Back to the Porcupine

August 31, 2025

Luis Rubio

Two emblematic books capture the history of U.S.–Mexico relations over the past few decades. Alan Riding’s Distant Neighbors, published in 1985, portrayed two opposing nations that seemed incapable of communicating, much less understanding one another. In retrospect, Riding was writing just as the two countries were beginning to talk and to construct the scaffolding of what would become a far-reaching interaction over the following decades. Years later, in 2003, Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow published The Bear and the Porcupine, describing the complexity of an expanding relationship between two societies that did not share values or perspectives but were nevertheless moving toward deeper integration—largely without consensus on what should come next. Today, in 2025, perhaps for the wrong reasons, the bilateral relationship is more intense than ever, yet the axiological distance—the gap in values—is profound and widening.

The rapprochement that began in the 1980s grew out of concrete circumstances that demanded engagement. Mexico was shifting its economy and running into mounting trade conflicts. For their part, Americans saw Mexico as a troublesome neighbor generating migration and crime problems for which no effective mechanisms existed. Each side, for its own reasons, came to recognize the need to raise both the level and quality of dialogue and interaction.

It is important to remember that Mexico saw its northern neighbor as the enemy, portrayed in school textbooks as the thief who had stolen half of the nation’s territory. Robert Pastor, an influential scholar at the time, used to begin his lectures with a story about the French statesman Talleyrand, which he considered illustrative of the way the two nations dealt with one another. When told that one of his political enemies had died, Talleyrand is said to have replied: “I wonder what he meant by that.” Much suggests that we are back in that same perverse logic—except that there is no way to return to the old status quo.

What followed was far more ambitious and deeper than either nation had anticipated, but also more contentious than either wanted. Mexico proposed what became NAFTA as a mechanism to consolidate and lock in the reforms it had undertaken. For the Americans, NAFTA was a monumental gift to Mexico, enabling it to transform itself and join the ranks of developed nations. In other words, the seeds of future conflict were sown from day one: Mexico saw NAFTA as the culmination of a process, the U.S. as the beginning of a new era. Riding captured the conceptual gap; Davidow explained it in real time. Despite limitations and tensions, the outcome can be seen in two dimensions: on the one hand, the two societies and economies are ever more integrated, and this integration—formal and informal—is irreversible. On the other hand, Mexico’s failure to pursue a coherent development project split the country in two, as Claudio Lomnitz has described: one Mexico, successful and tied to NAFTA; another left behind, excluded from modernity and trapped in permanent violence—yet both sharing the same territory.

Rather than seize the chance to build a modern nation, successive Mexican governments leaned on migration northward as an excuse to avoid deep reforms in security, education, infrastructure, health, and governance, while using exports as justification for not overhauling the economy. For the first time in its history, Mexico had a structural source of foreign currency that resolved its perennial balance-of-payments crises. In effect, Mexico coasted along—apparently without cost. That worked until AMLO came along, doing everything possible to reverse NAFTA’s advantages, and Trump began questioning the rationale of a political and commercial framework he saw as disadvantageous to the United States.

That is where we find ourselves today: a growing de facto integration alongside a widening ideological estrangement. For Morena, integration is anathema, and the party has done its best to sabotage it through obstacles, regulations, and treaty violations. For Trump, Mexico has become a corrupt, ungovernable country dominated by organized crime. The paradox is that conceptual distance is accompanied by an expanding imposition of conditions—particularly regarding corruption and security.

Despite mounting pressures, the Mexican government pretends nothing has changed, seeking merely to temper U.S. activism instead of harnessing it to build the capacity to pacify the country and provide security to its people. For Americans, what matters is what crosses the border. For Mexicans, what matters is the extortion and violence of organized crime. The only way forward is to address both simultaneously.