June 11, 1999
Commentary
EDITOR'S NOTE: A small incident in Los Angeles shows why Mexican citizens living in the United States do not look to their consulates for protection in time of trouble. Indeed, consulates have a long history of acting in the interests of the country's ruling party rather than its nationals.
By Jesus Martinez
U.S. citizens generally believe they are entitled to receive assistance and protection from U.S. embassies and consulates if they encounter difficulties when traveling abroad. After all, embassies and consulates are extensions of the homeland and its government.
Mexican immigrants who cross the border to work in the United States have never had such expectations. To many — if not most — immigrants, Mexico's consulates merely replicate the authoritarianism, repression, corruption, and disdain for the rights of citizens that is still found at home.
The most recent proof of this came in late May when Pedro Arias, 73, an immigrant with a long history of activism on behalf of the rights of Mexican immigrants, and a firm critic of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, was provoked, attacked, and severely beaten by Benjamin Corona, 35, bodyguard to Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, the Mexican consul in Los Angeles.
Arias had been one leader of the peaceful protests organized by immigrant activists during Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo's recent visit to California. They sought to meet with Zedillo through various official channels so they could urge that Mexicans residing abroad be given the right to vote in presidential elections. Zedillo ignored this request and protesters made their disenchantment known wherever he made a public appearance.
Once Zedillo left California, consular officials revealed their true face with the attack on Arias. After the beating, the bodyguard fled into the consular building in a vain attempt to escape notice and to avoid arrest.
In a later meeting with activist groups, the consul Pescador Osuna stood by his bodyguard and even indicated that a lawsuit will be filed against Arias.
The Arias incident reaffirms long-time practices of the Mexican government in the United States.
In the early 1900s, the dictator Porfirio Diaz established an impressive system of espionage in an attempt to control the political activities of Mexicans in the United States. Consulates throughout the Southwest played a key role in these efforts, relying on paid agents to sabotage the work of immigrant organizations considered enemies of the regime. It was all for naught, as the dictatorship was overthrown in 1911 by a charismatic Francisco I. Madero, who launched his revolutionary movement on November 20, 1910, after crossing from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez.
During World War II, U.S. agricultural interests successfully pressured their government to establish a bilateral migrant labor program with Mexico — the "bracero" program, a system of temporary labor designed to suit the needs of the expanding national agro-industry. Under the accord, it was agreed that Mexican consulates would monitor labor and living conditions of the workers. However, as many scholars have shown, the consulates failed miserably in preventing, stopping, or even documenting the abuse and exploitation of the laborers.
More recently, under the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration (1988-1994), consulates were assigned the responsibility of undermining the growing support in the United States for opposition forces, particularly the dissident presidential candidacy of Cuahutemoc Cardenas. Political espionage once again became a central function, this time accompanied by an assortment of government financed programs to co-opt immigrant organizations.
The failure of these new policies became evident in 1997, as Ricardo Monreal, opposition candidate for governor of Zacatecas state, persuaded many zacatecanos in California to abandon support for the PRI. Monreal won and has initiated a trajectory of policies favorable to those state residents linked to the process of international migration.
President Zedillo and the PRI now fear this phenomenon will be repeated in next year's presidential elections.
In his recent trip to California, Zedillo was able to discover first hand that the immigrant demand for the right to vote in future presidential elections has wide acceptance and is not merely the invention of a handful of activist groups. A law guaranteeing this right has passed the lower house of Mexico's legislature. If the Mexican Senate ratifies that bill, the political stakes will grow exponentially.
Unfortunately, until democracy triumphs in Mexico, intolerance and aggression against critical immigrants like Pedro Arias is likely to continue.
Jesus Martinez is an immigrant researcher and activist who was formerly a member of the Political Science Department at Santa Clara University.
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