Alas, poor Mexico…

… too far from God, too close to the United States!

One can’t do much about the geography of Heaven, although Cardinal Norberto Ribera would like to see a Legislature a little closer to the people… or, rather, as “Secret History” suggests, to the Cardinal’s chosen people.

And the United States isn’t about to undergo any tectonic plate shifts in the near future either.    Justin Thody, who directs  Latin American analysis for the Economist Intelligence Union, blames Mexico’s anemic 2.8 percent expected growth rate on its too close economic ties with the United States.  As an unsigned editorial in yesterday’s “The [Mexico City] News says, “President Calderon tends to blame the unemployment crisis on the United States; he is partly right as this year alone the maquiladora industry lost 125,500 jobs — dragged down by the U.S. auto industry’s problems.”

The News is ignoring the one industry tied to the United States that IS creating jobs… narcotics exports. But, that probably is not a sustainable industry, and so far the Calderón Administration (like its recent predecessors) has bucked the trend in the rest of Latin America, where nations have aggressively courted markets in Asia, Europe and throughout the rest of the Americas.