S. mexico relations have been dicey from the start. Even before our two nations were born of revolutions, when we both broke from our European origins between issues of of economics, labor, migration, trade, legal and otherwise. Never mind outright war. Life on our southern border has always been, well, complicated. But given how pivotal modern U.S. mexico relations have become in current American politics, two words, border crisis. It demands Americans pay closer attention to the extraordinary history that brought us here. So today we discuss it all with the widely published Professor Renata Keller of the University of Nevada, whose newest book, the Fate of the Americas, comes out very soon this coming October. Professor Keller, hello Buenos Dias, I should say.
- [03:01]
Renata Keller
Buenos dias. Thank you for having me.
- [03:03]
Don Wildman
The relationship between our two lands, of course, predates US and Mexico back to indigenous peoples for thousands of years. But our conversation today addresses United States and Mexico relations specifically, which kick into gear in the early decades of the 19th century. Territorial issues until then, this vast area, what becomes Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, on our side alone, all that was part of New Spain. It's The Louisiana Purchase, 1803, that makes us neighbors, right?
- [03:36]
Renata Keller
Yes, exactly. The Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the Spanish territories in Florida. So originally, New Spain was significantly larger than the original 13 colonies that became the first 13 states of the United States.
- [03:54]
Don Wildman
Americans do not realize, I mean today, how fluid our borders were throughout the 19th century. I mean, Spain, Britain, Russia, France, all, all of these were dealing with North America territories back then. But Spain, of course, was the main one.
- [04:08]
Renata Keller
They were the first. So they quote unquote, discovered the Americas first. And so they had a significant head start in colonization and in claiming territories for the span Spanish crown. So they spread from the Caribbean through what would become Mexico, it was then called New Spain, throughout all of South America, except for what became Brazil, what the Portuguese claimed. And so thanks to this head start, Spanish territories were significantly larger than the relatively small territories that the British claimed in North America and a few parts of the Caribbean as well.
- [04:41]
Don Wildman
1803, Louisiana Purchase. Keep that in mind. The next big date, 1819, which is the Adams Onus Treaty, which is when Spain cedes Florida to the the U.S. thanks to all the Seminole War. That was, you know, Andrew Jackson and all that. That's an extraordinary fact that a lot of Americans don't realize is that we got all of Florida back in 1819 due to that treaty.
- [05:02]
Renata Keller
Yeah, we got Florida territory. And it was a big deal for the United States to get that territory. And it was kind of a signal. Right. Of these ideas or these plans to expand further south and then eventually also especially west.
- [05:16]
Don Wildman
Yeah, and when I say Adams, I mean John Quincy Adams, who did a very good job on that treaty. We got all of Florida. We did recognize that Texas would be sovereign territory to the Spanish. And that's going to tee us up for a big thing just a few years later, right?
- [05:33]
Renata Keller
Yes, exactly. The Texas question was one of the original flashpoints in the territories that would become the United States and Mexico. In figuring out who would control the Texas territory, it was a big question.
- [05:48]
Don Wildman
How much of it was the Manifest Destiny at this point? That comes kind of later, doesn't it? It was sort of Figuring out what was going to happen with the western expansion of the south was more part of this.
- [05:59]
Renata Keller
And slavery, yes, the slave system was a big question whether slavery would be allowed in Texas or not.
- [06:06]
Don Wildman
I mean, I hope people are recognizing already there's a lot in the chamber here. You know, over those first decades of the 1800s, there's so much that gets loaded up onto the plate really of US Mexico relations centering primarily at that time on Texas, which is right in the crosshairs of this problem and is going to indeed, in just a few years, end up flaming up into war. How does Texas eventually transition from Mexico to the US and not just the US it becomes its independent nation for a while.
- [06:35]
Renata Keller
Right, exactly. So the question with Texas was that it was very sparsely populated when independence happened in the United States and then subsequently in Mexico. The entire northern part of Mexico was not very populated. There were still a lot of lands under indigenous control. And the Mexican government in Mexico City really wanted to populate. That was one of the main goals was to secure its northern border through population. And ideally they hoped that European, especially Spanish descended peoples of Catholic faith would move to the northern parts of Mexico and modernize the indigenous population there and establish solid Mexican control over the territory. And that just wasn't happening. But the people who were willing to move to these territories were white southerners, white U.S. southerners who were interested in getting cheap land. And they signed these agreements with the Mexican government promising to convert to Catholicism, promising to settle a certain distance away from the border, to kind of hope that they would be more fully integrated into the Mexican nation. But they didn't really honor those, those agreements. And they still considered themselves more Americans than Mexican. And eventually they outnumbered Spanish born or Mexican born people in that territory by some measure of 10 to 1 or something. And so they were the ones who ended up populating Texas.
- [08:07]
Don Wildman
The Texas question you're talking about sort of occupies the years between 1830 and 1845. The next date that's really important for people to understand is 1821. That is Mexican independence from Spain. I mean, this was happening all over the world. This is sort of the era of revolutions. It heightens towards 1848. But this is all beginning to. The colonial system is beginning to break down. And since Spain controls so much of that, they're dealing with it all over the place. And Mexico is one of those territories. So they end up ceding Mexico to the Mexicans in 1821. And that begins this whole new era towards the Texans. And what would happen there as A result. Can you kind of outline the effect on those settlers when Mexico takes over in Texas?
- [08:54]
Renata Keller
Sure. So when Mexico becomes independent, it had just fought a relatively long independence war, and it was costly, it was bloody. And the new state that emerges from that independence war is very weak. And they have a lot of trouble establishing control over territories that are farther away from Mexico City, especially in the north, but also in the South. And Texas is one of those places where they just can't establish control. And one of the biggest questions is this question of slavery. So the central Mexican government outlaws slavery much earlier than the United States. So slavery is no longer allowed in Mexico, but it is in the United States in the southern parts. And these settlers who had colonized Texas supposedly on behalf of the Mexican government, were from the south, and they were interested in maintaining their slave system. And so that was one of the issues where they said, you know, this is too much central control. They're trying to dictate our lives. And so that was a big issue driving this push for Texan independence from the rest of Mexico.
- [10:01]
Don Wildman
There were also custom duties. You know, there was financial impact. They prohibited immigration from the US To Texas in order to reduce how many English speakers were there. I mean, it resonates right through today, doesn't it?
- [10:13]
Renata Keller
To a certain extent, yeah. Once they figured out how many people were settling right near the border and were not integrating into Mexican society, we're not learning Spanish. We're not converting to Catholicism as they had initially promised, they did try to limit immigration.
- [10:28]
Don Wildman
Some of this kind of dates back to the Spanish, isn't it? It's hard to control a country that size in those days, for sure, when you consider the federal control, or at least center of power is down there in Mexico City, which is quite southern, in Mexico itself, never mind above the future United States border. It's way up there. And Spain had had trouble with that as well. They were depending primarily on missionaries and all of those sort of excursions that are up there into those arid desert plains. It's just difficult to do it logistically. Never mind that they're dealing with this whole population of settlers. 1835, 36 is the Texas Revolution. Independence recognized by the Mexican president, Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, after he has been taken prisoner. Can you explain this war and how it goes? How is it fought?
- [11:15]
Renata Keller
So the Texan Independence war was an interesting one because they had this, like, minor skirmish over a cannon. There was a cannon the settlers had been given, and the Mexican government said, we're not sure we want to be arming you guys anymore. And so they told the settlers to give this cannon back. And the settlers hung up this flag that said something along the lines of, if you want it, come and take it. And that was the spark that set off the Texan revolution. And there were a couple of major battles. The most famous one is the Alamo, of course, and that had been a mission. You mentioned missionaries. That had been a mission, and the Mexican government had occupied it for a while. And then the Texas secessionists took over the Alamo, and they tried to hold out against the Mexican army and lost. It was a famous loss. The Mexicans won that battle, but they lost the war. One of those situations. And Santa Ana, who you mentioned, was very famous for losing Texas to the United States. That was a big loss for him. He was probably the most powerful person in Mexico for a lot of the first half of the. The 1800s, and. And he lost Texas. Texas gained its independence through a number of battles. And then you still have this border question, though. So once Texas gains independence, there's two main questions. One is, will Texas be allowed to join the United States? And that's something that Mexico had. You know, they were saying this whole time like, you're Mexican territory. You're not allowed to join the United States. And whereas the Texans, you know, ostensibly were for independence, but most of them really did want to join the United States. And then the other question is, if it becomes either independent or a US State, where do you draw that border between Mexico and Texas?
- [13:08]
Don Wildman
So we have Texas, which is, under the Mexicans, a no slavery area, which is a massive issue in this situation right now. How much does this tee up the war that is to come, the Mexican American War, which happens in 1845? How much are they related? Because that's, I think, confuses everyone.
- [13:27]
Renata Keller
Yes, they're very closely related. So people consider this war, the Texan Independence war, kind of the first part, I would say, of the Mexican American War or the US Mexican War, because it's all of a piece, right? It's all of this question over land. Who's going to control this vast swath of land? It plays into manifest destiny, this idea that the United States is destined to spread across the continent all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And so these questions that come up in Texas are the same questions that drive the war 10 years later when the United States decides to first admit Texas as a new state. But then there's a question in the United States of whether Texas is going to be admitted as a slave state or A free state. And then if you keep expanding westward, would those new states also be admitted as slave states or free states? And then again, like I mentioned, the border. So that's actually what sets off the Mexican American war, is a conflict over where you draw that border between Texas and Mexico. And the United States tries to claim more territory by redrawing the border, and the Mexicans fight back. And that gives the United States under Polk an excuse to. To say, you know, the Mexicans drew US blood on US territory.
- [14:49]
Don Wildman
You'll be relieved to know we can't get into all the details, but listeners should look up the episode that we've done earlier about a year ago. So it's way back on the list about the Mexican American War. It is a fascinating, amazingly dramatic war, you know, that really takes place on Mexican territory all the way down to Mexico City. But the result of this is that there is a famous treaty, the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, which grants the United States, or cedes to the United States, an enormous amount of territory. All of those states that I mentioned at the top of the show, that more than half of the territory of that country ends up being American, which is an extraordinary thing. We purchase some of it because we pay them $15 million, which is a lot more money than $15 million sounds like these days, but nonetheless, an extremely successful effort and victory for Polk and for the Americans. I do want to underscore how that must have left the leadership of Mexico in really shaky state, right?
- [15:50]
Renata Keller
Oh, absolutely. This was devastating for Mexico to lose. I mean, can you imagine losing half of your national territory at once? I mean, the government was already weak, which is part of why they lost so decisively. And this was a further blow to the Mexican government. Their national territory was cut in half. Their treasury was pillaged. They had no money, no leadership left. And so this was a huge blow. The Mexicans, and it still is today, they have never forgiven the United States, understandably, and especially when the gold rush happens a year later and California suddenly becomes so, so important and so profitable. And that had to have hurt so much to think that that could have been Mexico's gold, but instead it was going to the United States.
- [16:36]
Don Wildman
And but for a civil war that we were fighting a couple decades later, what happens down in Mexico would have been getting more attention. Basically, everything that happens under that war sets the table for the Mexican Revolution, which is coming up in the 1900s, but nonetheless, it's a symbol of how shaky the social fabric really, never mind the leadership of Mexico really is, and.
- [16:59]
Renata Keller
They get invaded by France. Not too long afterward, the French come and try and take advantage of Mexico's weakness and establish a new empire in Mexico. And then you get civil war over that question, you know, trying to kick the French out, which they do eventually. Eventually. And yeah, so you get years of civil war, eventually you get Profiro DIAZ Establishing a 35 year dictatorship. So that brings some stability, but it also leaves the vast majority of the population suffering and hungry and kind of ready for a revolution.
- [17:30]
Don Wildman
Right. Everyone should listen to this in terms of, you know, just compare it to the United States, which is, you know, goes through its own big problems, civil war being mainly it. But essentially it sort of progressively moves to a more and more stable federal government. That's essentially what the story of the United States really is. The opposite is true in Mexico. And so when that federal government has to flex itself, it does so later on in a sort of authoritarian fashion. And that's more 20th century history. But when we wonder in general, as we're listening to this program or anyone is listening, they should think about that comparison. Why are these two countries that are right next to each other so vastly different? And a lot of these major historical events have a lot to do with it.
- [18:09]
Renata Keller
Yeah. Part of the reason they're so different is they're right next to each other.
- [18:12]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [18:13]
Renata Keller
And so what benefits the United States hurts Mexico.
- [18:17]
Don Wildman
Exactly. 1910-20 is that Mexican Revolution era. One fact that escaped me until I read about it here. About 900,000 Mexicans migrate north during that revolution. There's an enormous. I mean, that's huge migration that happens as a result. And that begins kind of an ongoing situation that we live with even today. You know, a sort of fluid border depending on the leadership of people coming and going all the time.
- [18:43]
Renata Keller
And it was much more fluid back then, too. The border was not at all militarized the way it is today. Exactly. And because there was so much violence and chaos, especially the Mexican north was one of the hotspots of the revolution. One way to escape the violence and the chaos was to go to the United States.
- [19:01]
Don Wildman
Right. And I assume that they were doing that in a seasonal fashion. There must have been work that was available. And so people would come over to work on farms and pick things. But also people stuck around as a result. You know, people set up lives. I wonder back then, before the advent of highways and certainly the automobile, how much Mexico was reaching out into the United States versus all that sort of borderlands. It hadn't really been felt otherwise. We're not getting Mexican restaurants in New England at that point?
- [19:27]
Renata Keller
No, not that far in, no. But a lot of the territory that had been first Spanish and then Mexico. You know, you still see a very prevalent Mexican culture there, and so you might not see Mexican restaurants in New England, but you definitely see them in Arizona. I grew up in Arizona, and you used to just be able to cross the border. You know, there were checkpoints, but there were also vast parts of the border that weren't fenced or anything at all. And so differences in the division wasn't as significant as we are used to seeing today.
- [20:00]
Don Wildman
Yes, that's something I really want to understand before we end today is why is the migration issue so different today than it was back then? Because it was profoundly different.
- [20:17]
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- [22:54]
Don Wildman
Mexicans, as normal as it was for them to be coming, going, at least in those border regions, they are painted with this negative reputation. Right? A lot of that has to do with this migration and certainly in the.
- [23:05]
Renata Keller
Great Depression, a lot of nativism in the United States. And this goes back to even when, when the United States took over Mexico's territory, the people who were already there were given the choice between moving south to remain in Mexico and remain Mexican citizens, or they could stay in the United States and either maintain their Mexican citizenship or have a pathway to U.S. citizenship. And so you already have a fairly significant number of people who were of Mexican descent who get kind of grandfathered into the United States, but they're not always very welcome by other people. And so this idea that they are suddenly foreigners in the land that they grew up in was a bit of a blow for them. And it was hard to integrate. A lot of people were not very welcoming, even though, you know, these people had been born in New Mexico and Arizona and California. And so you get these conflicts over who really should be in charge in these territories and that continues, that never really gets resolved. And so you got a lot of nativism in the United States, even though those states had been Mexican.
- [24:09]
Don Wildman
It's worth comparing it to the Chinese migration, you know, and all of what happens to Asians in this country in the late 1800s, the Chinese Exclusion act, all of the migration acts in the, in the 20s, you're right to say that period of time, post Civil War, up into the 20s was an extraordinarily sort of famously anti immigration period in America that some of today's situation parallels with in some regards. A lot of this, of course, as with any immigration, has to do with the need for labor. I mean, when the US companies were building those railroads and we have that exclusion act against the Chinese, suddenly they need to find workers from somewhere else. Where do they go? Mexico.
- [24:50]
Renata Keller
Yeah. So at the same time, some parts of the US population are welcoming in people from China, people from Mexico to do the work. Other sectors of the US population are trying to exclude them and trying to drive them out through terror tactics or denying them rights like the right to vote or the right to have access to health care, things like that. And so there are these Tensions even within the United States over whether to bring in and welcome in people from other countries.
- [25:19]
Don Wildman
Yeah, I mean, it's a practical question, really. You just need people who don't cost a lot of money, who are going to work very hard and get a lot of them. And that was that time period. It's the beginning of Mexican migration for industry on a larger scale. 16,000 people were needed on the railroads by the early 1900s. That was 60% of US rail labor came from Mexico. And this begins this whole circular migration thing, which was already happening with agriculture and became kind of a fact of life, you know, of this country and Mexico. Certainly, as you say, back down in those areas, people came very used to this. Yeah.
- [25:52]
Renata Keller
Before you tighten the border, people can migrate more circularly. Like, they can come and work in the United States, then go back home to Mexico. If you don't have a militarized border, that's a lot easier to do, to go back and forth. It's once you close down the border that people stay permanent. Right.
- [26:09]
Don Wildman
What's the bracero program that I read about?
- [26:12]
Renata Keller
The Bracero program is really interesting. So this was. It started during World War II, when the United States was fighting in Europe and the Pacific, and a lot of the men in the United States were off fighting the war, and we still needed people to grow our food. We still needed people to keep the factories running. Famously, women stepped in. In a lot of these roles, but also Mexicans did. And so the bracero program, it was a series of agreements between the US And Mexican governments and between specific employers in the United States to bring in Mexican nationals to work in the United States officially under official contracts. So to do it legally and to bring them to work in the fields and the factories and keep the country going. And so it started during World War II, but it lasted until the mid-1960s.
- [27:03]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [27:04]
Renata Keller
And it was this funnel of. Of labor. But it was interesting because it was official and it. It was promoted and encouraged by both governments.
- [27:14]
Don Wildman
And it was like it was 400,000 people. Right. It was a massive amount of. Of migration north for this purpose. And it goes over a period of time. You know, there's also undocumented migration that happens alongside the Procero program. All this kind of contributes to this whole negative attitude towards this sort of bigotry towards Mexicans. In 1954, Operation Wetback, which is a terrible title. It's a derogatory term, of course. And there's a mass deportation of undocumented workers. Again, something we've heard about before in American history, what we're living with today.
- [27:47]
Renata Keller
Yes, exactly. And so you have this official, sanctioned government program, the Bracero program, but you also have people working unofficially, not through these legal channels, and you have both things happening at the same time. And so you get a lot of pushback from people in the United States. You know, the same old thing is always right. The Mexicans are taking our jobs, and. And eventually the United States government says, okay, we're going to deport the people who are here illegally.
- [28:16]
Don Wildman
But who started it? The Americans started it. That's what's crazy.
- [28:19]
Renata Keller
By hiring them and recruiting. Yeah. But also exploiting.
- [28:23]
Don Wildman
Yes. The double standard is really, really painful to understand with regards to Mexico. And so only so many people take the media at its word, whoever you're listening to these days. But, boy, is there historical precedence for all of what we're dealing with today. It's never acknowledged, really, in your average news report. It's just today's problem. But it all has historical precedents. Even the border control situation goes back longer. As we're saying, this is a deportation time. It doesn't get militarized, really, until quite later, though, right?
- [28:56]
Renata Keller
Yeah. We don't really start clamping down on border crossings and trying to stop people from crossing the border until under Reagan, really, the mid-1980s with the immigration, with Erica.
- [29:07]
Don Wildman
Yeah. I mean, of course, they had a border patrol that goes back to the early 1900s, and that wasn't just to do with the Mexicans, but decades and decades go by with this sort of fluid, loose border situation going on, because it was kind of understood that people were on the circular path. They were going back home, you know, making their money and going back. But it's when they start to stay and when they get identified as a political asset, really, this problem becomes an asset. In the early 90s, when Clinton is in power and the Republicans are really fighting against this particular administration, it's Newt Gingrich and the Republicans who sort of identify this crazy migration problem that's really inflamed, and let's go for it all the way.
- [29:48]
Renata Keller
Yeah, they frame it as a problem, even though, like you said, there had always been this push and pull factor. There had always been people recruiting Mexican labor within the United States. So there had always been this desire to get Mexican labor here. But now you're framing it more as an invasion. They describe it as an invasion. And this idea that they are taking over the United States, that they're going to change our culture somehow. And so it definitely becomes More inflamed in the 1980s and 1990s.
- [30:22]
Don Wildman
But the tighter border controls make it harder to go back and to do this circular pattern that many Mexicans we used to generationally. Now you have this militarized border that makes it difficult to go home, so they end up staying here. And you have sort of this whole buildup of eventually millions of people who just say, you know what? It's harder to get back in this country anymore, the way my grandparents used to do. So I'm staying put here. And you end up in the Bush years with 12 million. I remember that number that Bush II wanted to create a bill for, as his father had been quite liberal about this sort of thing down in Texas. You know, it's just a normal thing for us down here. George Bush, too. SPEAKS SPANISH he wants to fix this problem in a very positive light because it had gotten so weirdly out of balance thanks to our borders. Right?
- [31:11]
Renata Keller
Yeah. So instead of people coming back and forth for work, instead of it being more of a labor issue, it does become this question of what do we do with millions of people who are staying instead of going back and forth. Because like you said, it's no longer very easy to get into the United States. So once you get in and people pay thousands of dollars to get into the United States to get smuggled in, they risk their lives crossing Mexico, crossing the border. And so they're not going to go through that again once they get in the United States, they're going to stay and they'll send money back to Mexico, certainly, but they're not going to go back and forth anymore. And so you get a population that is staying, and that does create pressures and questions of citizenship and integration and who has rights to. To public things like education and health and all of those things that we provide our citizens.
- [32:02]
Don Wildman
Right. But I like what you say, you know, it became seen as an invasion instead of the normal way it was seen in the past, which was kind of a circular migration. You know, I understand the issues, especially on the municipal level, you know, where you have lots of people who are coming into your towns and suddenly have to educate them and deal with them for medical reasons and all sorts of stuff. It's really tough, but it isn't unprecedented, perhaps to the level it got to. It was unprecedented, but that was a result of almost people being trapped in the country because it was no longer easy to go back and forth. It's. It's so interesting and so important. So we've spent most of this conversation on Migration, but side by side. And this is so fascinating with u. S. Mexico relations. You have the economics, you have the fact that they are our number one trading partner. Partner in the world. That's correct, yes.
- [32:54]
Renata Keller
Yes.
- [32:54]
Don Wildman
Which is a totally positive thing. So it's a weird dichotomy when you address this issue with Mexico. We tend to look at it in many of us in a negative fashion, but we completely rely on them for our economic well being. How weird is that?
- [33:10]
Renata Keller
Yeah, exactly. When Mexico does well, the United States does well. Instead of viewing it as a competition, for a lot of history, it has been a partnership where you can see both economies are extremely connected, intimately connected. US Investment in Mexico, Mexican labor in the United States, it's all of a piece. Right. And so this idea that it's a zero sum game is not actually accurate. That's not how it's developed. That's not how either economy has developed.
- [33:42]
Don Wildman
We can't afford it. That's the thing. We can't be destroying Mexico. We depend on them so much.
- [33:47]
Renata Keller
Exactly.
- [33:48]
Don Wildman
1876 to 1911, foreign investment is encouraged. We're talking about cattle, silver, textiles, food. There's an enormous amount.
- [33:58]
Renata Keller
Railroads.
- [33:59]
Don Wildman
Railroads, exactly. The mining is such a big deal, and of course agriculture, because that's a warm weather country. We're going to depend on that sort of thing. On the other side of that, you know, Mexico, very suspicious of the United States taking advantage of it for all reasons we've mentioned, shifts over to a more nationalistic view of this thing. They have their own nativism. Oil, which has become such a big deal in the early 20th century, is nationalized. What does that mean? 1938, they nationalized their oil industry.
- [34:25]
Renata Keller
Yes. And so that's actually during the Mexican revolution, they pass a constitution, the Constitution of 1917, that says that all Mexican territories and everything below, including mining oil, belongs to the Mexican nation. And so this comes out of the revolutionary era, but they don't enforce that constitution for a while. They're busy nation building and putting things back together after the Mexican revolution. But then by the 1930s, you do have a government that is becoming more nationalist, especially under president Lazaro Cardenas. And so he decides to nationalize Mexico's oil industry in 1938, like you mentioned. And there were some conflicts over taxing over labor between these oil companies had been owned by investors in the United States and Great Britain. So as a result of these labor disputes, Cardenas resolves them by nationalizing Mexico's oil industry. And there's this question of how is The United States going to respond. But you'll remember this is the late 1930s and things are getting pretty ugly over in Europe. And Cardenas is pretty astute, and he manages to suggest that, well, maybe we'll sell oil to the Germans or to the Japanese, you know, if the United States isn't going to buy our oil while we have other options. And so fdr, President Roosevelt decides, okay, we're going to be good neighbors. We are actually going to live up to our good neighbor policy, and we are going to accept the nationalization. We are going to encourage these oil companies to accept the compensation that the Mexican government is offering. You know, they compensate the companies. They don't just take the oil industry away. And so it's the height of Mexican nationalism, you know, when Mexico supposedly becomes fully independent, is how they portray it.
- [36:22]
Don Wildman
I mean, the stakes are very high with World War II. It reminds me also in World War I, you have, of course, the famous Zimmerman letter, which suggested to the Mexican government that they come on the side of the Germans. Zimmerman was a German. And it was sort of this espionage moment that the Americans became aware of, that if Mexico allied with Germany and we were defeated, they would get their lands back in the West. Well, that was one supposedly one of the tipping points of us entering into the war in 1917. I'm going to jump 50 years later from World War II to 1994 and the famous NAFTA agreement between the U.S. canada and Mexico. This is under Clinton uses terms we are now very familiar with. Slashing tariffs, boosting supply chains. All of this stuff we've heard about in the last few years. NAFTA was about that, whether you liked it or not, whether you agreed with it or not. It was about uncomplicating the trade relationship between these two partners of ours.
- [37:14]
Renata Keller
Yeah. Fully integrating the economies of these three nations of North America. And it was bipartisan, too.
- [37:20]
Don Wildman
Yeah. And so began a great sucking sound to the south, according to Ross Perot, some of which is true. I mean, a lot of jobs left. We heard so much back in the day of nafta, but we don't really hear a lot about the outcome. Can you explain that?
- [37:35]
Renata Keller
Sure. So NAFTA did significantly increase trade across the three nations. It did help the manufacturing sector significantly. It created a lot of jobs, especially in Mexico, especially in agriculture and manufacturing. And the trade numbers were just astounding. The increase in trade and in production was significant, but it also had some very serious environmental consequences. The environment was completely left out of the agreement, as was immigration so those were just too controversial to, to get the agreement to pass. And so they are kind of side agreements that weren't very well enforced. And so you do get a lot more jobs in Mexico, but they're not very well paying jobs. And a lot of small farmers in Mexico lose land to big agro businesses. And so it increases immigration to the United States from Mexico. It also contributes to the growth of things called maquiladoras along the US Mexican border on the Mexican side, where these big factories where Mexican workers are hired at very low paying jobs. But it also contributes to internal migration within Mexico. So people are moving from southern Mexico to the border to work in these factories. And there's not much regulation in terms of wages or job protection or environmental factors.
- [39:00]
Don Wildman
So does the US Economy benefit from nafta?
- [39:03]
Renata Keller
Some parts, certainly. So trade and manufacturing definitely benefit. You do lose some jobs. Quite a few jobs do move to Mexico where people accept lower wages, where the wages are lower. And so businesses don't have to pay their workers as much in Mexico. And so you do lose some jobs. But then because trade is increasing, other sectors of the US Population benefit because you are getting more purchasing power across the board, better products, cheaper products mostly. And so in some ways, yes, the U.S. benefits, in some ways, no. All three countries suffer some of the consequences.
- [39:45]
Don Wildman
And at some point NAFTA expired, right?
- [39:47]
Renata Keller
It got revised under Trump, his first presidency. They revised NAFTA into the US Mexico Canada Agreement, I think it's called. And so they, they keep a lot of the structure of nafta, but they, they updated some of its things like having to do with intellectual property. They do include labor this time around, I believe. And so it's, it gets updated more than, more than replaced.
- [40:17]
Don Wildman
I want to move to the war on drugs, which of course is another headline issue. The cartels come into power in the 80s. There was a time about 10 years before that Richard Nixon had declared that drug abuse was the public enemy number one. The DEA is formed around that same time. All of this gets heightened in American life and painted for its own political reasons, also with a really broad stroke rush. And thus begins this kind of feeling like the Mexicans are our enemy again and the cartels are running the show. How much was that true and not.
- [40:50]
Renata Keller
It's interesting question, right, because we talk about the cartels, but the main drug traffickers, the main people controlling drug trafficking in Mexico were in the government. And so it was actually the Mexican government, specifically the pre, A lot of the security forces, the police, the intelligence services were Very much connected to the drug trade and they were the ones managing it. So you have these traffickers who are the ones moving drugs and growing drugs. But the government was the one controlling the industry toward the end of the 20th century, toward the late 1990s, that's when the pre is starting to lose control over Mexico and this single party state that had controlled Mexican politics for so long after the revolution that starts to crumble. And so you start to see more competition for the drug trade happening and people are competing to decide who's going to control this extremely profitable industry. And so that's part of why you see the violence escalating in the later years of the 20th century, is because the competition is increasing once you lose this single controlling factor. And so part of it's what's happening in the United States. Right. You know, Nixon and Reagan declaring war on drugs. But a lot of it's also these changes that are happening in Mexico.
- [42:09]
Don Wildman
Yeah. And in a way it starts to sort of umbrella both issues of migration and drugs because the drugs are coming from Colombia at least certainly in the 80s with, with cocaine being channeled through the Mexican cartels towards the United States. But also migration shifts from being a Mexican migration, which it's questionable whether it really ever was that big an issue because of the circular thing we were talking about. But now the migration is coming from lower down from Guatemala, from, from Central American countries moving through Mexico. And it's an interesting thing that the two things sort of begin to happen at the same time.
- [42:44]
Renata Keller
Yeah, the civil wars in Central America are happening at the same time that the drug industry is booming and there's often connections right. Between the CIA and the dea. And at the same time that some people are trying to fight drug trafficking, other people are using drug traffickers to smuggle weapons to counter revolutionary groups. And so the violence and the chaos in Central America especially drives this sudden migration flow north as people are trying to escape what's going on there. Their lives have been destroyed, so they try to find security in the United States.
- [43:19]
Don Wildman
And what is the response of the US Pressuring the Mexicans to take control of the situation.
- [43:32]
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- [44:02]
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- [44:51]
Don Wildman
Let's land here in this conversation in the modern day, which, you know, so many of the themes we've talked about are loudly articulated these days, politicized to the nth degree. And even we're naming things differently. You know, Gulf of Mexico, now Gulf of America. I mean, where are we now in our state of relations with the Mexicans? Is it going to improve? Is it more of the same? I mean, or is it going downhill fast?
- [45:20]
Renata Keller
I think it's going downhill real fast. I think this attitude of blaming the Mexicans for all our problems, of even saying that, okay, we're going to send the US army into Mexico to fight drug trafficking is completely disrespectful of Mexican sovereignty and has never worked before. We tried sending the U.S. army in to hunt down Pancho Villa and look how that. It's, it's ludicrous. And so the attitude toward Mexico, the antagonism, it's completely unproductive. It's not going to help the United States. It's isolating us. It's causing problems with our closest partners. The most successful partnerships we've had with Mexico have been, for example, during the Good Neighbor years when under Roosevelt, we treated them with respect. We respected Mexican sovereignty. We worked together for the benefit of the United States and Mexico. And sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better than what we're doing today, which is picking fights with our neighbors, blaming them for problems that we have largely participated in creating and creating this very unhealthy relationship and attitude toward our closest neighbors.
- [46:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah, I mean, with migration, with borders, trade, war on drugs, a relationship that should be more about cooperation becomes about conflict. That's sort of the, that's the historical take I have.
- [46:44]
Renata Keller
Yes, I would agree, Absolutely. There's a lot of room for collaboration. There's a lot of opportunity to work together with all of these issues. And instead, currently we are choosing to pick battles and portray our closest neighbors as enemies, as inferior as invading. So this whole idea that we are not only competing but actively at war on in some ways against Mexico and against its citizens is not helping anyone.
- [47:13]
Don Wildman
Well, once again, travel can answer this. Address this problem better than anything else. Take one trip to Mexico, go to the Mexico City and go to the Archaeological museum, go to Oaxaca, any of these places. Oh my Lord, the place is wonderful. Dr. Renata Keller is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her books focus on Latin American relations with the US and her latest book, the Fate of the Americas, is coming out just in October. And Renata, where can listeners find out more about you?
- [47:38]
Renata Keller
That'd be great if they followed up. I have a website through the University of Nevada, Reno. The Department of History website has a link to my faculty bio. My email is there. RenataKellernr.edu. my book also has a website through the University of North Carolina Press. You can read more about the book there and I would be delighted to follow up.
- [47:58]
Don Wildman
Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
- [48:00]
Renata Keller
Nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me.
- [48:08]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit A podcast from History Hit.
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