The Stranger Next Door: Bloomberg Businessweek Opening Remarks

Not so long ago, if you believe what you read in the papers and see on TV, Mexico was the next Afghanistan. It was poor, lawless, and plagued by drug violence, a failed-state-in-the-making whose problems and people would soon cascade over the border.

In early 2009 a U.S. Joint Forces Command report speculated that, in the next quarter-century, Pakistan and Mexico could prove the most worrisome flash points for American security. According to a study by Roberto Newell for the Wilson Center, more than 60 percent of all stories about Mexico in major U.S. papers were negative in 2007; that figure had risen to more than 80 percent by 2010. A survey of U.S. attitudes toward Mexico in 2012 found only 14 percent of respondents called it a “good neighbor.” Type “Why is Mexico so” into Google and the first four adjectives suggested are “dangerous,” “violent,” “bad,” and “poor.”