Canadian International Council

On the Limits of Historical Imagination: North America as a Historical Essay

Author(s): Mauricio Tenorio Trillo
Source: International Journal, Vol. 61, No. 3, North American Security and Prosperity:
Annual John W. Holmes Issue on Canadian Foreign Policy (Summer, 2006), pp. 567-587
Published by: Canadian International Council
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40204191
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Mauricio Tenorio Trillo

On the limits of
historical imagination
NorthAmericaas a historicalessay

Over the last decades of the 20th century, the writing of history underwent
serious political and epistemological criticism, especially in US academic
circles. Yet it remained attached, by its origins, its academic structure, and
its goals, to the nation and the state, as well as to unchallenged racial, eth-
nic, and civilizationalidentities. Over the same decades, however, a renewed
idea of Europe- despite its flows and uncertainties- saw an interesting
experiment in the conscious rewriting of histories and cultures, re-examin-
ing the 19th-century focus on the nation as the central plot of history.1

MauricioTenorioTrillois professorof historyat the Universityof Chicago,and at CIDE,

Mexico City,He acknowledgesthe input of his conversationswith Nuria Font,Ana Sofia
Cardenal,FernandoEscalante,James Sidbury,Neil Kamil, WilliamForbath,Alan Tully,
and Olivia Munoz-Rojas.
1 Regarding this reconstruction of European history, see, for example, Mikael af Malmborg and
Bo Strath, eds., The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention within and among Nations
(Oxford: Berg, 2002); Josep Fontana, The Distorted Past: A Reinterpretation of Europe (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1995); Steinar Stjerno, Solidarity in Europe: The History of an Idea
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Craig Parsons, A Certain Idea of Europe
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe: From
Antiquity to the European Union (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002); Zygmunt
Bauman, Europe: An Unfinished Adventure (Cambridge: Polity, 2004); and Edgar Morin, Penser
I'Europe (Paris: Callimard, 1987).

I International Journal | Summer 2006 | 567 |

I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

Almost four decades of documenting a common historical and cultural con-

sciousness for Europe might, in the long run, turn out to be a political and
social failure. The constitutional challenge, rapid expansion, and the Turkey
factor might in the end make the story of "Europe"an obsolete tale. Yetthe
mere effort, and, so far, its consequences in terms of peace, political stabil-
ity, and economic progress make the effort to create an idea of Europe a
more appealing intellectual temptation than keeping untouched the craft of
the national historian.
Why has the idea of a European-like process of integration not been
even remotely considered for and in North America? Can North America
become a symbol of a different kind of relationship between Mexico,
Canada,and the US, a relationship in which cultural particularitiesexist but
which responsibly assumes a common past and a common future? What
is certain is that maintaining "civilizational"differences- though in the
short run intellectually comfortable and academically profitable- is partic-
ularly risky and undoable in the long term. The consequences of main-
taining and nurturing assumed civilizational differences will affect the
peace, stability,and good standards of living in the region. This is not only
because of Mexico'sgrowing inequality and uncertain economic and politi-
cal future, but also because of the world's violent challenges and the vicious
cycles in the US that blend inexorably- if irresponsibly- economic growth,
immigration, all sorts of nativisms, notions of national security, and dan-
gerous racio-culturalconceptions of the "Americanidentity."

NORTH AMERICA: BASIC THESIS ON THE FAILURE OF A SYMBOL

North America does not have a symbolic, cultural, political, or legal exis-
tence. Yet it is the gigantic economic and human fact within which Mexico,
Canada, Central America, and the US live without ever discussing it. It
resembles a gigantic statue of a medusa-like lady whose name has been lost
by history but whose gaze we avoid, knowing that upon looking at those
eyes we would see our own.
North America has been a timid geographical mark that has paled in
comparison to the dearly unconcealed map- not cartographicalbut moral
and racial- known as "LatinAmerica." North America has been a geogra-
phy that is conventionally used in reference to the indigenous people of
Canada, the US, and northern Mexico. North America is real when it is
about native Americans, a pre-national reality. The cultural-racialdichoto-
my ("Anglo"vs. "Latin"),however, is conceptually mightier than the map of

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 I On the limits of historical imagination |

eitherAmericaas a whole or that of NorthAmericaas a complexbut inte-

gratedgeographicalunit. As in a 19th-centuryhistoryof civilization,the
continentis dividedinto the nonsense of an Anglo and a Latinpart,as if
such "Anglo" and "Latin" races,territories,and civilizationswere first,real,
and second, locatablein clearlydefinedculturaland geographicalspaces.
Threedecadesof post-"newleft,"post-thisand post-thathistoricaland cul-
turalcriticismhaveonlyre-emphasizedthese essentialswithendlessexcur-
sions into cultural-racial-ethnical certainties.
Today North America is an undeniable commercialand economicreal-
ity,though its benefitsare still a matter of controversyaftermore than 10
yearsof NAFTA.2Economicintegration,however,is a factthatNAFTAonly
acceleratedandinstitutionalized.In those dayswhen Naftologywas feeding
the pocketsof Mexican,US, and Canadianscholarsand lobbyists,North
Americawas also proclaimedas a culturaland historicalentelechy.Oh,
those days! Massivepolling about the value system in each countrywas
undertaken,historiansattendedinnumerableconferences,and moneywas
putintoculturalprojectsthatincludedUS, Mexican,andCanadianscholars.3
At thattime, NorthAmericawas a cultural,historical,and intellectual
agenda,whichsupposedlywouldeducatepublicopinion,open universities'
curricula,and go beyondtraditionalnationalistidentitypolitics.Tenyears
afterNAFTA,we can say categoricallythat NorthAmericaas this kind of
intellectualagendawas a total failure. In the world'snew circumstances,
and in today'sUS academicenvironment,the thoughtof NorthAmericaas
a symbolof historicalimport,of human pacificcoexistence,is nowhereto
be found.

2 See the position of the US State Department, "NAFTA: Ten years after," 20 April 2004,
www.state.gov. See also the perspectives of the NCO Public Citizen, www.citizen.org, and of the
IMF in M. Ayhan Khose, Guy M. Meredith, and Christopher M. Towe, "How has NAFTA affect-
ed the Mexican economy? Review and evidence," IMF working paper WP/04/59, April 2004,
www.imf.org.

3 By far the least NAFTA-oriented and most serious treatment of the subject is by Lester Langley,
MexAmerica: Two Countries, One Future (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988). See also Miguel
Basafiez, Human Values and Beliefs: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook: Political, Religious, Sexual,
and Economic Norms in 43 Societies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); and
Douglas Lawrence Taylor, El nuevo norteamericano: integracidn continental, cultura e identidad
nacional (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2001).

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

North America, however, is more than ever a fact; it is a human and

geographical reality whose cultural echoes will, possibly, be recognized by
scholars in some light-years to come. Realistically, I believe that only the
awareness of the risk of political and social instability in the region will
bring about different horizons of historical and cultural thinking.
In conflictive and tragic ways, Europe departed from an accepted com-
mon culture and history and thus moved toward economic, civic, and polit-
ical integration. In sharp contrast, in the 1990s, the idea of North America
had a low profile and a pusillanimous agenda of integration. This last
aimed at moving from de facto economic integration toward a symbolic
common history and culture that could serve as institutional symbols of
coexistence and constitutional pride. It was pusillanimous because it
sought total market integration and only wanted a cultural facade. The idea
never actually included either freedom of human circulation or serious
investment in symbolic construction- neither a North American citizen-
ship nor a North American university, nor a serious investment in educa-
tional programs, nor in legal architecture to achieve a common civic life.
Today,Europe's future is uncertain, and yet, at least for such countries
as Portugal, Spain, and Greece, that jump from an assumed common his-
tory and culture toward economic integration has been successful overall.
It has produced a civic, political, cultural, and economic reliance unparal-
leled in their modern histories. They are more than ever in their history
what they always were: Europe. On the other hand, one could not say that
Germany or Franceare less German, less French, and less secure and worse
off economically than before their gradual unification with southern
Europe. The symbolic structure is there as much as the undeniable institu-
tional and economic transformation.
Of course, the issue of "civilizational"differences is currently being
constantly pointed out by different European constituencies, especially in
relation to Turkey. Curiously,the great advocatorof Turkey'sincorporation
into the European Union is the US, which calls ecumenically for the union
of civilizations. US officials and academics seem to be insensitive to the
economic, political, and, above all, cultural challenge that Turkeymeans for
Europe. This is particularlyodd if one considers US policies towards and
views of its own "civilizationaFchallenge, its own private Turkey:Mexico.
North America as an intellectual, cultural, and historical integration is
a total failure in which racial, civilizational, religious, linguistic, and even
planetary (Mexico is everything the US is not) differences are not only kept,

I 570 I International Journal | Summer 2006 |

 I On the limits of historical imagination |

but proudly fed. Between the US and Canada this sort of "civilizational"
integration exists, and is here to stay.Their national divergences are kept as
important idiosyncratic and institutional marks. But between that America
and the other, the "Latin,"integration is an economic and human fact. Yet
it is still seen not as a matter of political decision-making but as an onto-
logical and civilizational step that is impossible to take.
North America in the 1990s did not become a good catchy cultural
tune because of the paradoxof easternness: Mexico somehow has been his-
toricallydefined as non-western and non-US; as something radicallydiffer-
ent in racial, religious, and all sorts of other ways, to what is believed to be
the western world. Since the 19th century, for generations of foreign trav-
elers and scholars, Mexico has been a "brownAtlantis"in which whatever
is western, urban, and cosmopolitan is not Mexican. The real Mexico has
been often seen as having pristine and unchanged traditions and a unique
race, closer to the racial and cultural uniqueness of Palestine, China, or
Egypt than to the US.4 The influential Swiss-American scientist, Louis
Agassiz, upon learning of the Confederate bombing of Fort Sumter (1861),
said: "They will Mexicanize the country." Mexicanizing meant not only
political instability and violence- the civil war made the US one with the
Americas1modern violent struggle to create unified nation-states- but it
also meant a Mexico-likeracial chaos and promiscuity, which was supposed
to emerge from the end of slavery and massive migration of free blacks to
the north.5
As late as 1981, Joel Garreau, talked of "the way North America really
works. It is Nine Nations. Eachwith its capital and distinctive web of power
and influence.... These nations look different, feel different, and sound dif-
ferent from each other, and few of their boundaries match the political lines
drawn on current maps."6 "Mex-America"was, for Garreau,one of the dis-
tinguishable nations within the US, the only one of the nine that was
unmistakably defined by its ontological difference, being marked by another

4 Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, The Brown Atlantis (forthcoming 2007); and Mauricio Tenorio Trillo,
Mexico's Odalisque Mania, 1840-1880 (forthcoming 2007).

5 Anecdote told in Nathaniel S. Shaler, The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), as quoted in Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New
York: Farrar,Straus, and Giroux, 2001), 102.

6 Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (New York: Avon, 1981), 1-2.

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

civilization (another race, another culture). The myth of Mexico as a fixed

space, a space of a different racial profile, of eternal and unchanging time,
is so deep that it is believed that it is somewhere south, not in the US, not
among "us," especially not in "us." Just as significant are Samuel
Huntingtorfs comments on the "Hispanic challenge" to the "Anglo-protes-
tant creed."7
Many such examples can be given. Some would argue that these com-
ments have no contemporaryscholarly or political worth. Yetin today's aca-
demic life, paper after paper, book after book is produced in English about
Mexico demonstrating modern, even postmodern, versions of the same
easternizing of Mexico- Mexico as Latin American, that is, as not really
modern, not reallywestern. Mexico as a "hybrid"culture (as if every culture
were not hybrid), ancient history, a country of profound roots and values
totally alien to the western, democratic, modern world, a country endemi-
cally violent, unlike- one ought to conclude- today's American segregated
cities. And in Mexico, every new generation re-invents its own
"Mexicanness"through a twofold irony- recreating Mexico'sspiritual mes-
tizo superiority as a non-gringo entity, and sending remesas (remittances)
from the US.
Civilizational differences are supported in lasting, though empirically
weak, historical and cultural arguments through which Spain, the Spanish
language, and Catholicism were made into a non-European, backward,anti-
modern civilizational milieu. When, in the 18th century, English, French,
and German thinkers made absolutes- reason, beauty,ethics- succumb to
the idea of history (change in time and space), all things Spanish became
frozen in time, either anachronistic or reactionary.8This civilizational dif-
ference was accentuated during the 19th and 20th centuries through a
racial obsession with the indigenous component of the nations that

7 Samuel Huntington, Who are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2004); Fernando Escalante, ed., Otro suefto americano: en torno a quie'nes
somos de Samuel P. Huntington (Mexico City: Paid6s, 2004). For similar arguments but from
the other side of the identity debate, see Gilbert Gonzalez, Culture of Empire (Austin: Austin
University Press, 2004); also David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1995).

8 Peter Szondi, Poetik und Ceschichtsphilosophie I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974); and
Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting, translated by Steven Rendall (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2004).

I 572 I International Journal | Summer 2006 |

 I On the limits of historical imagination |

emergedout of the collapseof the Spanishempire. This was done despite

the massivedemographiccollapsethat took place in the Americasduring
the first centuryof contactbetween Europeand the new world,and as if
threecenturiesof miscegenationand Christianization hadneverhappened.
Mexicowas the eternalplaceof timeless traditions.Thereforethe conclu-
sion is almosta dogma:Mexicois mestizo,a mixtureof thatnot-fullymod-
ern ingredient(Spain)plus the legacyand presenceof indigenouspeoples,
as if the US and Canadahad not undergonesimilarprocesses.9Whilethe
Spanishpart of the equationis easternized,the indigenous part is over-
racialized,discriminatedagainst,or idealized. Whatresults are two con-
cepts:Mexicoand LatinAmerica,both connotingthe total racial,civiliza-
tional,and, I would say,even ontologicaloppositionto what the west, the
US and Europe,mean. France,Spain,and Germanycan stilluse the oldest
nastystereotypesabouteach other.Yettheir differencesare not as institu-
tionalizedas thosebetweenMexicoandthe US, forexactlythe same reason,
it is assumed,thatone wouldnot mix oil and water.
These civilizationaldifferencesare a thin layerof long-lastingpreju-
dices that obscurethe vast complexcommon historyof the regionwhere,
foroverfourcenturies,Amerindians,Europeans,Asians,andAfricanshave
interacted and become inhabitants of the modern western world.
Moreover,the so-calledalien civilization(Mexico)lives and has lived for
almost two centurieswithin the US. The US, in turn, has been a partof
Mexico'scultural,political,and economicdailylife for so long and to such
a degreethatit is a realwonderthatwe are so sure aboutthe civilizational
differences.Differenttheyare,as much as, or maybeless than, Argentina
and Bolivia,or the US and England,or Portugaland Greece.
Race,to be sure, is at the verycore of this paradox.It is neitherhisto-
ry,nor culture,nor wealththathas madeof Mexicoanotherradicallydiffer-
ent civilization.It is race. To this epochaltruth,which makes us, we the
multikultilegion, contemporariesto two hundredyears of nationalistic,
Manichean,racialthinking,verylittlecan be added.Yetto admitthis racial
conclusionas a validintellectualexercisewouldbe the end of any intellec-
tual, cultural,political,or economicreasoning.Evenif raceis the key,his-
toriansof the future ought to keep thinkingand planningaheadas if at
some point this will not be the case. Wishfulthinking,but aboutracethat

9 This I develop in Mexico's Odalisque Mania.

| International Journal | Summer 2006 | 573 |

I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

is the only task at hand. Fighting race with racial arguments- even as noble
as the idea of an ethnic multiculturalism or mestizaje- only reinforces our
epochal obsession.10 Then again, historians and cultural brokers can keep
working to document the civilizational superiority of the white, protestant,
democratic ethos (whatever that may be), or the contrary: keep writing
about the superior spiritual, moral, human strength of mestizaje, Mayas,
Mexicans or Chicanos or Latinos.
Developmental differences are more visible and discussable than
race. That is, not much can be done in terms of North America, or any
other form of responsible human and political integration, as long as
such a huge development gap exists between Mexico and its two northern
partners. From the 1930s on, development seemed to be the paradigm
we- Mexicans, Canadians, or Americans - inhabited, either when deal-
ing with the Tennessee Valley or with La Laguna in Mexico, or with invest-
ment plans, education, and technology everywhere in the region." Eighty
years of thinking development has led to various experiments of relative
success and failure. The gap between Mexico and the rest of North
America is enormous if measured in income distribution, technological
development, economic size, or standards of living. These developmen-
tal differences all too often become one with the paradox of easternness,
further reason to see Mexico as "other": the "Latins"are just not part of
the protestant, individualistic, entrepreneurial, innovative, and modern
ethos. We can keep fighting shadows for or against "neoliberalism"(what-
ever that is), but we in North America have reached a point of no human,
ecological, and political return. Development will remain the key factor
for the economics of the region. With a stagnated Mexico the region will
not be better off and it will be immensely more insecure. And yet devel-
opment ought to be discussed within a radically different dimension. It is
not their development vs. ours, our help vs. their problems, their workers

10 Peter Fry, A persistencia da raca: Ensayos antropoldgicos sobre o Brasil e a Africa austral
(Sao Paulo: Civilizaca*o Brasileira, 2005).
11 For the history of US, Mexico, and Latin America in terms of development, see Mark T.
Gilderhus, "An emerging synthesis? US-Latin American relations since the Second World War,"
Diplomatic History 16, no. 3 (1992): 429-452; Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The
Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Lars
Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of US Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

I 574 I International Journal | Summer 2006 |

 I On the limits of historical imagination |

vs. our jobs, their history vs. ours, with us or against us. It is that their dis-
aster is ours, their wellbeing is ours.

OPTIONS?
After 10 years of NAFTA, after 20 years of multicultural and supposedly
post-nationalistic discussion in US and Mexican university lives, after
Mexico's democratic turn, after September 11, the following possible lines
of argument exist for rooting a new, responsible sense of common histori-
cal and cultural civic life:

From the US perspective:

i) Business as usual:
Mexico has been a total failure of development, thanks to its intrinsically
corrupt nature and civilizational handicaps. The best approach is to keep
trying to control immigration and drug trafficking as much as possible
while Mexico remains a reliable source of needed labour. As long as a min-
imal institutional framework is alive in that nation, keep investing and tak-
ing advantage of low wages. Nothing radically different can be done, so
Mexico ought to be left in the limbo of both a second-class US foreign pol-
icy issue, and a standardized bureaucraticdomestic agenda. Continue with
more of the same policies and wait to see what happens.

ii) Business as usual option II:

Mexico has been an extraordinarydevelopmental success, and has become
a large and important economy; it is full of problems, institutional and oth-
erwise, but it is a relatively stable and reliable partner that needs constant
monitoring, will remain a reliable source of cheap labour, and is a relative-
ly secure place for investment. Mexico is, as F. D. Roosevelt believed, a sort
of a child, a good child. The US ought to recognize its nature- childish,
irresponsible, and naive- and keep working with it.

iii) The "we are truly in the same boat"option:

The United States would no longer think of Mexico as a successful or unsuc-
cessful national example of development but as an essential and intrinsic part
of the past, present, and future of the region whose core is the US. A region
that is, and has been for a long time, economically,historically,culturally,and
demographicallyintegrated. So there is need for a plan of gradual steps,
reachablegoals, and massive investment in orderto reach standards of living

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

and developmentthatcouldeventuallyleadto an accepted"NorthAmerica"

accompaniedbythe symbolicandcivicinfrastructure
a unitedregionrequires.

In terms of historiographicaland culturalinfrastructure,two extremesare

thereforevisible:the reproductionof the same civilizationalandontological
differences(withas much sophisticationor human sympathyas one may
wish), or the consciousbeginningof a radicalchangein culturalperspec-
tive- the overcomingof deep-rootedcivilizationaland racialdifferences,
which would eventuallydrasticallytransformcivic culturewithin the US,
Canada,and Mexico,andalsobetweenMexicoandthe restof the continent.
Not a new history,but an a-la-recherche-du-temps-perdu kind of responsi-
ble argumentin view of currentand future undesirablecircumstances.
This, of course,reachesthe limits of our historicalimagination.

Fromthe Mexicanside the optionsare:

i) The same old story:
Nothingcan be done but to keepworkingto createa modernmarketecon-
omy,patchinghere andtherewhenevernecessary,doingverylittlein terms
of income distribution - through fiscal policies or investmentin educa-
-
tion as verylittle can be done with a poor and weak, albeitdemocratic,
state. The government would continue to use immense amounts of
resourcesto fight drugtraffickingratherthan to consolidatesecurityinsti-
tutions in the cities, towns, and on the roadsof Mexico.If a catastrophic
social or economic scenariowere to occurin Mexico,as in 1994, the US
would bail out irresponsible US and Mexican investors and corrupt
Mexicanand US officialsand institutions- at a high economiccost for US
and Mexicantaxpayersand low-incomepopulations.In the meantime,the
remesaswouldbe solidifiedas the main sourceof nationalrevenue.

ii) The nationalistapproach:

Mexicoought to followa nationalistwelfareagendabasedon a huge state
debt and populist,short-sighted,economicplans. Officialswould re-enact
traditionalMexican anti-Americanismand engage in a Venezuela-or
Cuban-stylenationalistcoalition,hoping that oil and remesaswouldkeep
healthyminimum revenues,jvivaMexico,cabronesj.

iii) The futureis one for the entireregion:

Mexicoshould conceiveof both developmentand the futureaccordingto

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 I On the limits of historical imagination |

accumulated experience, but in a drasticallydifferent scenario (demograph-

ically,economically,ecologically)and in a radicalnew dimension (more than
national, more than as a good neighbour, more than the doggedly argued
term "globalization").Mexico ought to seek to open at least the intellectual
possibilityof the goal of a gradual,difficult,but solid development plan based
on the creation of "NorthAmerica,"in which the rich take responsibilityfor
the development of the poor- for the rich countries'own long lasting benefit
beyond cultural,civilizational,and political differences.

The agenda for cultural producers in Mexico, thus, could be a radical

change from business as usual. National intellectuals1lives would not be
affected by the slow but serious goal of changing centuries of "civilization-
af differences in the search for a common history and pride in shared civic
intuitions. For if "national"intelligentsias are to survive it will be not as gate
keepers of identity, not as cosmopolitan neutral minds, but as local brokers
of multiple possibilities of cultural and political identification.

ONE IS A DREAMER...
From the US side of the equation, there seems to be no incentive to think
of Mexico any differently than according to the criteria that it has used for
the last 80 years. The machinery of the US state has not learned to live
without its two great engines - the cold war and the PRI. Business as usual
is what the US seems to need in the short run- a reliable source of cheap
labour for current and future growth, and a reliable political and economic
partner, together with the old stereotyping (Mexico, that great, communi-
tarian and ancient country; Mexico, that "Latin"place that does not get its
act together; Mexico, that violent place that needs monitoring and approval
from the US).
On the Mexican side, democracy has brought levels of uncertainty
unknown since the 1920s. In a contentious political environment, with the
US as the main economic partner,the incentive exists to act irresponsibly,
because, in the long run, "no pasa nada." Inequality in the region, on the
other hand, has reached unthinkablelevels in Mexico,but no longer is it only
a Mexicanissue. US growth, security,and culturallife are linked to the cycles
of povertyin Mexico. Fordecades, in both countries, governments have acted
with extreme irresponsibilitywith regardto the long-term consequences of a
relationship based on the assumption that when it works it is good for "us"
and when something is wrong it is the other's fault. All in all, there are no

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

visible possibilities of Mexico'sbeing seen in a radicallydifferent fashion in

the current US political arena.
Mexico is Americanizing not because of McDonald's or neoliberal-
ism, but because of the individualistic behaviour of so many who, every
day, make the decision to migrate and find a better life for themselves and
their families. The US too is Mexicanizing, not because of miscegenation
and immigration, but because it is gradually enlarging the inequality gap,
mimicking Mexico's class structure. A US social and cultural rethinking
of Mexico would, therefore, become a rethinking of the social responsi-
bility of the federal and local states in the US. As with monopolies and
growing poverty in the gilded age, or unemployment and poverty during
the great depression, Mexico could be today's catalyst to reinvent the
social role of the state both between Mexico and the US and within the
US.
Would a Marshall plan, based on the eventual formation of a
more-than-economic coalition of nations, work for Mexico?It is difficult to
know. What is beyond doubt is that business as usual will not work:in terms
of national security for the US and Canada;in terms of long-lasting eco-
nomic stability;in terms of the wellbeing of large sectors of population-
both in Mexico and especially in the US; or in terms of the materialization
of long-lasting principles of equality,tolerance, and democracy.
The European Union was created with two fears in mind: the Soviet
Union and the US. A North American union cannot even be a remote
thought within our current fears: Mexicanization and Americanization
based on Mexican immigration to the US, the overwhelming weight of
America in the Mexican economy, and long-lasting civilizational and racial
differences. And yet, intellectuals and scholars ought to advance the agen-
da of a common civic life, if only for theoretical consideration, for two rea-
sons: the undeniable fact that it is time to accept that the region shares a
common history and future, and the economic and social risks of continuing
business as usual.
Although the US lacks the political will to conceive of new scenarios,
American history suggests that some forms of internationalism could be
used to finally accept a common past, present, and future with Mexico. In
1922, Harold E. Stearns published a collection of essays titled Civilization
in the United States, the preface of which states, "Desirous of avoiding
merely irrelevant criticism and of keeping attention upon our actual treat-
ment of our subject rather than pure personalities, we provided that all

I 578 I International Journal | Summer 2006 |

 I On the limits of historical imagination |

contributors to the volume must be American citizens."12Somehow things

have changed. Since the 1990s, a less nationallycentred historiographyof the
US has been consciously in the making.13Certainlywe need this internation-
al history not solely for the US, but for an era- for the American century.We
need a renewed examinationin which the past regains its strangeness. A past
in which, once again, all of us historians are alien, and yet residents, for we
are unavoidablyinhabitants of all modern concerns and problems. That is,
the historian everywhereas metoikos, the Greekword for resident alien, with
which T.S. Eliot,that profoundlyAmerican anti-American,signed his letters.
As early as 1932, the president of the American Historical Association,
Herbert E. Bolton, said

Our nationalhistorians,especiallyin the United States,are prone

to write of these broadphases of Americanhistoryas though they
were applicableto one country alone. It is my purpose, by a few
bold strokes,to suggest that they are but phases common to most
portions of the entire Western Hemisphere;that each local story
will have clearermeaning when studied in the light of the others;
and that much of what has been writtenof each nationalhistoryis
but a threadout of a largerstrand.14

12 Harold E. Stearns, Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans (New
York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1922), iv.

13 In transnationalizing the history of the US, David Thelen and Thomas Bender's effort in par-
ticular should be recognized. See Denis Lacorne, La crise de I'identity am4ricaine: Du melting-
pot au multiculturalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), and the classic text by Randolph S. Bourne,
"Trans-national America," Atlantic Monthly 118, no. 1 (1916): 86-97; J. L Granatstein, Yankee Co
Home?: Canadians and Anti-Americanism (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1996); Frank Underhill, ed.,
In Search of Canadian Liberalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960); Alan Knight, US-
Mexico Relations, 1910-1940. An Interpretation (San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies,
University of California, 1987); David Thelen, "Of audiences, borderlands, and comparisons:
Toward the internationalization of American history," journal of American History 79 (1992):
432-62; David Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History
in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Ian Tyrell, "American exception-
alism in an age of international history," American Historical Review 26, no. 4 (October 1991):
1031-55; Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002).

14 Herbert E. Bolton, "The epic of the greater America," annual address of the president of the
American Historical Association, delivered at Toronto, December 28, 1932, American Historical
Review 38, no. 3 (April 1933): 449-74-

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

We must welcomethe currentreturnto Boltoniandoubts,to postna-

tional questioningin the US, and startthinkingaboutthe overcomingof
civilizationaldifferenceswith Mexico.
Canada,for its part,offersa long-lastingdebate,alasconflictive,on the
ideas of pluralnationalisms. The reconsiderationof Canadianhistoryby
US and Mexicanhistoriansis an overduetask. Canadaconstitutesthe lib-
eral nation that has undergonethe experiments,in a relativelypeaceful
fashion,thathavetemptedthe US and Mexico.Formanyyears,it seemed
that,to use a Canadianhistorian'scharacterization, Canadawas an "actof
faith,"and hence the US was the faithitself,and Mexicowas the marrano,
the convertedthat oftentimeshad been unfaithfulto the creedof modern
liberaland democracy.The peoplefrom Colonyto Nation,and the people
gone astraywithin the Laberintode la Soledad,had in common their con-
stantreferenceto the Peopleof Plenty.15 Canadawas "theladyof snow,"the
true north, the naturalbeauty,the only real multiculturaland bilingual
nation of the continent. Canadian patriotic historians argued that
Canadians'realnortherncharacterhad madethem workharder;theywere
morecivilizedthantheirrevolutionary US peers.like peninsularesin New
Spain who wrote histories and laws in orderto differentiatethemselves
from their criolloequals, Canadianliberalhistoriansfound an essential
componentof the nationalismof theirauthenticnorthernersin provingthe
differencevis-a-visthe US. Differentthey were, but on a more-and-less
scale,not in a being-and-not-being kindof argument.Therewereno doubts
thattheybelongedto the same civilization.
By the 1970s, Canadacould add multiculturalism to their "differential"
mark. The US soon followedsuit.Today,theyfacethe samedilemma,sum-
marizedby WilliamKaterberg as "[o]necommunity'spatriot(theQuebecois
separatists Andbothnativismshaveas dear
forexample)is another'snativist."
"other" the "browrffrontier.Canadaindeedis a lesson for a potentialreal
NorthAmericanregionbothbecauseof its ownparticular historyandbecause
differencesin peace.16
of its own maintenanceof long-lastingcivilizational

15 Arthur Lower, Colony to Nation, 3rd edition (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1957); Octavio
Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (Mexico City: El Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1952); David
Potter, People of Plenty (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1956). These three books consti-
tute the founding documents of "civilizational" identities for their respective countries.

16 William Katerberg, "The irony of identity: An essay on nativism, liberal democracy, and
parochial identities in Canada and the United States," American Quarterly 47, no. 2 (September
1995): 493-524; Cranatstein, Yankee Co home?; Ram6n Mafz Sua"rez, ed., Democracy,

I 580 I International Journal | Summer 2006 |

 I On the limits of historical imagination |

Mexico'sown nationalisthistoriographyneeds to undergo a serious

transformation.It is stillcomposedas a poorlydigested"cultureof defeat,"
blendedwith an aggressivesense of the moral superiorityof a "mestizo,"
diverse,and victim nation.17No wonderthis storytellinghas often fed the
convictionaboutcivilizationaldifferencesbetweenMexicoand the "Anglo-
Saxons."A solidinstitutionalization of the historyof the US and the rest of
the continentin Mexicowould undoubtedlyminimize the nationalistcer-
tainties so prevalentin Mexico'shistoriography.Also, a different,more-
than-Mexican approachto Mexicantopicsand eventswouldproducefertile
historiographicalsoil in orderto ruminateanew aboutboth Mexico'sand
othercountries'histories
Currenthistoriansandeducatorsoughtto workhardto openthe minds
of young people. Perhaps, and only perhaps, Mexico'sfuture Carlos
Fuentes,withoutlosing cosmopolitanismand erudition,would go against
the flowto leaveopen the niche of the culturalinternationalmarketknown
as "Mexico." CouldMexicansbe moreto the worldthantheirracial,cultur-
al, and stereotypicalgenes? Could an intellectualwho happens to be
Mexicanenterthe flow of worldideas withoutselling fiestas,siestas,som-
breros,and Fridas?And will the next generationof, say,New Yorkintellec-
tuals considerthe commandof Spanishto be an indispensablepartof the
craftingof their own erudite personas?Todaywe ought to educate, in
Mexicoand the US, anotherdimensionof literati.

HISTORIANS AND THEIR LIMITS

Moderntimes havecultures,identities,andciviclives rootedin history.But
historyis not fixed,waitingto be used and discovered,alwaysessentially

Nationalism and Multiculturalism (London: New York, Frank Cass, 2005); Stephanie R. Golob,
"North America beyond NAFTA: Sovereignty, identity, and security in Canada-US relations,"
Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 2003; Gilles Bourque, Jules Duchastel, Victor
Armony, eds., L'identite fragments : nation et citoyennete' dans les d6bats constitutionnels
canadiens, 1941-1992 (Quebec: Fides, 1996); Kenneth McRoberts, "Competing nationalisms:
Quebec-Canada relations," (Barcelona: Institut de Ciencies Polftiques i Socials, 1995).

17 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and

Recovery, translated by Jefferson Chase (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003); Josefina
Vazquez, Nacionalismo y educacidn en Mexico (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1970);
Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, De cdmo ignorar (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, CIDE,
2000); Roger Bartra, La jaula de la melancolfa (Mexico City: Crijalbo, 1987).

I International Journal | Summer 2006 | 581 |

I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

meaning the same thing. Past, present, and future are an unstable balance,
always changing, forever moving in the consciousness of the present.
State, nation, and history are as consubstantial as the father, the son, and
the Holy Spirit. New imaginings of past events depend less on the past
than on different presents that necessarily are alreadybiased by views of the
future. Past and present are divided by an obvious barrier,but in fact this is
a conceptual frontier that until very recently has been determined by one
singular historical phenomenon: the nation-state. History, in Frederich
Nietzsche's well-known argument, creates "second natures," as conclusive
and unchangeable as rivers and mountains. That is why history used to
serve to liberate peoples from traditions and atavisms.
Today'ssecond nature (history),however, is an insurmountable present
tense of nations, civilizations, and cultures. While the US seems to have
found an eternal favourableflow of freedom from past, present, to future in
history, today's second nature also dictates that there are places, such as
Mexico, endlessly caught in tradition, resignedly searching to overcome
their atavistic circumstances. We inhabit these second natures, which seem
to further justify our conviction of cultural differences and totally opposed
identities. Within our second natures, imagination is a scarce resource
because the historical imagination is a cutting against the grain of the pres-
ent, cutting done with imagined- at times desired, at times feared-
futures in mind.18To struggle historiographically is vital for the historical
imagination, for when imagination is weak, history does not liberate differ-
ent versions of the past and the future, but binds us to a seemingly insur-
mountable present.
I cannot, nobody can, demarcate the contours of future historical imag-
inations. I can, however, point out simple thoughts with which future
imagining could be fed. In order for North America to serve as a fertile cul-
tural and historical soil where new political, legal, economic, and social sce-
narios could grow, there are at least two visible tasks for the historian to con-
sider, first, the common consideration of our collective myth and experi-
ment, l'Amerique; and second, the change of the moral role of history in a
way that can be briefly expressed in Spanish: "de historia para ser a historia

18 Constantin Fasolt, The Limits of History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004), 3-47;
Paul Valery, "Mirada al mundo actual," translated by Lucfa Segovia, Istor 1 (2000): 98-113;
Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, Argucias de la historia (Mexico City: Paid6s, 1999).

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 I On the limits of historical imagination |

"
para estar. That is, from history as the natural language of identities,
national or otherwise, to history as the language to read, realize, plan, and
unplan where we are and where we want to be in the future.
The US is our world myth of non-relinquishable epochal principles:
opportunity,equality, growth, tolerance, democracy, freedom. This is espe-
cially true for the countries of the American continent, and particularlyfor
Mexico and Canada. US history should not be the patrimony of a national-
ist historiography. US history ought to work as a catalyst of local, regional,
national, and North American histories. Deprovincializing US history is an
indispensable intellectual task for historians both of the world and the US.
How can this be achieved?
US history could be a common collective critique of both US excep-
tionalism and all sorts of local nationalisms. When scholars talk about new
historical dimensions and the denationalization of history, they mean the
history of modern times. Modernityoriginated and merged nationalist his-
toriographies and modern consensus: science, rationalism, humanism,
secularization . This is the era whose history we see in urgent need of dena-
tionalizing in order to deactivate a present consciousness that defends, as
life and death axioms, civilizational differences. And there is no way of
rethinking this history without a two-fold reconsideration of US history:
first, to look at US history with a renewed alienness; second, to appropriate
this renewed US history for a North American and global understanding of
modern times. The history of the US must be seen as the history of our
truly American, epochal experiment. North America as historical focus is a
necessary step in order to write the history of modern times, and this can-
not be fully understood without the appropriationof US history.
In addition, a less nation-centred approach within the US ought to be
undertaken as criticism of our respective national histories, which have also
used the US as a key personage of their respective plots. This would bring
about a dialogue- not necessarily a harmonious one- of historians in and
outside the US, on and beyond the US. Trulyan expedition into an as-yet-
unexplored common history.
On the other hand, we need to revise conventional Mexican, Spanish,
French, or general European anti-Americanism. The truth is that we need
such a thing. What would the world's dercs do without the idea of the US
in defining their own regional and national idiosyncrasies? What would US
intellectuals and political advisers do without their Emersonian maverick
sense of revolt against the old, aristocratic,useless European world? What

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

would the "Anglo-protestant creed"be withoutthe "Hispanicchallenge?"

Whatwouldbecomeof the romanticgoodnessand of the veryontologyof
Latinnessin "LatinAmerica"withoutthe recourseto the old habitof anti-
Americanism - in which romanticUS orientalismis an essentialcompo-
nent?L'Amerique is the centralghost,the vitalhope,whichon a dailybasis
makesanew our imaginedculturalfrontiers.
Mexicanintellectualsand educatorsare in a unique situationto devel-
op a new kindof critique,a self-critiquethatis bothAmericanand Mexican.
But of course US academicsfirst ought to see Mexicanintellectualsand
scholarsas otherthan the talkingheads of Mexicanthings. Imperialnos-
talgia (e.g., France),orientalism(of Europeanand US views of Mexicoor
"LatinAmerica"), andpatrioticintellectualism(of,forinstance,US scholars
andintellectuals)hinderthe emergenceof a new kindof anti-Americanism.
Thereis a stowawaypatriotismin contemporary thinkingaboutMexicoand
the US. Anti-Americanismought to be convertedinto the dismantlingof
this patriotism,both in the US and in Mexico.
This kind of anti-Americanismmade into Latinoamericanism is the
romanticimpulseof the US's searchfor authenticity,and it has no end. It
is importantanduseful, but it is not the kindof anti-Americanismthatcan
producea profoundcriticismof any of the Americancountries'internal
dilemmasor of the US as an imperialpower.
Anti-Americanism, I believe,oughtto be a uniqueformof anti-national-
ism andof anti-fundamentalism: a contemporary wayof fashioningan inter-
nationalruleof law,assumingnot onlyUS hegemony,butits globalpolitical,
cultural,and moralimportance.It wouldbe anti-American becauseit would
mean a criticismof lastingimagesof whatthe US means. It wouldalso be
anti-American becauseit wouldhave to be rootedin local criticism,going
beyondourrespectivenationalisticanti-American traditions.It couldbecome
a carefullyand consciouslycreatedintellectualtrendaccordingto particular
time-spacecircumstances.It wouldmean,on the one hand,the end of con-
ventionalanti-Americanism, as thereis nothingmorebarbaricthaninhabit-
ing stereotypes, assuming culturalatavismas historicalknowledge.Theanti-
Americanismthatwe currentlyneedwouldeliminatethe facadeof American
nationalism,as the right,natural,good,and harmlessform of nationalism,
andwoulduse Americanismas it oughtto be:a universalprincipleof coexis-
tence,tolerance,andpoliticalnegotiationbasedon a generalrespectof more-
or-lessdear rulesof the game. Thisanti-nationalism canonlybe achievedby
disbelieving our own national foundation myths.

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 I On the limits of historical imagination |

On the other hand, the change of the moral role of history, "de historia
para ser a historia para estar," could start from different fronts. All
metoikos, we are all alien to the past. In the 19th century or in the good old
1960s as well, the philosophy of history was often reduced to a useful past,
a past effective for a national or class identity. History and memory became
the ultimate tribunals, the original source of stable, true identities. German
romantics often used Schiller's hemistich, "die Weltgeschichgte ist das
Weltgerichf (world history is world tribunal), and liberals such as Justo
Sierra believed that the US paid for its historical faults vis-a-vis Mexico
(1848) with a bloody civil war. Many Americans, such as President Grant,
believed the same. Historians want to make justice, to resurrect, re-enact,
give voice, empower all common cultural terms used in the recipe "histo-
ry."Thus we have searched for the culture and the history of the real peo-
ple, the real American, the real Mexican, even when we try to document
"multf or diverse senses of identities. No new historiographicaldimension
would be opened while we depart from the idea of an identity as the basis
of a real memory, culture, or history.
It is a common sophism: for whom history? For the true history, which
is our history, the we is the optimal, unique, and natural result of history. It
is much better to write history of metoikos within the present, the past, and
the future, departing from a less ambitious question than "who are we?" in
order to ask "whereare we, and where do we want to be as human beings?"
Thus, history would depend on where we are. That is, it would depend on
the moment the question is asked, and on the level of risk one is willing to
take in making a balance of history and oblivion in order to imagine the
future one wants to be in. To break deep-rooted civilizational differences in
view of present facts- economic integration, profound inequality, migra-
tion, violence, etc.- is a way to look back to history and culture with alien
eyes and imagine different futures for a region whose history seems to have
been written to document ontological differences.
There is a historical and cultural exercise that can start to provide a
needed common ground: is there any topic or issue in US, Canadian,
Mexican, or American history that can be read solely as a national histo-
ry? The key columns of our respective "civilizationar basis - race, reli-
-
gion, migration, political ideas, economic thought, nation, state are de
facto more than national. A simple change of historical perspective would
allow us to see how much any topic is indeed part of a larger history. This
intellectual exercise would eventually furnish us with a common ground

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I Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |

in which, for instance, US exceptionalism pales in comparison to its com-

mon history of continental civil wars, and the global definition of racial
differences.
After all, what are cultural differences? Culture is so much our epochal
dogma- as it emerged to substitute race and science as the basic criterion
of moral, political, and historical thinking- that it seems impossible to
challenge its prevalence as a category of analysis and as a central belief of
our respective intellectual environments.19 We believe blindly in the exis-
tence of a US culture, and within it a Latino,Chicano, African-American, or
even gay culture. And of course, no one doubts the existence of such a
thing as Mexican culture. These are problematic categories to be sure. Even
more problematic is the idea of differences and compatibility. I do not have
an answer, but I just do not see that many differences in all these modern
inhabitants of North America. Too much relativizing the "value"of cultures
has led us so far; it is time to relativize the very differences in a region as
North America, which is nothing but a chaotic, unstable blend of all these
cultures we see as clearly defined entelechies.
In sum, North America could become the modest emblem of an excit-
ing, alas strenuous, historical imagination, one that could leave traces for
the imagining of better futures beyond current dangerous civilizational dif-
ferences. It could also be a collective agenda to at least intellectually deal
with and redefine US imperial power in a pragmatic, yet civic and ethical
fashion. If an intellectual environment emerges in which different notions
of citizenship and sovereignty are imagined for the US, Mexico, and
Canada, then the role of the empire would have to be exposed to hitherto
unthinkable cultural and ethical dilemmas. North America could at least be
considered the name of a significant revision- moral, empirical, and histo-
riographical- of the notion of empire in order for the US to not resign its
world hegemony, but to give needed economic, moral, and social directions
to a power that otherwise seems lost in the midst of, on the one hand, quasi-
religious and inconsequential wishful thinking, and, on the other, the pri-
mordial thirst for more power that has characterized the history of human
empires. If nothing else comes out of North America as an intellectual
agenda- other than a different view and criticism of the current empire-

19 Gustavo Bueno, El mito de la cultural Ensayo de una filosofta materialista de la cultura

(Barcelona: Editorial Prensa lbe>ica, 1996).

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 I On the limits of historical imagination |

present historians would at least have left a message in the bottle for future
imaginations to rescue. The likely failure of North America as a cultural
agenda would hopefully absolve our attempt before future imaginations.
The historical imagination after all is always an essay, a try. Imagination in
history writing, nevertheless, is a scarce resource; it can never go beyond
the confines of the present. What we call imagination in history writing is
indeed an unstoppable attempt to flee the power of the present. The his-
torical is akin to the imagination that allows the castaway to visualize, on
one hand, that she is that, a castaway on the island of the present; and on
the other, a way out, even if she fails.

| International journal | Summer 2006 | 587 |