What has a million degrees and ten thousand cold feet?
The warm part of New England.
Ba-dum-tchi.
I intend that joke as an appeal to the intellectual argument for integration raised as part of this project in the Empty Quarter. Consider the issue of America’s southern border as a question of geometry. A presently constituted, the American-Mexican border runs thousands of miles over unforgiving terrain. Logistical problems can be calculated per mile, and at scale they make any action taken one of limited resources. If one instead draws a border line further south, the number of miles goes down. South of Mexico City, just to the west of Chiapas, the border shrinks to a 100 mile problem. Even at 1 billion a mile to construct, a literal wall becomes literally within the realm of the American budget. (note - that is a reductio ad absurdem argument to illustrate a point.)
With 32 Mexican states total, in a best-case scenario integration with the United States would mean 64 new Senators and another 300 or so House of Representatives. But assuming in the real world the integration process would proceed north to south, re-partitioning from the southern tip of Texas to Monterrey and Guadalajara, for example, or north of Mexico City, turns the border into a much more defensible construct. Of course, it also means integration with the people in those states. Fortunately, they already have states set up. A democratic process of integration with the existing states into the federal system.
From the American perspective, apart from the border, this integration would represent a positive step in the tradition of what made our nation great as a federated region of united trade interests by acquisition and merger, would add the following resources. There are the factories and maquiladoras (textiles) of Chihuahua, and Sonora. There are oil interests. There is the tremendous human capital of the Mexican people. They are predominantly Christian, hardworking, industrious and capable. Mexico has significant stores of wealth in oil and agriculture. Their culture is already heavily integrated into the North American one. One may imagine win-win scenarios for this human capital. Busloads of Mexican migrant workers travelling to the Breadbasket or Ecotopia (California) to take advantage of seasonal work and bussing home to the casa when the season is over. This could be no more interesting or newsworthy than a subway city rides from Boston to NYC. And integrating the university’s of Mexico City are a scintillating prospect for American academic standing.
Coming back to the native peoples role - the Spanish were ruthless in South and Central America up through Mexico until the comanche, American and English stopped their northward march. Some say the Mayan and Aztec were vicious in their day - stories of human sacrifice on the altars of the pyramids they built. Whatever the case may be, be it that the brutal violence of the Spanish followed an existing pattern established on that land before them, or one they introduced - today the regions south of Mexico are known for patterns of brutal violence. The notorious death squads and militias and cartels continue to horrify in the present age and not generally found north of Mexico. The Columbian necktie, for example - was a method of torture where the throat is slit and the tongue fished back out through the slit. Today the brutality of the Mexican cartels calls this to mind - integration would bring many of them within the jurisdictional realm of north American law. (Taken with an integration of willing Canadien states into the union count another 10 or so Senators and 50-60 more reps - and the vast wealth of the north with a tenth of the problems that would be taken on to the south.)
After the Mex-American war in 1848, the border would have been at Mexico City until the Americans gave back to the upper half as a desert buffer in settlement. In the modern age, Mexico is readily integrated to the North American united states with common economic and social systems. The trouble with Mexico is that it brings with it a whole lot of interesting problems. What may be interesting to consider is that in the old days, it was exactly this sort of trouble that served as impetus for integration into new regions .
Mexico Shootout Kills 14 After Town Fights Back Against Cartel - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Just sayin.’ Sending Wyatt Earp or George Washington to bring law and order and run out the rascals would have made sense as the next logical to the old days Americans. This would be the frontier. That’s what they did all the way from the St. James River all the way to California and central Texas.
Obviously integration would bring in a whole host of problems that presently exist in Mexico - but none seem as insurmountable as what the nation has faced before. All integration would provide is a framework to begin tackling those issues.
The joke of the day says that Florida is America’s wang. That’s funny to me because what I see when I look at the North American continent is a giant eagle spreading its wings. Florida is the tip of one wing. Alaska is the other tip. I think the nations founders saw the same thing. To my mind I would love to see a modern president express a renewed domestic expansionary vision of non-violent national economic integration.
References
Garreau, Joel. The Nine Nations of North America. 1st ed., Avon Books, 1981.