BOSTON ---- Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes used to say that of all the regions of the United States, his countrymen identified most with the South. Fuentes is a friend, but having grown up largely in Georgia, I always found his comparison odd: The South is probably the American region that most rejects Mexico.
But what Fuentes was referring to was the South of William Faulkner and the obsessions that came from being a defeated people, in one case by the Yankees of the North and in the other by all "Yanquis."
Today's South is a bedrock of opposition to the large immigration of Mexicans, both legal and illegal, but what those opponents there and elsewhere are missing is a gradual tectonic shift in both countries that also alters the Fuentes observation.
More important than the passing headlines about drugs or border fences or whether to allow Mexican trucks on American highways is a convergence in values that is little detected from day to day but is taking place between the Mexican and American people.
In fundamental attitudes about work, religion, sex, politics, the free market and the like, we are becoming more like each other, according to polls during the last 30 years, and the melding is only likely to continue. The growing economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement, an explosion in travel and communication, and the fact that 10 percent of Mexicans now live here and that many Americans are retiring there help push the trend.
The border will not disappear in the foreseeable future, as many immigration restrictionists fear. But stranger things have happened. French and Germans were considered hereditary enemies, but now trust each other almost more than anyone else, polls show. The rise of China may drive the U.S. closer to Mexico and Canada, just as the rise of the U.S. itself helped unite Europe. A convergence in values paves the way.
Half of all Mexicans in 2005 supported actually abolishing the border, a doubling since 1980, according to the latest World Values Surveys, done by a global association of sociologists.
This is consistent with a September Pew study showing that a third of Mexicans would "say yes" to moving to the U.S., and 18 percent would do so "without authorization." They are pulled by jobs and relatives here, helping reverse what historically had been a deep suspicion of the U.S.
Indeed, the World Values survey finds that the number of Mexicans who distrust Americans as a people plummeted from 52 percent in 1990 to 31 percent, while those who trust us grew. Mexicans overwhelmingly look favorably on President Barack Obama, Gallup and other polls show, but that is a more fickle political measure.
Far fewer Americans ---- 18 percent in the World Values survey ---- favor union with Mexico. But until the recent drug violence along the border, nearly two-thirds of Americans have supported closer ties and had favorable views of Mexico, according to various polls from the last 20 years.
Americans remain righteous about maintaining national identity, but so do Mexicans. In fact, the World Values survey shows that Mexicans have more national pride than Americans, by a margin of 83 percent to 66 percent.
In the 1950s, the celebrated sociologists David Riesman and William Whyte lamented the decline of individualism in America, and they were partially right, as Americans have steadily placed higher emphasis on what polls coincidentally show are Mexican values oriented toward community, family and group.
At the same time, Mexicans in 1980 placed little emphasis on encouraging children to be independent, imaginative or determined, but now do so almost as much as Americans, according to World Values.
Significant Mexican support in 1980 for worker- and government-owned businesses, or mixed models, has morphed to be closer to American attitudes, though backing for employee participation in management remains stronger in Mexico.
Nearly three-fourths of Mexicans in 1980 agreed to a survey question saying that homosexuality was "never justified." That number is now about a third, as in the United States. God is more "important" to Mexicans than Americans, but three-fourths of people from both countries define themselves as "religious."
The list goes on, and what such convergence on broad values means, at the very least, is that mutual understanding becomes easier. The economic gap with Mexico is huge ---- the average wage differential is more than 10 times ---- but this will narrow. The polls show that Mexicans, like Americans, are now focused on the quality of life, instead of survival.
EDWARD SCHUMACHER-MATOS writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. Comment online at nctimes.com or contact him at edward.schumachermatos@yahoo.com.
