Continental Rift
When George W. Bush appointed him U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Brownsville native Tony Garza talked of strengthening our ties to our most important neighbor. Then came Iraq—and his best laid plans became another casualty of war.
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The issue became null when the Security Council decided on March 17, 2003, not to vote on the resolution. Just for good measure, Fox later told the press that he wouldn't have backed it even if they had. Many Mexicans felt vindicated by his words. They believed that their firm opposition to war had played a symbolic role in affirming Mexico's independence and that it had helped tilt the historic imbalance with the U.S. Bush, though, was brooding. The Iraq showdown, and Mexico's refusal to acquiesce, was followed by a year-long period of public silence that the leaders from both countries now seem reticent to discuss. "There was, at the beginning, an unfortunate discourse that was experienced here as interference," Alberto Fierro-Garza, who then worked at the Foreign Ministery, told me in the polite and roundabout language of Mexican government officials. "But I think the ambassador immediately had the sensibility to see that that offends Mexicans." Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández, the country's undersecretary for North America and a fan of Garza's, turned the United States' original analogy. "Even your best friend should tell you what he really thinks," he said with the virtue of someone who feels he's won the rhetorical debate. "Even good friends have to be able to disagree." He credited Garza with fulfilling his role as ambassador and said the relationship had matured because of the experience.
Garza agrees, and he argues that even if the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico appeared to have chilled over Iraq, the myriad institutions that keep the two countries working together behind the scenes continued to cooperate daily, especially in keeping the border secure. "This is a relationship that's more mature than whether President Bush and President Fox give each other a full abrazo or a half abrazo," he said.
But at least one Mexican believes that the fallout after 9/11 has had more lasting consequences on Garza's job. "The issues he works on are marginal," Rossana Fuentes-Beráin, a political analyst and managing editor of Foreign Affairs en Español, said. "They're not central for Mexico or for the United States." She suggested that Garza hasn't gotten to utilize the positive skills he brought to his job—and that he most likely won't, as long as the current administrations remain in place. "I think Mexico doesn't have the ability to change the relationship," she said. "It's an asymmetric relationship, and the partner with more weight is the one who gets to set the rhythm of the agenda. He's an ambassador who was named for a different time. He was an ambassador selected to bring the two countries closer together, but after September 11, there's been no interest in doing that either on the part of his country or on the part of Mexico. The relationship has simply stayed where it is. It didn't crash, but it made an emergency landing."
Whether it was only turbulence or a crash landing, the continued sluggishness of the relationship during Garza's tenure will probably do little to diminish his future in politics. He insists that Bush is not going to lose the election. But if he does, John Kerry would almost certainly replace the ambassador, and Garza would have to return to Texas to figure out his options. In 2001, when U.S. senator Phil Gramm announced that he would be retiring after completing his term, Governor Rick Perry initially pushed his fellow Republicans to support Garza for the post. But Gramm favored U.S. representative Henry Bonilla, who ultimately decided not to run (Attorney General John Cornyn won the general election a year later). Now Garza can't walk around without people asking him if he wants to be governor someday and pledging their support should he run. The feeling is widespread that Texas is finally ready to have its first Hispanic governor, and after Tony Sanchez failed to be that person in the 2002 election, some Republicans would love to beat the Democrats to it—suggesting in the process that their party represents the future for Latinos in the state.
Garza is noncommittal, at least in front of the press. The man whom the Associated Press once called a "consummate politician"—the label surprised him—insists that he's not ready to take the proposition seriously. "I think about Texas a lot, and I love the state," he said. "Right now I'm pretty passionate about what I'm doing. Bush as governor told me one time, "A lot of people are going to come at you throughout your career. Do what you're doing. Do it well. When it's time to decide, you can take a step back and there will be opportunities.'"
THE AMBASSADOR WAS THROWING A PARTY. It was a dinner party held on a drenching June evening, but it was, nonetheless, intimate and exciting. The guests ranged from a goateed priest with blue-framed Versace glasses to a 25-year-old Harvard-degreed lawyer who had already written three books, including a collection of poetry and a tome on Mexican-Chinese trade. There were photographers, painters, sculptors, magazine editors, foundation directors, hotel owners, and two exceedingly hip caterers who had designed the dinner menu. Because the ambassador is not married ("My dad always said it's going to happen when you're not looking, so I've spent a fair amount of time not looking," he joked), the gathering was orchestrated by Abaseh Mirvali, a worldly Iranian American expatriate and career diplomat who made the rounds and kept everyone laughing. Garza sipped tequila and smiled too. He was wearing black pants, a white guayabera, and like a good Texan, his toes were tucked into black cowboy boots.
The soiree was a modest reenactment of a three-hundred-guest party that Garza had hosted two weeks earlier to inaugurate his art show. A recent fan of Mexican comtemporary art, he decided that the ambassador's residence should exist as a testament to the longstanding influence that the United States and Mexico have had on each other through a display of works from both sides of the border. He hired Mirvali, whose passion after foreign service is art, and because they were working with a bare-bones budget, she set about soliciting pieces from wealthy foundations. A team of workers cleared out all of the dated, diplomat-style furniture that had stifled the foyer and living room for decades, and the stately home was transformed into an edgy art museum. The collection, titled "Formations," includes 38 pieces by both American and Mexican artists, ranging from up-and-comers to legends like Robert Rauschenberg and Rufino Tamayo. Already something of a celebrity in Mexico City, Garza has gotten into the nation's art magazines and on the cover of society pages because of the show.
"I doubt that there's another American embassy in the world that has this spirit," gushed Mauricio Maillé, the visual art director for the foundation run by television giant Televisa, which contributed a number of the pieces. He glanced about and marveled at the vast metamorphosis that the once stodgy, self-important residence had undergone. "It's a spirit of liberation," he mused delightedly. "Of takeover."
It had been five months since Garza had visited Altar, but there was little the ambassador could say about migration these days. In the U.S., the press had pounced on Bush's January proposal, suggesting that it was an election-year attempt to win Latino votes. And even while Garza insisted that the proposal was nothing of the sort because the Latino community is divided on the issue—that it was instead evidence of Bush's genuine belief in the need for reform—he admitted that it would be all but impossible to pass such legislative changes before November. Meanwhile, for their part, the Mexicans seemed to have resigned themselves to the fact that migration is really not a bilateral issue, that it's an internal policy that the United States has to change following national sentiment. Several Mexican government officials I spoke with even suggested that Fox had made a grave error by proclaiming migration his centerpiece policy concern at the start of his administration; they said he should have focused instead on what Mexico needs to do for itself. So for now, binational dealings on migration have been limited to a new program that will transport Mexicans safely back to their homes if they are apprehended by the Border Patrol, and another that allows legal Mexicans in the United States to benefit from various nutrition programs, such as food stamps.
The ambassador's ability to push the broader American agenda with Mexico had been further diminished by the political stasis on both sides of the border. In Mexico, the nation's pundits unanimously agreed that their president was a lame duck, and even members of Fox's own party have been counting the days until the end of his administration. There is no doubt that the Mexicans now like Garza, even if he is American and speaks grammatically imperfect Spanish. They laud him for being politically efficient, discrete, persevering, humane. They are flattered that he is Bush's intimate friend. But a few feel like Fuentes-Beráin, the magazine editor, who argues that while he does have close contacts where it counts—in the State Department, the Treasury, or the Department of Energy, where Mexico could use some help—there aren't any high-ranking senior officials in Bush's administration who are devoted to Latin America.
Garza still believes fiercely in Mexico. He seems content to leave a smaller mark on U.S.-Mexican relations, and he continues to behave as though his assignment is the most important in the world. "I throw myself into my jobs," he told me the day after the party, "and part of that is actually feeling things. Part of that is sitting there in Sonora and having Juliana clutch my finger and say to myself, you know, you're right about this migration problem. Not only intellectually and because it fits with the set of principles that are important to you and important to your president, but because you just got your finger squeezed."
The trip to the Sonoran border had been the most life-changing of Garza's diplomatic experiences. In June he'd returned with his friend Emilio Azcárraga Jean, the owner of Televisa, and persuaded him to produce several news reports and public service announcements warning Mexicans of the perils of crossing the border. The night of the party, though, the other face of Mexico needed attending. "We used to come to these things out of a feeling of responsibility," Lulu Ramos Cárdenas de Creel, a gorgeous blonde who auctions art to benefit charities, told me. "Now you come to be around great art and have a good time and be surrounded by interesting people who leave you with something." By the end of the evening, there was a group that was attending an all-day pool party that weekend, and another that was promised a private visit to the city's cathedral to hear its majestic bells sing at night. If Mexico was bleeding at its borders, its soul was still intact. So Garza enjoyed the quick drinks, and he made his guests feel welcome, and he delighted in the swirl of ideas.
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