Distant Neighbors [antikvár]

Foreword Probably nowhere in the world do two countries as different as Mexico and the United States live side by side. As one crosses the border into Mexico from, say, El Paso, the contrast is shocking—from wealth to poverty, from organization to improvisation, from artificial flavoring to pungent spices. But the physical differences are least important. Probably nowhere in the world do two neighbors understand each other so little. More than by levels of development, the two countries are separated by language, rehgion, race, philosophy and history. The United States is a nation barely two hundred years old and is lunging for the twenty-first century. Mexico is several thousand years old and is still held back by its past. Over the past 150 years, Mexico has come to know and feel American power: in the nineteenth century, it lost half of its territory to its northern neighbor; in the twentieth century, it has become economically dependent on the United States. In contrast, the United States until recently barely looked south. Mexico's stability was