June 12, 2006

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

“Mexican Power”—What American Politicians Don’t Want To Know.

Sometimes you run across a journalistic endeavor that really stands out for its honesty and clarity.

I recently saw such a thing in the Mexico media. It was a graphic feature (using Flash animation) that appeared on El Universal Online  . It is entitled "Mexican Power".[By José Peréz-Espino and  Francisco Barrados, April 10, 2006] Yes, that’s right, "Mexican Power"—the title was in English.

The feature, which you can see here embedded in an HTML page, or here, linked directly to the Flash animation, includes a series of 6 pages with charts that illustrate "Mexican Power" in the U.S.A.

I suggest you look through it. I provide below an English translation for those of you who don’t know Spanish…yet.

Mexican Power—Page One:

"Mexican Power"

"The Mexicans in the United States are no longer invisible. Their number has grown to 25 million, with or without papers. They represent a purchasing power of more than 378 billion dollars (of which 5% was sent to Mexico last year). The majority no longer work in the fields, as before, but in the principal cities. They are professionals, politicians, businessmen or influential communicators, students, laborers or those who work in the service sector. Here we present an overview of the Mexican Power in the United States."

Mexican Power—Page Two

This page has a map of the U.S. with certain cities marked, and the caption reads

"This 10^th of April thousands of residents of the United States participated in the ‘National Day of Action & Rally for Immigrant Rights’ in 70 cities of the U.S.A, demanding legalization for 11 million ‘indocumentados’. "

Mexican Power—Page Three

This has a map of the U.S. and this caption:

"In the U.S. there reside 25 million persons of Mexican origin. Of that total, 9.8 million were born in Mexico, of whom 4.8 million are indocumentados. The Mexicanized states are California, Texas, Illinois, Arizona and Colorado."

This page has a very handy feature. You can move the mouse to any state in the union, click it, and find out how many Mexicans are living there, according to the Universal estimate.

Notice too the phrase "Mexicanized states"…El Universal's words, not mine.

Mexican Power—Page Four

This page has a map of Mexico, with this caption

"The majority of the Mexicans who emigrate to the U.S. in five years came out of 10 entities (in this case states). Almost the same states receive the biggest parts of the remittances that the paisanos [fellow Mexicans] send to their families."

On this page, you can click the mouse on to any Mexican state and find out how many emigrants El Universal estimates come from that state.  

Mexican Power—Page Five

This has another U.S. map with the caption "In 2000 there were 35.3 million Latinos in the United States. This is the distribution of the Latino community in the U.S.: Mexicans 66.9%, Puerto Ricans 9.6%, Cubans 3.5% , Dominicans 2.2% , Salvadorans 1.9%, Colombians 1.3% , Guatemalans 1.1%, others 13.5%."

Mexican Power—Page Six

This page has "Notes and Sources":

The sources on this page include the U.S: Census, CONAPO (Mexican population bureaucracy), and estimates given by Mexican consulates in the U.S. ( Mexican consulates gather a lot of information).

And get this—another listed source for "Mexican Power" is none other the Center for Immigration Studies. And Steven Camarota is actually mentioned!

Congratulations CIS—your figures are considered reliable by El Universal Online!

Note that, here in Mexico, people who emigrate to the U.S. are considered Mexicans, regardless of citizenship. So are their descendents.

And note the refreshing honesty of the Mexican Power feature. It gets right to the point.

It doesn’t talk about Mexican contributions to the U.S. economy.

It doesn’t talk about the U.S. as a "nation of immigrants".

It doesn’t talk about diversity.

It doesn’t talk about justice.

It gets right to the point—“Mexican Power.”

That’s really how they see it.

MEXICAN POWER.

When will American politicians wake up and see what’s really going on?