Mexican President Vicente Fox apologised on Monday for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won’t, but many Mexicans — stung by a new US crackdown on illegal immigrants — said Fox was just stating a fact.
Fox’s spokesperson, Ruben Aguilar, said Fox’s comments were in defence of Mexican migrants as they come under attack by new US immigration measures that include a wall along the Mexico-California border, and were not meant to offend anybody.
US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said the US embassy in Mexico City has raised the issue with the Mexican government.
”That’s a very insensitive and inappropriate way to phrase this and we would hope that [the Mexicans] would clarify the remarks,” Boucher said.
Fox at first refused to apologise for the Friday comment, saying his remark was misinterpreted. But later, in telephone conversations with Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, two black US civil rights activists, the president said he ”regrets” the statement.
”The president regretted any hurt feelings his statements may have caused,” the Foreign Relations Department said in a press statement. ”He expressed the great respect he and his administration have for the African-American community in the US.”
Jackson replied that he is sure the president had no racist intent, and suggested the two meet to discuss joint strategies between blacks and immigrant groups in the US, Aguilar said.
Fox agreed to set up a visit to Mexico by Jackson, Sharpton and a group of American black leaders.
Many Mexicans did not see the remark as offensive. Blackface comedy is still considered funny in Mexico and many people hand out nicknames based on skin colour.
”The president was just telling the truth,” said Celedonio Gonzalez, a 35-year-old carpenter who worked illegally in Dallas for six months in 2001. ”Mexicans go to the US because they have to. Blacks want to earn better wages, and the Mexican — because he is illegal — takes what they pay him.”
Earlier on Monday, Jackson and Sharpton said Fox should apologise.
”His statement had the impact of being inciting and divisive,” Jackson said.
Intense competition
Lisa Catanzarite, a sociologist at Washington State University, disputed Fox’s assertion, saying there is intense competition for lucrative working-class jobs like construction, and employers usually prefer to hire immigrants who do not know their rights.
”What Vicente Fox called a willingness to work … translates into extreme exploitability,” she said.
Fox made the comment on Friday during a public appearance in Puerto Vallarta, saying: ”There’s no doubt that Mexican men and women — full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work — are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the US.”
Responding to the criticism during his daily news conference on Monday, Aguilar read a statement expressing Fox’s ”enormous respect for minorities, whatever their racial, ethnic or religious origin”.
”The purpose [of the comment] was none other than to show the importance Mexican workers have today in the development and progress of US society,” Aguilar said, repeating a statement that was released on Saturday.
He refused to comment further, saying only that Fox will ”intensify his diplomatic efforts to protect the integrity of the Mexicans living in that country”.
US measures criticised
The dispute reflects Fox’s growing frustration with US immigration policy and deteriorating relations between the two nations.
Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said the Mexican government was expected to send a diplomatic letter to the US on Monday protesting recent measures that include requiring states to verify that people who apply for a driver’s licence are in the country legally and overriding environmental laws to build a barrier along the California border with Mexico.
The measures have been widely criticised in Mexico, where residents increasingly see the US as adopting anti-migrant measures.
Even Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the Archbishop of Mexico City, criticised US immigration policy as ridiculous, and defended Fox’s comments, saying: ”The declaration had nothing to do with racism. It is a reality in the US that anyone can prove.”
Derbez on Monday defended Fox and criticised US ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, who has angered the Mexican government in part by issuing warnings to tourists about ongoing violence in Mexico.
”What we have to make clear is that it would be best if [Garza’s] opinions, which I understand are his own and not those of his government, are not expressed in a public manner,” Derbez said.
Outdated language
Gilberto Rincon, president of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, said the statement was ”unfortunate”. But, speaking after releasing a report on racism in Mexico, he said it reflects outdated language more than a racist attitude.
Fox has championed the rights of minorities and the disabled, and he led a successful campaign to amend the Constitution to make discrimination a crime.
George Grayson, a Mexican expert with the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said the dispute will hurt Fox’s campaign to liberalise immigration laws, adding that it shows ”once again how tone-deaf Mexico’s president is with respect to the US”.
While Mexico has a few, isolated black communities, the population is dominated by descendants of Mexico’s Spanish colonisers and its native Indians. Comments that would generally be considered openly racist in the US generate little attention here.
One afternoon television programme, Vida TV on the Televisa network, regularly features a comedian in blackface chasing actresses in skimpy outfits, while an advertisement for a small, chocolate pastry called the negrito — the little black man — shows a white boy sprouting an Afro as he eats the sweet.
Victor Hugo Flores, a 30-year-old bond salesman, cringed when asked what he thought of Fox’s comment.
”It was bad, but it really isn’t racist,” he said. ”Maybe the president shouldn’t have said it.” — Sapa-AP
National writer Erin Texeira contributed to this story from New York