In this Issue of Voices of Mexico
Content

EDITORIAL
Our Voice
Silvia Núñez García

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SPECIAL CONTRIBUTION
Our Integration beyond Walls
Rector Enrique Graue Wiechers

Contemporary migration is a reflection of the globalized world we live in today. The exchange of information through new technologies and the geographical dissemination of production processes have demonstrated that borders as physical or figurative obstacles are at the very least a porous construct, and that in certain instances of the modern world their once ominous symbolic relevance seems to have vanished altogether. A growing rate of mobility and exchange in terms of data, goods, and services —indeed, neoliberalism’s hard currency— entails a proportional rate of mobility for people. In the midst of this, a consequent surge in protectionist and nationalist ideology stirs the global political climate, bringing to the fore a marked reluctance from governments to accept the reality of migration.

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POLITICS
Trump: The Anti-immigrant, "Mexicanophobic" President
Mónica Verea

Since the presidential campaign, the immigration debate has been very racially and ethnically offensive in general, but it has also been particularly anti-Mexican. Donald J. Trump stood out as the most “Mexicanophobic” of the Republican candidates, with our country becoming one of his favorite targets. In addition to repudiating NAFTA, he characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug smugglers, rapists, and generally “bad hombres.” This atmosphere turned into fertile ground for the racists to come out of their closets, hurling their insulting attitudes and discourses against migrants, who have been irreversibly damaged by the nowpresident’s hate-speech.

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ECONOMY
Donald Trump, NAFTA, and Mexico
Pablo Ruiz Nápoles

In his campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump aggressively denigrated Mexico. First, he declared that many Mexican immigrants were criminals, and they must be deported. To support this effort, he also proposed Mexico would pay for a wall built to keep its people from pouring over the border to take U.S. jobs. Second, he called for a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to benefit the U.S. more.

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SOCIETY
Monitoring Maternal Health among U.S.
Hispanics on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Jill A. McDonald

Maternal health is one of the best indicators of the overall health of a country. Maternal health is measured by rates of maternal morbidity and mortality, but also by the occurrence of certain birth outcomes, such as adolescent birth and preterm birth. These outcomes are also, of course, detrimental to infants’ health. Having healthy mothers giving birth to healthy babies is a strong foundation for the overall health of a population.

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MEXICO-U.S. RELATIONS
Redefining Mexico-U.S. Relations
To Enhance North American Prosperity
Sergio M. Alcocer

For an entire year, up until this writing, President Donald Trump has engaged in offensive, false, simplistic rhetoric about Mexico, Mexicans, and relations between our countries. The most dangerous and concerning underlying component of his tirades is racism. The central themes of his discourse have been the traditional issues (security, migration, and trade), which frequently are those that cause the most tension and disagreements between the two nations. While they are important, our relationship must not only be measured by these.

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INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
The Importance of Social Capital
For Migrants’ Integrating into Society
Without Work Permits
Mervi Leppäkorpi

An estimated 1.9 to 3.8 million undocumented migrants live in Europe (0.3 to 0.5 percent of all residents).2 Important differences exist within Europe: for example, it is more common and accepted in southern Europe for undocumented migrants to be part of the work force. In northern European countries, irregular migration has been recognized and researched only relatively recently.

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THE SPLENDOR OF MEXICO
Ritual Huichol Art.
The Drum Fiesta and the Use of Body Paint
Ricardo Claudio Pacheco Bribiesca

the Huichol indigenous people are known in Mexico and a large part of the world for the richness and diversity of their crafts. The majority of their very colorful yarn pictures, bead weaves, and textiles use a wide range of fearlessly contrasting hues. They are comprised of geometric forms like a kaleidoscopic, with animals, flowers, plants, ritual objects, human figures, or mythical scenes parading through them, framed in plentiful scenes full of form and color.

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ART AND CULTURE
"Haitijuana," a Photographic Essay
By Hans-Maximo Musielik
Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco

the first photograph Hans-Maximo Musielik (Pforzheim, Germany, 1974) took was with his father’s old Canon when he was seven years old. Hans, the son of a German doctor and a Spanish pediatrician mother, remembers that he put a model boat in his bathtub at home in Germany and had fun trying to use the split-screen viewfinder. All the photos came out yellow, dark, and blurry. Since 2004, the social dynamics in Mexico and that “everyday ebb and flow,” as he calls it, led him to settle here to do his work as a photographer.

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MUSEUMS
Weaving the World
The Oaxaca Textile Museum
Salvador Maldonado

For wearing, for hanging, for adorning, for dancing, for dressing rituals, for talking about the world in textures and colors, more than 7 000 pieces of textile art, embroidered on cotton broadcloth, silk, cotton, wool, and vegetable fibers make up the Oaxaca Textile Museum collection.

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SPECIAL SECTION
SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS
IN NORTH AMERICAN GOVERNANCE
Roberto Zepeda

The international relations of sub-national governments in North America are crucial for the region’s governance because important decisions are made at the sub-national level. The dynamics of regional governance embrace not only trade relations, but also other kinds of links that have emerged and developed out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), including agreements to cooperate in specific areas. Sub-national governments’ international activities strive for economic development by promoting investment and exports, but they also attempt to forge cooperation agreements in the fields of education, the environment, labor, and tourism, among others. In the United States and Canada, sub-national governments have seen their power and influence grow in a context of federalism and decentralization that have given rise to new forms of governance. They have also emerged as international actors, becoming the avenues for solutions and proposals for the most serious, complex global problems in the early twenty-first century.

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REVIEWS
Instrucciones para salir del limbo: Arbitrario de representaciones audiovisuales de las fronteras en América del Norte, By Graciela Martínez-Zalce
Óscar Badillo

Perhaps not since the signing of NAFTA has what is happening in Mexico’s North caused so much concern. In the last decade of a tumultuous century, we observed our northern border with growing expectation and not a few misgivings about globalization, which was presented as synonymous with progress. Today it is clear that the promise of free transit between countries has only been for goods; in contrast, for individuals, geography has been broken apart and borders have become a “limbo,” that is, an edge, a temporary or permanent liminal space with its own heterogeneous characteristics. Molded by the friction between cultures, the borders of North America became extremely complex spaces that have not gone unnoticed by cultural industries like the cinema and television.

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