I know Mexico very well. If I really want to, I could have coffee with Carlos Slim next week. But I have no need to.
You would be surprised how Mexico has a leadership vacuum. They are such a close reflection of the USA I look at them as little brothers. They try so hard and they mimic Americans so much in everything from highway construction, to their crazy whimsical tax code, to their shopping malls. Even in their sale of insurance they copy the USA. AIG has trained many of them. Banking? Banamex is Citibank.
And they are sincerely trying to clean up their water and sewage and all that. But there’s no real force of leadership because so much corruption is generational and ‘normal’.
But American marketing and manufacturing has penetrated so much of the culture in Mexico that they just try as they may to copy it and absorb it.
They try so hard to be like the USA. They even refer to themselves as the United States of Mexico and view themselves as Americans.
But are their billionaires so smart to effect a global power shift on a silver scheme? No.
Many of their billionaires have lost huge in investment schemes and grand ideas. Their resorts make some good revenue but it was USA know-how that designed many if not most of the successful Cancun resorts. And the water in Cancun is pretty good, why is that? American know-how again.
Can they do without America? Yes, but difficult. They can contract with Germans to purify their water but it doesn’t make much business sense in the final analysis. And they don’t care for the Chinese much. So Americano gringos are it for now and for a long time to come, as long as there aren’t too many Obamas along the way.
Explain something to me. Why do run-of-the mill Mexicans and for that matter all Latin Americans tolerate the corruption in their countries and the inability to ever have a middle class? My opinion of Mexico is that it is the most racist country on the planet. Ever watch a Mexican a TV show? All you will ever see are blond-haired, blue-eyed Spaniards. The indigenous people of that country, which I am pretty sure are the majority of the population, are destined to a life of poverty similar to the caste system of India.