Mexico: Kartographer Katie
By: Katie Mcdowell
Tags: Travel, Cartography, Geography, Mexico, History

Why it matters

To the American eye, Mexico conjures up mixed images of beauty, conflict, and cultural tensions. Mexico plays an integral role in American culture, leisure, sociology, and politics. Our close relationship with the country creates various levels of admiration, appropriation, misinformation, and prejudice towards their people and lands.

Mexico’s food for us is a divine culinary experience, from the tacos we enjoy on street corners with freshly shaven al pastor to the enchiladas we scarf down at a beach resort to the mole we taste at a fine dining premise. Their alcohols are some of the most ubiquitous contents of our celebratory drinks, from tequila shots to various fruity, salty cocktails and smoky mezcal we enjoy with cigars and an old deck of cards.

Some delicious tacos al pastor near our lodging in Roma Norte, CDMX.

Mexican beaches are highly sought after, with Cabo San Lucas and Cancun filling to the brim every spring break and summer, honeymooners basking on the white sands of Puerto Vallarta and Playa del Carmen.

Adventurous travelers visit the anthropological sites in and around Mexico City, the ruins and jungle hikes in the Yucatan Peninsula, and the “authentic” native experiences and voluntourism of Oaxaca.

Beyond leisure, Mexico plays an integral role in the supply chain of countless consumer goods, from sugar to “American-made” cars to medical devices.

And yet we often use “Mexican” as a racial slur to fling at service workers for “taking our jobs” in the jobs none of us would willingly take, to the English language learner in the classroom out of impatience for not being at the same baseline as those more privileged, and the crimes we single out at the border to justify our despicable treatment of undocumented immigrants.

We also see some of the darkest reflections of ourselves on the backs of burdened northern Mexican territories. Teenagers snort up cocaine in white suburban basements that ravaged through a brutal, bloody supply chain from Colombia and trafficked into the United States via Mexican drug cartels. Southern California partyers venture through Tijuana and Rosarito for cheap substance and sexual thrills.

We would be remiss not to recognize that the land in what is now Mexico was a vibrant epicenter of ancient civilization, where we saw the earliest writing systems, calendar systems, trade, architecture, and sophisticated religious practices far before European colonists.

It is important to acknowledge the brutality of Spanish colonialism, which created a racist, classist hierarchy of people and attempted to wipe out thousands of years of history. It is critical to acknowledge how hard of a fight Mexicans put on to attain their independence and preserve their ancient cultures. We must learn how difficult of a journey it has been in the years to follow as a modern political state with contrasting political ideologies and leadership almost constantly in revolt. We must understand that a destabilized, decentralized authority gave way to Mexican drug cartels when countries like the U.S. generated the demand (and further consolidated it due to our interventions that stunted other drug suppliers in Central and South America).

Most importantly for these purposes, though, is to recognize how much land we stole from Mexico in the Mexican-American war. Beyond ideological tensions we feel towards Mexico and constructed dehumanization complexes we practice in our everyday prejudices, we have physical evidence of theft of some of their most fertile land totaling nearly 50% of their territory — and it’s often barely a blip in American history textbooks.

Let’s give Mexico the space to take back some of this forgotten narrative.