[c. 8,700 words] [End]

[Versión española]

PRIVATE ACTION FOR
MEXICAN-U.S. UNION

The Expansionist Party of the United States advocates merger of Mexico into the United States, whereby the 31 states and Federal District of Mexico would become up to 10 states of the Union, the boundaries of which would be decided by Mexicans before petition for statehood, or by Mexicans and Americans in good-faith consultation after such petition.

We believe that such a greater Union would be in the very best interest of all people of good will, but the initiative for such a grand marriage of lands and peoples must come from private persons, because the public leaders of both countries are unlikely to propose such a merger for fear of angering nationalists in Mexico on the one hand or isolationists, racists, and cultural chauvinists in the United States on the other.

"Hidalgo Incendiario" ("The Firebrand [Father] Hidalgo"),
Orozco mural in Government Palace, City of Guadalajara

The United States and Mexico share a border almost 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) long. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and vehicles cross that border every day, in a constant convection of people and goods. Mexican TV is shown and Mexican music heard on hundreds of Spanish-language TV and radio stations in the United States (the U.S. has two Spanish-language TV networks, Univisión and Telemundo), and U.S. television programs and movies, dubbed or in English, are shown all over Mexico. Mexican arts are greatly admired in the United States, from the works of muralists Diego Rivera and José Orozco to crafts in wool and ceramics. Mexican music (e.g., mariachi) also occupies a fond place in the heart of many Americans ("estadounidenses") who don't "dig" the staccato and frenetic rhythms of Afro-Latin salsa and merengue.

Government Palace, Guadalajara, inside which the above mural appears

Chichén-Itzá, Mayan city in the Yucatan region of Mexico

Historically, Mexico is far older and more distinguished than the United States. When Britain first attempted to colonize temperate North America in 1585 (the lost colony of Roanoke), it encountered sparse populations of native peoples living in small villages and divided into hundreds of small tribes. By the time the Mayflower arrived in Massachusetts, Spain had been in Mexico over a century, but the history of Mexico went much farther back than that. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519, and found himself confronting a great and powerful Aztec Empire, whose capital, Tenochtitlán, had some 300,000 inhabitants, more than any city in Spain at the time. (Tho the word "Aztec" derives from Náhuatl, the language of the Aztecs which is still spoken by over a million people, the Aztecs called themselves the "Mexica" or "Tenochca".) Moreover, the Aztecs were relatively recent arrivals, having come from the north, perhaps even the present U.S. Southwest (their language is related to that of the Comanches, Shoshones, and other tribes of the U.S. Southwest), after the earlier Toltec, Mayan, Teotihuacán, and Olmec civilizations (going progressively farther back in time) had had their heyday.

These cultures are called "civilizations" in that they were based on cities, which require well-ordered systems of agriculture, commerce, and military and social organization. They were not, however, what modern people would call "civilized". The Aztecs had great temples in which terrible things were done, including human sacrifice (a practice shared with the older "civilizations"), and a well-developed system of governance that extended over much of present-day Mexico. But Aztec overlordship was brutal, so aroused fierce resentments among the conquered and tributary peoples. Cortez discovered these resentments, allied himself with tribes that had been grotesquely oppressed and massively slaughtered in ritual human sacrifice by the Aztecs, and thus successfully conquered the Aztecs.

In inciting revolt against the Aztecs, Cortez was simply manipulating the incessant intertribal and intercity conflict that for centuries had been the ruinous routine of all these "civilizations". His conquests formed the base of Spain's enormous North American empire, which extended from Panama in the south to the present U.S. state of Oregon in the north, the western Mississippi Valley mid-continent, and even the entire northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the tip of Florida.

Spanish soldier of the conquistador era

Thanks to its many conquests and settlement colonies, some rich in gold and silver, Spain was, for over 250 years, the richest and greatest Empire of the Western world, exceeded, if at all, only by China on the entire planet, with colonies from the southern tip of South America to the vicinity of the Columbia River and deep into the Midwest of the present United States, and dipping into the Philippine archipelago off southeast Asia and to various pockets along the western shores of Africa, plus island steppingstones midway across the Atlantic.

Naturally, the Spaniards of New Spain (Mexico) were deeply proud of this great Empire, and saw the British merchantmen who established what was to become the United States as déclassé latecomers, not to be taken seriously. That was to change.

Merced Temple, Guadalajara

Bit by bit, Spain slipped and Britain grew in power, and those inconsequential little colonies along the eastern coast of North America started marching inland and southward, endangering Spain's hold on the interior of North America and on The Floridas. By 1800, Spain had ceased to be the greatest power of the Western world, and lost the interior of North America to France. That proved a cataclysmic loss, for France sold Louisiana to the new United States, and the die was cast. Henceforth, Spain and its successor states in the New World were to be relegated to the sidelines of history, and the United States was to take center stage, first in North America, then on planet Earth.

After over 170 years of contending with the United States for pride of place, and a disastrous 1846-48 war in which Mexico lost more than half its territory to the U.S., Mexico's newly realistic leaders in 1994 conceded by deed (tho not word) that Mexico had been irredeemably defeated in its attempt to go it alone, isolated from and hostile to the "Colossus of the North", and so decided, as we say in English, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Mexico entered the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) effective January 1, 1994.

Plaza de los Fundadores (Founders Square), Guadalajara.
Fountain (foreground), high relief of first settlers (background)

Our countries thus became the two largest members of the enormous three-member trading area NAFTA, now some 397 million people in an area of over 8.1 million square miles. (The third member is geographically large but demographically small Canada.) Tho many Mexican businessmen feared NAFTA before it was ratified, the U.S. magazine Business Week in early 1999 reported that the best people in Mexican business have adjusted brilliantly to NAFTA and are now eager to take on any challenge, secure in the vastly larger world of opportunities that NAFTA offers than did Mexico in isolation.

It's time for Mexicans to realize that just as NAFTA has proved far more boon than bane, Mexico has much more to gain than lose from joining the Great American Union. Indeed, it may well be that Mexico can find greatness ONLY in joining the Union and becoming the bridge between global North and global South, between the First World and Third World, between the English-speaking world and la Hispanidad. That is a future much to be desired.

Guadalajara Cathedral

Morality impels Union. The bulk of Mexicans are appallingly poor — helpless pawns in games of international economics and power politics who suffer exploitation of grievous sorts — only because of the present political arrangements that rule their lives. Mexico is a nation of fixed roles and social position, in which a son is expected to be what his father was, a daughter what her mother was, and any upstart is more resented than admired. Millions of Mexicans pour over the U.S. border not just for a better material life but also to get away from social immobility and rise to suchever heights as their talents and energies can take them. It's time for all Mexicans who know there is something fundamentally rotten in Mexican culture to stop defending the indefensible and declaim for all to hear that Mexico has got to change, and the direction it needs to change in is the direction of the United States.

Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary

Once Mexico reforms internally, such that anyone can aspire to any job or social status, a large part of the "push" that impels extraordinary levels of migration across the U.S.-Mexican border will cease to exist. There will continue to be a "pull" aspect to that migration, of course, until Mexico's economic growth is so strong and so pervasive that everyone who wants honest work at a fair wage can find it without leaving home. THAT is something statehood for the various regions of Mexico will guarantee.

It's hard moving to a strange country — or even an unfamiliar region of one's own country, as many southern migrants to maquiladoras (foreign-oriented and often foreign-owned assembly plants) in Mexico's northern states have discovered. Much better would it be if Mexicans could find work in their own city, town, or village.

But well-compensated work isn't the only thing in short supply in today's Mexico. Much of rural and small-town Mexico is short of even the rudiments of modern civilization — electricity and telephone service, for instance — not to mention that concomitant of modern telephone service, and sine qua non of modernization, Internet service. Modern sewage treatment and water-purification are in terribly short supply in small towns and rural areas. As is education. Transportation. Health care. You name it, much of rural Mexico doesn't have it. That is a crime against the people that all decent people should denounce and work to fix.

Fortunately, creating infrastructure is business, and can be very good business indeed for U.S. corporations, U.S.-Mexican joint ventures, etc. Mexico needs so much, and providing it, with a small, appropriate profit built in, can bring huge economic benefit to the people smart enough to get in on it.

Aguascalientes

So let the electrification of rural Mexico commence. Let telephone poles and high-tension electric towers sprout all over Mexico. Mexico has oil and gas to fuel such progress but has, astoundingly, been loath to maximize production because to do so has seemed to mean directing much of that production to one country: the United States. Poor Mexicans are supposed to suffer so that their ruling class can keep itself aloof from domination by U.S. demand? We don't think so.

Manzanillo coast

Mexico also has extraordinary potential for solar power. Much of rural Mexico is sunny almost all year round. Arrays of photoelectric cells in unbearably hot, unpopulated Mexican deserts could supply the electric needs of much of rural Mexico, without the burning of so much as an ounce of Mexico's fossil-fuel reserves. Solar ovens could cook rural Mexico's foods without the sacrifice of so much as a twig of scarce forests. The technology is well established. All that is missing is the political will and investment capital to establish mass manufacturers of solar ovens, solar panels, and the like. Indeed, high-tech Mexican plants to make photoelectric panels at low Mexican wage rates might make solar electricity economically viable across much of the U.S. and other rich areas as well!

The only things keeping Mexico poor are (1) Mexico's own social and political organization, and (2) the Mexican ruling class's refusal to let Americans do what Mexican business won't.

Dissolve the border, and vast benefits start to flow to Mexico's poor in one day, as domestic businesses scramble to secure the loyalty of Mexican workers or potential workers against competition from north of the current border.

Bahía Concepción (Conception Bay), Baja California

One of Mexico's largest opposition parties, PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) advocated some years ago that Mexico sell its northern states to the U.S. to pay off its then-onerous debts.  PAN is based in northern Mexico. We would much rather all of Mexico join the Union, for all the benefits that such a union would produce for all of us.

*

Guadalupe Cathedral, Puerto Vallarta, a 1950s church in old style

The benefits of Mexican entry into the Great American Union would not be one-sided. Americans have much to look forward to as well — for instance, complete energy independence, for Mexican oil and natural gas could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil, with all the adverse impact on our balance of payments that buying foreign oil causes. The various other resources that made Spain so keen on conquering Mexico to begin with would also be open to American investors. Oh, they wouldn't get them free, of course. They'd have to pay a fair price, or fair royalty, to the present owners and/or the government of the local State. But U.S. business would be able to invest in areas of the Mexican economy now barred. Mexico's resource of greatest value to U.S. business , however, is its enormous, "unsaturated" consumer market.

95 million people who are not part of a saturated market constitute a huge incentive to U.S. business to invest in Mexico and employ Mexicans. After all, unemployed people can't buy anything. Henry Ford proved, when he started to make the Model T, that if you pay people enough to buy the things they produce, they will indeed buy them, and then you make far more sales than you otherwise would. What was obvious to Henry Ford is NOT obvious to the plutocracy of modern Mexico, other parts of Latin America, nor indeed most of the Third World. But Ford was right. Pay people a fair wage and they will make us all rich.

Because Mexicans need so much but most Americans already have almost everything they need, Mexico is potentially an enormously attractive market. Whoever arrives first with good products at good prices stands the likelihood of creating a long-term market share and customer loyalty that most businesses devoted to the U.S. domestic market can only dream about.

A note about language. Many people within the United States misconceive of the U.S. as a nation-state. It is no such thing. In a nation-state, "A political unit consisting of an autonomous state inhabited especially by a predominantly homogeneous people" (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition), the bulk of the population shares common customs, origins, race, history, and language. Any group within that society that does not share those values is not felt to be part of the nation, so is generally pressured either to conform or to leave. In the United States, there is no such uniformity. Rather, we are a Nation in the political sense ("A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country"), and in a spiritual sense, a group of people of many different origins who aspire to the same ideals and so are united in purpose. Our national purpose is set forth in the basic documents of our Union, starting with the Declaration of Independence and Preamble to the Constitution and proceeding thru various hallowed statements such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (see the topic "National Credo" at http://members.aol.com/Schoonmakr/Chairman.html). Tho  for Americans the phrases resound in English, the sense can be stated in any language.

Painting that celebrates Mexico's own diversity

Americans do aspire to cultural unity, but we recognize that our culture is diverse, so what we seek is the paradoxical "unity with diversity." We are different from one ethnic, racial, religious, or other community to another, and from locality to locality, but we're comfortable with that. The United States has no official language, and has resisted efforts to declare English our sole national language. Quite the contrary, Federal law requires that services of various types be provided in any language spoken by a substantial number of the people in a given place, at least until those people are able to defend their rights in English.

Yes, there are powerful assimilative forces at work to make everyone learn English so they can communicate with each other across group boundaries, but there is no national pressure for people to give up their own language once they are also able to speak English. Some individual states have made English their official language, but there is nothing in the laws of the United States that permits a state or the Nation to ban other languages.

The "Commonwealth of Puerto Rico", a colony of the United States, is officially bilingual, English-Spanish, and for several years was officially unilingual in Spanish! When the Puerto Rico government declared Spanish its sole official language, nothing was done to take away the island's special relationship with the United States. The State of Louisiana has, at least in the past, been officially bilingual, English-French. (I am not certain whether it is presently bilingual, but it may well be.) Any Mexican state would be expected to be at least officially bilingual, Spanish-English, and to place native speakers of English in classrooms as teachers of English so children can learn fully nuanced English without an accent.

Frankly, that will not be good enough for some rightwingers in Congress when a vote on Mexican statehood comes up. They will vote against statehood for any area that does not accept English as its sole official language, tho they might be mollified if a proposed new state has no "official" language. A "working language" other than English might not offend them so deeply that they vote against statehood, as long as they can believe that over time the children will be taught good English in the schools of any new state.

Are English-language chauvinists — or people afraid for the future of English — numerous enough in Congress to block statehood for any new state? Probably not. Mexico impácts the U.S. so deeply in many areas that diminishing its potential harm to the U.S. is far more important than imposing English upon people who don't now speak it.

That brings us to the question of migration. One major reason U.S. conservatives are likely to vote for statehood for new Mexican states is the realization that the best way to keep Mexicans from pouring over the border and producing major displacements in the United States is to make conditions so much better at home that Mexicans will want to stay in their own area, not cross the border.

Massive transborder migration does scare some Americans, and not just bigots. Many people are insufficiently confident that this country, which has absorbed and gradually assimilated over 60 million immigrants thru its history, can absorb millions more migrants from a single, non-English-speaking culture. They are too timid, and do not know how much migrants from Latin America want to learn English once they move to dominantly English areas.

Mexicans aren't stupid. They know that if they move to Chicago, New York, or Chattanooga, they will have to learn English unless they wish to be confined their entire lives to the barrio. Sure, within the barrio there's no need for English. But normal people don't enjoy living a confined life in a linguistic ghetto. They like to get out of the neighborhood from time to time, take trips, avail themselves of employment opportunities outside their limited circle, and otherwise enjoy all that life as an American affords. To do that, they must know English — and they know they have to know English to get ahead.

Thus it is that English-language courses by audio and video cassette are advertised all over Spanish-language TV, in commercials and infomercials at all hours of the day and nite. Moreover, any Hispanic migrant who wishes to learn English has only to change channels on his television set or stations on his radio to hear masses of English, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and practice to his heart's content. This was never possible before, and it has made a huge difference in the rate at which Hispanics are learning English. Whereas before, immigrants lived wholly within the ghetto, speaking only their native language among themselves, and only the children, who went to school, learned English, now even adults are learning English due to the accessibility of a constant stream of English everywhere they turn to in mass media.

In 1912, an Italian immigrant to New York City might encounter no one in daily life who did not speak Italian, so even if he or she wanted to learn English, that task was daunting, because there was no one to practice with. And you wouldn't dare speak to an Anglo lest you make some mistake that made you seem stupid.

Today, if you want to accustom your ear to English, all you need do is turn the TV or radio on and leave it on all day long. Buy a cassette-based instructional program and play it as many times as you need, in the privacy of your own home. Some programs employ microphones that a student can use to record his speech and play it back to compare with the teacher's — a mini-, in-home language lab! There are even computer courses. And all of them are infinitely patient and nonjudgmental. You make a mistake? Who's to know? You note your mistake and try again — and again, and again, and again — until you get it right.

So, altho the common misimpression among American enemies of immigration is that the U.S. is being culturally fragménted by the creation of huge, unassimilable masses of non-English speakers, the reality is the exact opposite: a larger percentage of immigrants are learning English faster and more fluently than ever before in history. Univisión reported, during 1999's July 4th weekend, that 88% of US. Hispanics speak English! — despite heavy immigration and frequent movement of significant populations back and forth across the border. Since that is true, Americans worried about cultural fragmentation can be reassured by showing them that learning English is the No. 1 priority of all Hispanic communities in the United States.

Fears of revanchism. Anglo-Americans took half of Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century, first Texas, then the region between Texas and the Pacific. Then Congress bought another thirty thousand square miles (the Gadsden Purchase) to secure the best route for a railroad between Texas and California. Some conservative Americans suspect that many Mexicans who move across the border are intent not on becoming Americans but in retaking their lost territory.

This map will look familiar to most students of U.S. history. It shows the territorial growth of the U.S. from 1783 to 1853. The three areas at bottom left, Texas in bright blue (1845), the Mexican Cession in red (1848), and the Gadsden Purchase in dark blue (1853) were all once part of Mexico.
Without them, the U.S. would still be a very large country, tho much reduced
(by about 26% of its present total area, including Alaska and Hawaii).

In truth, most Mexicans have deeply resented both the military humiliation, in two wars, that the transfer of territory in the last century involved and the limit upon Mexico's national greatness that halving its size might have cost. To many ambitious Mexicans, the United States' greatness should have been Mexico's, and would have been, had the U.S. not "stolen" half of Mexico! The truth is very different from this dreamy what-might-have-been.

This is a map almost no American will have seen. It shows the relative size of the conterminous U.S. and Mexico if Mexico had not lost 55.5% of its territory to the United States. The U.S. would still be larger by over 300,000 square miles within the region shown on the map, plus Alaska and Hawaii (another 576,479 square miles), but Mexico would be vastly larger than it is today — by 125%! Would that have made a difference to Mexico's place in history and its ability to provide a decent life to its people? Or not?

Look at Brazil, a country that was until the admission of Alaska in 1959 geographically larger than the United States but which has always been a pitiful wreck of a country, mired in poverty and social injustice. Brazil didn't even abolish slavery until 25 years after the U.S.! — this despite its exaggerated reputation for racial tolerance.

In 1889, Brazil overthrew its Emperor and established itself as a republic under the name "United States of Brazil". Sound familiar? Plainly Brazil aspired to be the "Colossus of the South", match to the "Colossus of the North", the "United States of America". (Mexico is the "United Mexican States".) Brazil attracted immigrants from many countries, and has vast natural resources and a population of 170 million. Is Brazil a great power, even superpower? It is not. Why not? Mexico can blame the United States. ("Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States." -- Porfirio Diaz, the execrable dictator whom a million Mexicans died in a civil war to overthrow) Whom can Brazil blame?

No, to borrow from Shakespeare's attribution to Cassius in the play Julius Caesar,

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Nothing the United States did to Mexico accounts for Mexico's miserable performance as a nation, nor the misery of the bulk of its people. Mexico's own culture of elitism (in both its Spanish and Amerind precursors), racism, oligarchy, plutocracy, and sexism, plus a national tendency to scapegoat the United States for everything that is wrong with Mexico, is to blame for Mexico's misery. If geographic places were traded, Brazil being next to the U.S. and Mexico being where Brazil is, Mexico would still be a mess — but would have no one to blame. So let Mexicans end the blame game and admit that all Mexico's efforts to compete with the United States have failed, then move on to a new gameplan.

Willy-nilly, Mexico does now and will forever hugely impact the United States. That impact can be destructive or constructive. In large measure, the present day-to-day impact of Mexico's separate nationhood upon the United States, and especially on border towns menaced by a mass influx of poor and desperate people, is largely negative. Beyond the border area, NAFTA has made much of the current interaction more positive, but illegal immigration remains a seriously adverse aspect of the current relationship.

(The presently preferred Spanish term for illegal immigrants, "indocumentados" (undocumented [ones]), is a contemptible lie. Honest individuals and media should permanently abjure the term "indocumentados" and its English version, "undocumented aliens". Mexicans who don't have immigration documents didn't once possess them but carelessly misplace them; they never had immigration permits to begin with, because they weren't entitled to them. "Undocumented" immigrants enter the United States ILLEGALLY, and the term in Spanish that aptly describes them is thus "ilegales" not "indocumentados". Using language to lie is a contemptible misuse of any language. If Mexicans have a quarrel with the law that forbids people from one side of the border between us from moving to the other side, let them address that problem (as this presentation does, with its own solutions), not pretend the border, or the law, doesn't exist.)

Copper Valley

The Expansionist Party would end all illegal immigration by permitting everyone in the United States and Mexico to work in and move to any part of either present country as a matter of right. Americans would have fully as much right to move to Mexico and open businesses or live out their retirement there as would Mexicans have the right to move to the United States in search of work and education. Indeed, in that the climate of much of Mexico is more suitable for old people than is that of much of the U.S., where severe winters endanger older people's lives, it would make very good economic sense, for both (present) countries, for Mexico to exchange many of its young people for many of the United States' old people.

Social Security payments that barely suffice or don't even suffice to cover living expenses for the elderly in the U.S. would accord senior citizens lives of considerable comfort in Mexico. With nothing more than their current retirement benefits, they could hire cooks, housekeepers, and personal assistants from among the people who don't move to the U.S., and thus live better lives in Mexico, doing more good for more people along the way, than they ever could in the U.S., where many can't afford any help at all with the challenges that life poses the elderly. Who can argue against that?

Moreover, millions of younger Mexicans filling jobs in the United States (and the U.S. presently has a serious labor shortage) would pay Social Security taxes that would put a presently endangered system in the black for the foreseeable future.

There is so much for everyone to gain, and so little for anyone to lose, from merger of Mexico into the United States that we don't understand why this hasn't spontaneously happened long ago. But because it hasn't, we who believe in the multitudinous benefits all around of Mexican participation in the Great American Union must now exert ourselves to make it happen.

Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States aspired to a Union that would unite all the Americas, from Point Barrow in the North to Tierra del Fuego in the south:  an American Union, for all Americans — una Unión Americana, para todos los Americanos. Merger of Mexico into the Union would be a big step toward that Hemispheric or Pan-American Union, and would likely spur further such steps in short order.

How can private persons advance the cause of statehood for Mexico?

Well, there's quite a lot an individual can do, by himself or with friends and other like-minded people. Here are some suggestions. If you know other people who might help, you can form a group such as one of  the Committees suggested below. But one person alone can do some of the things suggested and make a contribution. Even the greatest flood begins with but a single drop of rain.

Cascada

How the first Union was formed. In the 1770s, thirteen North American colonies of Great Britain instituted Committees of Correspondence, organizations appointed first by towns and then by the central government of each colony, whose purpose was to write letters to share information and ideas with people elsewhere in their own, and then other colonies. When these thirteen colonies became outraged by the policies of the London authorities, the Committees of Correspondence helped colonists to understand that they were not alone in their feelings of righteous indignation. The Committees developed into centers of political action.

Recognizing that only so much could be accomplished by letter-writing, the Committees of Correspondence used their letters to call a meeting of concerned citizens from all colonies, which meeting became the Continental Congress. Out of that Congress came the American Revolution, and that Revolution inspired other American peoples to free themselves from European domination too. This Revolutionary tradition is the common heritage of all the peoples of the Americas.

Miramar

What we propose, then, is the creation of formal or informal Committees of Correspondence in Mexico to promote the idea of merger of Mexico into the United States. Such Committees would write letters or send emails to the editor of Mexican and U.S. publications of all types, targeting their arguments to the particular audience addressed by each publication and tying such remarks to an article published by that publication or a news development that publication could reasonably be expected to take interest in. These Committees would also write letters or emails to Mexican, Mexican-American, and general U.S. organizations, politicians and political parties, tailoring each appeal to the particular person or organization addressed and using arguments specially thought through to appeal to the recipient of each letter.

For instance, one letter might go to the mayor and Chamber of Commerce of a Mexican town near the U.S. border pointing out how much economic benefit his region derives from mere proximity to the U.S. and how much more it would prosper within the U.S. Another letter might go to a trade association of the Mexican tourist industry comparing Hawaii's pre- and post-statehood tourist business and showing how much Hawaii's per capita income has risen since statehood.

Altar of the San Francisco Temple, Guadalajara

Another letter might go to the U.S. Catholic Conference pointing out that the Catholic population of the United States would increase by some 90 million if Mexico were to join the Union, so that Catholics everywhere in the U.S. would feel their position strengthened and the religious life of the Nation more balanced than it now is. An email might go to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People pointing out that Mexicans too have been victims of racial discrimination and know the sting of prejudice, so would be sure to ally themselves with the aspirations of blacks and other minorities in the U.S., adding the strength of 95 million new Mexican citizens to that of 28 million Chicanos, 33 million blacks, and 2.8 million mainland Puerto Ricans in a new coalition devoted to economic as well as political justice for all citizens regardless of color or ancestral language. And so on.

There are multitudinous audiences to be cultivated, each with its own point of view and political influence. In Mexico, Committees of Correspondence would seek to bring out into the open, pro-statehood sentiment that may now be hidden for fear of social disapproval or political retribution, then channel pro-statehood sentiment into useful activities. In writing to the U.S., such Committees of Correspondence would be telling people who have never even thought about it, that there are millions of Mexicans who believe it would be in the best interest of both the U.S. and Mexico for Mexico to be admitted to the Union. Such Committees of Correspondence would work toward the day, hopefully in the near future, when Mexico's people and government will unite to petition Congress for admission to the American Union.

Mexico City Cathedral, on the Zócalo (main city square)

The U.S. votes for President every four years, and the actions of that President, whoever he may be, will affect the lives of all Mexicans for the following four years. The Mexican economic situation is very bad, and improves only unevenly, with some few segments of society benefiting while all others are left behind. There is no guarantee that it will get significantly better for the bulk of the population unless there is a drastic change not merely in the people who run the Mexican government but also in the way Mexicans are governed. While one tends to think of political change as gradual, the fact is that things can happen very fast if people are angry enough. And Mexicans have good reason to be very angry. Therefore we should propose that Mexico petition for admission to the United States this very year, so that conditions in Mexico not only will not get worse but can start getting better very soon; and so that whoever is elected President of the United States next time will be sympathetic to the needs of Mexicans because his election will in no small measure be due to Mexican votes.

Palacio Nacional (National Palace), Mexico City

While it is clear that uniting Mexico and the United States before the next Presidential election would be very difficult, we shouldn't say it is impossible. It is a very big mistake to set unduly modest goals, because modest goals often result in only modest gains.

Latin America Tower, Mexico City

Whether Mexico does or does not enter the Union very soon, Mexican Committees of Correspondence could promote the idea of an Intercontinental Congress or Pan-American Congress, modeled on the Continental Congress that led to the establishment of the United States, and to involve all areas the Expansionist Party would like to see become part of the United States in the next twenty years or so: for instance, Mexico, the Philippines, Canada, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Western Samoa and other areas of Oceania, South Africa, Western Europe, the West Indies, and Central America and other parts of the Western Hemisphere

If the first such Congress should focus on the Western Hemisphere, the term "Intercontinental Congress" might still be used, since there is substantial inconsistency of treatment in the various countries of the Hemisphere as to whether the Americas are one continent or two. The farther north or south of Panama one goes, the more likely the local people will conceive of "America" as two continents. But a great proportion of the people of this Hemisphere see America as a single continent joined toward the west by a rugged cordilleran spine from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Yes, Panama forms a very narrow link between North and South America, but that problematic mountain spine passes right thru Panama, and the Canal has to climb over its mountains.

A wasp has a very narrow waist but is a single insect, not two separate insects that happen to fly together! It's worth noting, perhaps, that the wings of the wasp are on the 'northern' half.

My mother was born in the Canal Zone. My predisposition to see all the Americas as a single continent is thus bolstered by my knowledge that my own mother was born at the wasp-waist of this enormous, magnificent continent, and as a child spoke English at home but Spanish with her playmates from the Panamanian side of the street. It surprised me when she told me there were no fences nor walls to demarcate the Canal Zone from Panama proper. One side of the street was the Canal Zone; the other, Panama!

The Canal does not constitute a sea-level gash that physically chops America in two, but only a tattoo on America's body.

There isn't even general agreement about where "North" America ends and "South" America or "Central" America begins. Nor where the border lies between Anglo-America and Latin America. I have a Brazilian almanac that puts the southern border of North America at the Rio Grande (to Mexicans, "Rio Bravo del Norte"). What about the English-speaking West Indies? They fall below that line. Are they part of "Latin" America, even tho they speak English? Or are they part of "Anglo"-America? The question is more complicated than it might seem. On its face, the obvious classification is that English-speaking areas, be they in the West Indies, Belize, or Guyana, are part of Anglo-America, not Latin America. But "Anglo-America" has come to mean the "First World" parts of northern America:  the U.S. and Canada — even tho a large chunk of that geography is occupied by French-speaking Québecois, and French is a Latin language! Is Québec part of Latin America? Good question. I have never heard a good answer to that good question.

Perhaps it is harder to divide America than to think of it united.

It has always puzzled "Americans" that there are so many Spanish-speaking countries lying side-by-side without uniting. Yes, we learned in school that some of those countries were originally united, but separated because of incompatibilities or ego-tripping by local leaders. The U.S. also has a country most of whose residents share its main language, English, but remains separate decade after decade. Still, most Americans have always believed that sooner or later Canada will join the Union. So we remain puzzled that there are so MANY separate Spanish-speaking countries side-by-side. Wouldn't it be bizarre — but interesting — if the many separate Spanish-speaking countries of this Hemisphere, and even Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking country that is largely isolated in the Hemisphere, were to be united only by Union into a Hemisphere-wide Union based on the English-speaking United States!

"Pan-American" means "All-American", and that is something "Americans" in the United States need to keep in mind. Tho many millions of Latin Americans have resented "estadounidenses" ("United Statesans") arrogating to themselves the term "Americans", that identification may well prove crucial to the progress of this entire Hemisphere, if "Americans" can broaden their identification with other "Americans" from [Anglo-]Americans to ALL Americans, of every country of the Americas.

Few Americans know the boundaries of Mexico's present 31 states and Federal District, much less their coats of arms and (unofficial) state flags. The map and links below provide this information . People who like heraldry and flags will really enjoy this area. But perhaps they should finish reading the main page before exploring the wonderful world of vexillology at the "Flags of the World" website. (Note: FOTW does not have full information on all of Mexico's states. Use your browser's "back" button to return to this page. Or note the URL for this page before heading off into FOTW, because one can easily get lost in that vast and fascinating site.)

Legend key:

AGU Águas Calientes BCN Baja California BCS Baja California del Sur CAM Campeche CHH Chihuahua CHP Chiapas COA Coahuila COL Colima

DUR Durango DIF Distrito Federal GRO Guerrero GUA Guanajuato HID Hidalgo JAL Jalisco MEX México MIC Michoacán

MOR Morelos NAY Nayarit NLE Nuevo León OAX Oaxaca PUE Puebla QUE Querétaro ROO Quintana Roo SIN Sinaloa

SLP San Luís Potosí SON Sonora TAB Tabasco TAM Tamaulipas TLA Tlaxcala VER Vera Cruz YUC Yucatán ZAC Zacatecas

Copyright: FOTW Mexico states map by Tour by Mexico and António Martins and boundaries’ data by António Martins. Maps and boundary data are copyrighted by FOTW Flags Of The World.

Committees of Correspondence in Mexico could give rise to similar committees in each of those other territories and grow in sophistication and power by sharing ideas with others.

In writing to Western Europe, for example, you could point out that as part of the United States, Mexico would become a safe place to invest billions of Eurodollars now going to the present 50 States, with the additional advantage that investment in Mexico creates prosperity in a market that is not saturated with consumer goods the way the present U.S. is, so that the more money Europeans invest in Mexico, the larger the market for European manufactures grows. You could promote Mexican advertising agencies as having a perfect understanding of Latin America's culture and economies as would enable them to provide all services necessary to develop a larger Latin American market for European goods and services and to appeal to the large and growing U.S. Hispanic market.

Bullfighting, a detestable part of Spain's culture shared by Mexico
but not many other parts of Latin America

In writing to Puerto Rico, you could point out that its Spanish language and culture would be more secure in a larger Union, with Mexico and possibly with the Dominican Republic, Central America, and parts of South America, than with the present U.S. alone, so there would be no danger of Hispanics' losing their culture in opting for statehood. Mexican accession to the Union could thus end Puerto Rico's indecision and bring it into the Union, plus encourage other areas of the Caribbean to throw in their lot too. That would make the Caribbean "our sea" as much as the Roman Empire's conquests made the Mediterranean 'their sea'. And so on.

Speaking from the heart, small groups of sincere private citizens can reach other people's hearts, from those of simple farmers in remote villages in Mexico or Puerto Rico to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and even President of the United States. Letters can be sent almost anywhere in the world, and most of them, by far, are read, unlike many other forms of publicity. Those that are carefully written and make good points can move people to action, and ultimately change the world.

Beyond letters, there are petitions. Petitions, be they formal or informal, can be circulated across Mexico to move politicians to action. While the exact wording of such petitions should be set by Mexicans themselves, they might say something like this:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, faithful citizens of Mexico, urge our leaders to recognize that the people are Mexico, and the people need a change. Independence was a noble experiment that failed, and now the people of Mexico must have the courage to admit the failure of independence and find another way to provide a secure and happy future for our children, a future in which they can live with dignity, never losing sight of their heritage but never having to suffer for other people's stubborn pride. We ask the Government of Mexico to petition the Congress and President of the United States to admit Mexico to the Great American Union, so that all Mexicans can share in the rights and benefits which all people should enjoy and to which the United States has pledged itself: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Monument to Benito Juárez, first Indian President of Mexico, and a reformer

We seek to become part of the United States not to avoid our responsibilities but truly to live up to them, and we offer the United States not a servile colony but a valuable partner in its noble work in the world. We share the ideals of the people of the United States and seek to work with them in achieving in the real world ideals that today are mere rhetoric. The world is too small and too troubled for unnecessary divisions to continue. Good people, wherever they may be found, must join together for everybody's sake.

Even if you are hesitant to circulate a petition like this within Mexico, you can copy the wording in a private letter, sign that letter petition and send it to politicians, newspaper columnists and editorialists, and other opinion leaders in Mexico and the United States to start them thinking along those lines.

If a petition, by any wording, should be circulated and receive any significant number of signatures, it should be sent to both the President of Mexico and the President of the United States and leaders of Congress. Two companion petitions, one directed to the Government of Mexico, the other to the Government of the United States, could be circulated side by side for signatures by each signer at the same time. Some people might be more willing to sign one; others, the other; most, both (or neither).

Mexican monastery

There are other things private citizens can do. When candidates for public office speak in your area, you can ask about their attitudes toward statehood and encourage them to think about it seriously. You can write to the President of the Republic to say you are afraid for the future, and ask him to lead Mexico into statehood, not merely because it would be better for yourself and your children materially but also because Mexico as part of the United States could do more for Latin America and the world than could Mexico alone: that Mexico's ultimate destiny might be to humanize and rededicate the United States to alleviating the misery of the Third World by bringing "North" and "South" together in a single great American Union — of all the Americas.

Mariachi band performing in a large indoor venue

You can send letters to heads of U.S. corporations doing business in Mexico, the U.S. embassy and consulates in Mexico, etc., asking them to consider the implications of Mexico's joining the Union.

You can write letters to U.S. professional sports leagues to suggest they expand southward so that, for instance, Mexico City might have an American League baseball team, a National Basketball Association team, and a National Football Conference NFL franchise, while Monterrey or Guadalajara might have a National League baseball team and American Football Conference NFL franchise, all of which would put Mexico constantly in the minds of U.S. sports fans and television news viewers who hear sports scores whether they want to or not.

Field of maguey cactus grown to produce tequila

You can write directly to:

President Bush (The Hon. George W. Bush, President of the United States, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500; president@whitehouse.gov),

Speaker of the House of Representatives Denny Hastert (speaker@mail.house.gov),

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (Congressman Dick Armey, 301 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515-4326),

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (d.leadership@mail.house.gov),

Senate Majority Leader Thomas D. Daschle(509 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510, tom_daschle@daschle.senate.gov),

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (487 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510, (senatorlott@lott.senate.gov),

to tell them that many Mexicans want very much to reunite with the territories severed from Mexico in the nineteenth century, not by an impossible reconquest (which would in any case give Mexico an English-speaking minority of 50 million people!), but by joining the Union and extending the American Revolution to a larger part of America than it now energizes. This is something almost nobody in the United States knows. Say how much Mexicans admire the United States, share the political ideals of the U.S., and want to help in spreading those noble ideals around the world. Ask them to make Mexican statehood a plank in their party's election platform.

There are, in short, hosts of things private citizens can do to advance the idea of union of Mexico and the United States. I haven't mentioned two obvious other things up to now — joining the Expansionist Party and forming chapters thereof in Mexico — because there may be some currency controls as would forbid payment of dues to Newark and because there may be some legal problems with becoming members of a "foreign" political organization. Still, we offer a printable membership application at mbrapp.html for people who would like to become formal members of the Expansionist Party. People who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to do the other things suggested above may find contributing to the Expansionist Party the simplest way of helping.

Copper Valley

Most efforts for Mexican statehood have to originate in Mexico, however, because this is something few people in the United States will believe is a serious prospect unless it comes from Mexico, and because the United States is very wary of being branded "Yanqui imperialist" for taking the lead in annexing Mexico. Though political organizations need dues-paying members, of course, the Expansionist Party needs, even more, allies who are willing to exert themselves in voluntary activity for shared goals. We appreciate the encouragement we receive and are happy to count as members everyone who expresses support for our purposes, whether they join formally and pay dues or not, on the assumption that if we had candidates to run in their area, many such sympathetic people would vote for those candidates. (Few people actually "belong", as dues-paying members, to the Democratic or Republican Party, the major parties of the United States. Still, those parties manage to function.)

The suggestions above are by no means exhaustive, and you may have ideas of your own to offer. I'd like to hear your suggestions and to know how you have decided to promote statehood for Mexico.

Cordially, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Chairman

P.S. In all communications with media and opinion leaders, tell them they can get more information from me and the Expansionist Party at 295 Smith Street, Newark, New Jersey 07106, (973) 416-6151, and from our Internet site (indexed at http://members.aol.com/XPUS). If this proposal does receive media attention in your area, send a copy of anything that appears to us so we can stay fully informed. If it is something that requires reply, send it to us by email, along with an email address to which we might send an urgent response directly to the publication, website, or broadcast program on which the mention occurred. Thank you.

[Originally issued April 1984; substantially revised and illustrated June 30, 1999]
Flag graphics courtesy of FOTW Flags Of The World website at http://fotw.digibel.be/flags/.  [Animated XP logo contributed by Todd G. Sutherland of Mississauga, Ontario]

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