Alan Riding, in Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans, has set for himself a highly ambitious task: "The purpose of this book is to make Mexico more accessible to non-Mexicans. It is inspired not by a desire to expose the country's vulnerabilities but by the belief that Mexico would also be better served if better understood by its northern neighbor" (p. xii). This is a highly commendable ambition, but Riding makes unwarranted assumptions when he takes for granted that the United States has any desire to understand Mexico. The history of the relationship between the two countries demonstrates that the United States has a low tolerance for understanding and a high tolerance for exploitation. The people of the United States have demonstrated a monumental indifference toward Mexico (except with respect to keeping out "illegal aliens" --- aside from those employers who want to import and exploit), and the leaders have sought to "understand" Mexico only insofar as that understanding would help them exploit their "neighbor" to the south.
Riding goes on: "In a sense, the book represents a search for an invisible 'black hole' that embraces the entirety of Mexico in a single concept: to know what it contains requires a journey through the history of the country, through the minds of its people and through the diverse sectors of society. Each element can be analyzed in isolation, but it can be understood only when related to all the others to form an idea, at once diffuse and precise, of Mexico today" (p. xii).
What would the American reader feel if he were to read of a Mexican author's desire to sum up the United States in a "single concept," in one "idea"? Would not such an American reader come to the conclusion that the writer was presumptuous on two accounts? In the first place, no nation or culture can be summed up in a single concept or idea. Even the simplest culture would defy such a simplistic effort, and Mexico...