THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 82, May 16, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
IMMIGRANTS, RECONQUISTAS, & ECONOMIC SYSTEMS:
What Would the American Southwest Look Like
Under the Mexican Legal & Economic System?
By Paul K. Driessen
HOW & WHY MEXICO'S LEGAL & ECONOMIC SYSTEM DIFFERS FROM THAT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
CLARIFYING THE INTERTWINED ISSUES OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, POVERTY SOUTH OF THE RIO GRANDE, & HOW THE
FORTUITOUS COURSE OF U.S. HISTORY GENERATED OPPORTUNITY & PROSPERITY THAT REMAIN ELUSIVE FOR OUR
SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS -- ANGLO-AMERICA & LATIN AMERICA: THEIR DIFFERING HISTORIES, POLITICAL SYSTEMS,
PUBLIC POLICIES, & COURSES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
FULL STORY:
In one week, three news items helped clarify the intertwined issues of illegal immigration, poverty south of the Rio Grande, and
how the fortuitous course of U.S. history generated opportunity and prosperity that remain elusive for our southern neighbors.
Mexicans working legally and illegally in the United States send more than $25 billion a year back to their families, says
Professor Luis Pazos of the Mexican think tank CISLE. That’s twice what Mexico gets from tourism, and second only to
petroleum production revenue.
The poor fisherman who discovered Mexico’s vast offshore oil fields got a little medal, but never a peso, for alerting the
government to resources that have earned his country tens of billions of dollars. The oil might belong to “the people,”
but the bonanza revenues go to the rich, the corrupt and failed government programs, leaving the country’s poor to eke
out a living on less than $5 a day.
A growing “reconquista” movement demands the return of “Aztlan,” as radicals call southwestern states that were
“stolen” from Mexico, causing it to remain impoverished, they claim. “Atzlan is California. Atzlan is this country,” a
student ranted to Sean Hannity of Fox News. “This country was ours, and we want it back.”
A review of history and economics is in order.
Spanish colonists arrived first in the Americas, installing their seigneurial (feudal) system in lands claimed for King and
Church. The state gained title to all mineral rights, upper classes acquired vast land holdings, and often corrupt bureaucrats
regulated markets and businesses. The vast majority of families worked the land or did menial labor, with few opportunities
to own property, become educated, or improve their social status.
By the time the English began establishing colonies, their system of laws, representative democratic government, property
rights, free enterprise, and individual rights had evolved far beyond feudal concepts. Even poor entrepreneurs could and
did acquire property, patent inventions, mine gold and silver, and build businesses, factories, and industries. When wars
and treaties added Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California to the expanding nation, those new states
exchanged backward Spanish feudalism for the dynamic American system.
But even today in Mexico, key industries remain nationalized, and wealth is concentrated in the hands of elites. Prevalent
ideologies view wealth as “a zero-sum game,” in which what one person acquires can come only by taking money or
property from someone else. These doctrines help foment class conflict, demand “more equitable” distribution of wealth,
and condemn globalization and foreign investment, rather than seeing them as agents of improved opportunity, health, and
environmental quality.
Mexico’s poor own their limited property in “deficient form,” says Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, with inadequately
documented rights and assets. They have what he terms “dead capital” – “houses but not titles; crops but not deeds;
businesses but not statutes of incorporation.” Worse, they have little opportunity to improve their lot, as long as they
remain in Mexico.
Much of rural and small-town Mexico does not even have electricity, telephone and internet service, sewage treatment,
water purification, or decent roads, schools, and healthcare. Just five miles from Cancun, I visited Valle Verde, where several
thousand people live in primitive wood shacks, with electricity for only a few light bulbs and no running water or sanitation.
One cannot help wondering where all that petroleum and tourism money has gone.
Low-skill wages today are less than 15% of what Mexican workers can earn in the U.S.A., and half of Mexico's 106 million
people still live in poverty. Instead of investing in Mexico, affluent families often go where there are fewer barriers to
establishing new businesses, and where there is less crime, corruption, onerous taxation, and threats of confiscation.
So, while America creates jobs, grows richer and becomes more technologically advanced, Mexico limps along, its oil
reserves declining and its government fostering illegal migration northward, as a pressure-release valve for the growing
frustration of its impoverished masses.
Mexico is not poor because it lacks natural resources or bright, industrious citizens. It is blessed with both in abundance.
Mexico is poor because it retains an antiquated legal and economic system, and its populist leaders scapegoat the United
States for what ails Mexico, rather than adopting the practices of successful nations.
If the southwestern United States had remained part of Mexico, the region would have been governed under Mexican laws,
and would probably be as impoverished and bereft of opportunity as Mexico is today. It would never have generated the
inventions, innovations, industries, minerals, and wealth that its hardworking people have produced as the bounties of their
creative genius, risk-taking, and labors.
The American Southwest’s vigorous cities and universities, its medical centers and Silicon Valleys, its upward mobility and
thriving middle class, its transportation, communication and power generation systems would be a mere shadow of what
they are today. Las Vegas and Hollywood would still be sleepy desert way stations. (There’s a silver lining in every cloud,
some would say.)
If La Raza, MeCha, and the other reconquistas were to “take back” these lands, they would likely impose the same
disastrous policies that have enfeebled Mexico. They would squander, rather than capture, America’s prosperity and
opportunity – turning America’s gold into lead, like a reverse King Midas. Countless poor Mexicans would still be drawn to
the magnetic North. And our immigration problems would simply move to the southern borders of Oregon, Idaho, Utah,
Colorado, and Oklahoma.
Mexico needs to pay less attention to the tenets of liberation theology and Leftist populism and more to Pope John Paul II’s
Centesimus Annus encyclical, which underscores the benefits of private property rights, free trade, entrepreneurship,
reduced taxes and government intervention, and evenhanded rule of law. Mexico needs to do what rich countries have done
to become rich, and what China, India, and many eastern European nations are doing today.
If it does, if it can finally break its feudal shackles, Mexico will give its people the opportunity, health, environmental quality,
and prosperity they seek, and so richly deserve. Those who want to migrate will still be able to. But all classes will have a
better future, and Mexico will become an inspiration for all of Latin America.
© 2006 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Immigration & Illegal Aliens
Latin America -- Economics, Politics, Political Regimes,
& Relations with the United States of America:
Problems & Opportunities for the U.S.A.
Government & the Economy
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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