The Mexican Perspective: Understanding Their Culture
Relationships with Americans
Patrick Osio, Jr
(From Patrick Osio, Jr.’s The Mexican Perspective)
Much has been said and written about Mexicans’ love and hate relationship with Americans. Some describe it as Mexicans loving to hate Gringos. As is most often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
By and large, Mexicans have a great deal of respect and admiration for the United States and its people as a whole. The problems between Mexico and the U.S. have been more at the level of governments than at the level of people to people. The negatives between the two people, is more the making of Americans than of Mexicans. It is more the negative perceptions harbored by Americans about Mexicans, which in turn causes negative feelings towards Americans.
Most Americans treat U.S.-Mexico history as almost non-existent, sort of a footnote amongst more important things to learn. This is acceptable to Americans since the political history between the two countries has been one of the mightier exercising powers over the weaker. Since Mexico has been at the receiving end of the hammer’s blow, their history in the U.S. receives quite a different degree of importance. And since the majority of U.S. descendants come from European countries other than Spain, European history has dominated the most attention in the United States.
There is a saying in Mexico - “When the U.S. sneezes, Mexico gets a cold.” This refers to the effects events in the U.S. have on Mexico. While in the U.S. events may be no more serious than a “sneeze” in Mexico they often take on more severity.
Americans can avoid “personalizing” problems between the two countries by not getting sucked into the argument. There is no suggestion here that Americans need to be apologist about events or long ago history. Simply, the suggestion is that no one can have a one sided argument for long. If you don’t get involved in the argument, there won’t be one.
It is, however, important to at least know the ‘other side.’ Some of the historical events with opposite views are:
1. Texas and the Alamo
2. The U.S.-Mexican War
3. Pancho Villa and other revolutionaries
4. Oil industry and other nationalizations
5. U.S. interventions in Mexico
From a Mexican perspective, there are a multitude of times the U.S. has interfered in Mexico either militarily or by military threat, and economically. Most Mexicans who have a degree of education cannot understand how it is that U.S. schools do not touch on these points, and how it is that Americans can so ignore what took place. And frankly, that is a fair question.
Texas and the Alamo
Mexico was desirous of populating some of its more sparsely populated regions in its northern region, so it opened Tejas to immigrants. The majority of such immigrants were from the U.S. For their reasons, (though there is a school of thought that claims the idea was preconceived in Washington so as to first make the territory a republic and then invite it to join the union) the new immigrants wanted to create a republic out of their new homeland, but the territory was Mexico’s. The takeover was through armed conflict thus Mexico responded by sending troops, and on their side of the story, the Alamo was a stronghold of rebels whose aim was to take territory belonging to Mexico. The bloodshed spilled there was of the rebels making, and they were breaking Mexican laws and abusing their immigrant status.
(Read the entire chapter in the: The Mexican Perspective is available for electronic download purchase – read more about the book at: http://www.hispanicvista.com/sales/book_sale.htm)
- Table of Contents
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- About the Author
- Patrick Osio, Jr.
Editor of HispanicVista.com
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