Canada's relationship with Mexico

I am a Canadian citizen and permanent resident of Mexico. I have paid attention to similarities and differences between the countries and cultures for decades. I find the piece in the Globe to be naïve at best. Let’s look at just a tiny bit of the premise.

It is remarkable that Canada and Mexico have so much in common, beginning with our values,

Something I value about my relationships with Canada and Mexico are differences in values. When in Mexico, I appreciate the emphasis on family, friends, and attachment to community as well as heritage. I know Mexicans who have lived their lives in one state or even one town and have lived near relatives their entire lives.

In Canada, I appreciate the highly mobile nature of the culture and economy. I have lived in over a dozen communities in five provinces and one territory. As adults, my three siblings and I have never lived in the same community. Sometimes we went years without seeing our parents, not because of breaches in the relationships, but because of mobility.

I suggest that Canadians value education and relocations as means of achieving the value of upward economic and social mobility over Mexican values of family relationships, multi-generational connectivity, and being part of a community.

Both countries rose from their colonial pasts to become modern democracies…

The colonial pasts could hardly be more different. Mexico was an urbanized society at the time of European invasion. Indigenous peoples were largely militarily overpowered, and subjugated through effective enslavement. Canadian indigenous people were largely hunter-gatherers. This is not to suggest they were somehow inferior to Mexican indigenous people, but they did not witness the destruction of their universities, temples, palaces, etc. because they had not been built. Instead, in the early years of colonization, Europeans benefited from and relied on indigenous people for their own survival.

Mexico had a history of multiple foreign invasions, occupations, and subjugations of its peoples resulting in a long violent past. It experienced losses of huge parts of its country to American “manifest destiny”. Canada’s colonial history is one of two European countries, Britain and France, that scrapped between themselves until sorting out two colonial spheres of influence in a single country, followed by integration of territories already dominated, largely by the British.

The American invasion of “Canada” (then “British North America”) in 1812 was handily rebuffed.

American president Polk also intended to acquire most of Canada. His slogan of “54 40 of Fight” and his commitment to invade to acquire the territory came to nothing.

https://www.ushistory.org/us/29b.asp#:~:text=Polk%20called%20for%20expansion%20that,to%20victory%20against%20all%20odds.

The only thing remotely similar to Mexican revolutions was the comparatively modest Northwest Rebellion in which dozens, not thousands or hundreds of thousands died.

Although Mexico has made progress in governance in recent years, it is naive to forget the 70 year history of the PRIista hegemony or the even longer history of “strongman” rulership, whether by colonial powers or by domestic autocracy. This is very different from Canada’s long history of federal and provincial multi-party politics.