It's Getting Better All The Time

Last week, I jetted down to Chihuahua, Mexico for a quick three day visit. I've been traveling to the dry, sandy place often since 1998 and the changes that have taken place in the Northern Mexican city over the years are dramatic.

(A quick aside: why is it that the Northern areas of countries are typically more industrious than their Southern counterparts? Some examples that come quickly to mind are the United States, Italy, Mexico, and even Vietnam. For Mexico, the proximity to the US border is a huge factor and in some cases climate may explain part of it, but it's a pattern that usually defies an easy explanation.)

In the on-going (and now seemingly never-ending) debate on immigration, we hear a lot that the endemic corruption, poverty, and lack of economic progress in Mexico is the root cause of illegal immigration to the United States. And, to a large extent, that probably is an accurate analysis. However, we should not ignore the fact that while Mexico has miles to go, there are areas within the country that are moving forward.

An educated, property-owning, product-consuming middle-class is emerging in Chihuahua and it's rapidly changing the look of the city. So much so that there's a story going around (possibly apocryphal) of a coyote dropping a load of desperate campesinos off in the booming part of the city and telling them that they had at last arrived in the promised land of America. Because the surroundings were thick with Home Depots, KFCs, Applebee's, Wal-marts, Honda dealerships, etc., it took the poor would-be border crossers some time before they realized that they had been duped and were still in Mexico.

Americans are a notoriously impatient lot and sometimes I think we have unrealistic expectations of our neighbors to the South. The United States should not have to serve as a crutch that keeps Mexico from taking the sometimes painful steps it needs to heal its limping economy. And we should not hesitate to push the Mexican government to undertake the reforms necessary for such healing to occur. But we also should not dismiss the entire country as an incurable basket case either.

In Chihuahua at least, things are getting better. Slowly but surely.