America Helped Create the Racist Myth of the Violent Mexican That Trump Is Exploiting Today Pablo Piccato - Quartz
go to original March 21, 2017

With a growing middle class, a healthy export economy, and a resilient democracy, Mexico is much more than a spring break destination for the United States. And yet, US president Donald Trump has repeatedly linked his anti-immigration campaign promises with the alleged threat posed by Mexico’s “bad hombres.” In the newly-minted chief executive’s eyes, Mexico seems to be a country that can only cause the US problems. He has also met several times with families of victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and used their grief to bolster his sensationalist allegations.

Inadvertently or not, Trump is masterfully exploiting long-held visions of Mexico as a nation defined by crime to further his political agenda. These views can be traced back to 19th-century legends about bandits robbing coach travelers between Veracruz and Mexico City, to the images of Pancho Villa or other revolutionaries in the early twentieth century, and more recently, to the threat of narcos. Ironically, while Trump is now using this reputation as a political means to an end, over the past century the US has been instrumental in the creation and perpetuation of the myth.

Mexico’s violent reputation - at least in the US - became a powerful stereotype by the mid-20th century. After a decade of revolutionary fighting cost the country around five percent of its population, a new political class emerged and changed the ways of politics in Mexico City. Hardened by civil war, this generation brought with them bodyguards who were also enforcers, gunmen that came to be known as pistoleros.

...This misperception was further fueled by a series of thrill-seeking US tourists, including beat poets like Jack Kerouac, Neil Cassady, and William Burroughs. Burroughs accidentally killed his wife in 1951 and was only able to escape punishment in Mexico City thanks to a lawyer whose own reputation was that of a pistolero with a law degree. Cinema eventually caught on as well, romanticizing a lawless Mexico Wild West in movies like Orson Well’s 1958 noir Touch of Evil. A recently translated noir novel about pistoleros and the underworld of espionage in Mexico City, The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal, is perhaps the best literary look at the myth of Mexican pistoleros and their legendary mixing of politics, business, and bad international reputation.

And yet, despite the conventional wisdom of the time, Mexico was not simple a lawless outpost in the way Hollywood lead its American viewers to believe. My research shows that during most of the 20th century murder steadily decreased across Mexico. Rates did begin to grow again, without reaching the levels of the late 1920s, by the turn of the 21st century. However this makes sense: Mexico, after all, was enjoying higher levels of education and more and more people were flocking to its cities.

Today, the recent climb in violence is connected to the growth of drug trafficking. And yet, where are the majority of these drugs headed? American neighborhoods. A seemingly insatiable US demand for psychoactive substances, coupled with the futile “war on drugs” engaged by Mexican authorities with the urging and cooperation of the US government, has one again brought violence back to the border.

Read the rest at Quartz

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