To see ourselves as others see us

The only thing I miss about the old Mexico City Herald is Kelly Arthur Garrett’s clear writing on Mexican politics and culture.  On his own blog (Mexicalpan:  Not the News), he takes a look at how north of the border political concerns are playing at home:

Given its unprecedented relevance for Mexico, Mexican citizens on both sides of the border will be involved as never before, scrutinizing the candidates’ positions, analyzing policy proposals’ implications for Mexico, and influencing their much-coveted ethnic brethren, the Mexican-American voters.

What’s interesting about the paragraph you just read is that almost none of it is true. It seems true. Maybe it should be true. And it will undoubtedly be presented as true by a breathless Mexican media.

But if you talk to pollsters — that is, folks who actually measure how the population thinks rather than cling to set assumptions about it — you get a different picture. The average Mexican citizen, like the average citizen anywhere, has enough to think about without dissecting the details of another nation’s political battles.

That same average citizen can also be forgiven for believing that from Mexico’s point of view, it won’t matter much who wins.

“There’s a fatalism at work but it’s a sophisticated fatalism,” says Dan Lund, president of the Mund Americas public opinion research firm in Mexico City. “It’s not a bad way to look at the world.”