U.S.-Mexican Industrial Integration: The Road To Free Trade
Very good studies by Mexican and American authors compare the part that government policies and other factors have played in shaping the relations of the two countries' automobile, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, textile, computer and food industries. They show, according to the Mexican editor, "that the border is increasingly becoming not much more than an administrative barrier, albeit a cumbersome one, to industrial processes." Weintraub notes that the studies make clear "that the industrial strategies in the two countries are not completely separable."
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The election of Ronald Reagan in November 1980 may not have actually led to victory parties in the capitals of the more conservative military regimes of Latin America, but it seemed clearly to indicate that there would be a significant change in U.S. policy toward that area. While Jimmy Carter's Latin American policy was not a central issue in the 1980 campaign, it appeared from statements by Reagan's advisers and from the conservative "think tanks" that prepared policy papers during the transition period, that there was likely to be a shift in Latin American policy as dramatic as the one that marked the early days of the Carter Administration--in an exactly opposite direction. While the furtherance of human rights would not be completely abandoned as an objective of U.S. policy (Roger Fontaine, one of Reagan's Latin American advisers, had told a Chilean audience in September that "a concern for human rights did not begin with the Carter administration nor will it end with it"), it was to receive a much lower priority; and with friendly governments it was to be promoted through "quiet diplomacy" behind the scenes rather than through public denunciations and aid cutoffs.
Once again the diplomatic relations of the United States and Mexico are troubled by controversy over the waters of the Colorado River. The latest dispute, though building up slowly, is potentially more serious than earlier ones because of the vast agricultural development of the Southwest and the urgency of hemispheric solidarity. Water with heavy salt content draining back into the Colorado from irrigated land in the United States is endangering Mexican crops further downstream. At a time when the Johnson Administration particularly wants the friendship of Mexico and the rest of Latin America, the controversy provides Mexican leftists with a popular rallying point for their attacks on their own government as well as that of the United States. Unfortunately, the treaty of 1944 which divided Colorado River water and guaranteed orderly development of the region was drawn in haste and without clear provision for handling certain obvious problems. These omissions are the source of the present quarrel and may become the basis for action by the World Court.
As he reflected on the ironies of his first term, Ronald Reagan must have found it remarkable that so many difficulties had arisen in what he thought of as America's front yard. In comparison, the 1970s must have come to seem almost idyllic, at least on the surface; Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela had grown and prospered, the Panama Canal issue had been resolved. But then a double crisis--conflict in Central America and near bankruptcy almost everywhere--exploded just as Reagan's watch began.

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