In Canada, Janet Cawley reports from Toronto, there`s little if any hostility directed at individual Americans, tourists or otherwise, who spend an estimated $2.5 billion a year there. For most, it is a quick and easy vacation where the local people look and sound and dress and behave like Americans–only the money, the stamps and the frequent ”eh” remind the vacationer this is, after all, a different country. (Unless they are visiting Quebec, which is far more European than North American.) Canadians, many of whom have relatives in the States and often vacation there themselves, are used to dealing with Americans and having American friends. On a one-on-one basis, most probably would see few differences between themselves and their counterparts to the south.
But in a much more generalized way, and one that has nothing to do with tourism, Canadians are concerned about Americans encroaching into their territory. Canada wants to maintain its own cultural, political and historical identity while living next door to the most powerful nation in the world. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, in an oft quoted remark, compared the U.S.-Canadian relationship to an elephant in bed with a mouse (”Even a friendly nuzzling can sometimes lead to frightening consequences”).
Keep in mind that Canada has only one-tenth the population of the United States and that eight out of every 10 Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border–meaning the possibilities for American influence are immense, especially in the field of broadcasting. Most Canadians can get all three American networks.
Visitors to the Far North are often amazed at how up to date the locals are on American news–until they realize evening news programs from places like Chicago are transmitted north of the border via satellite. One trip not so long ago to Lynn Lake, in northern Manitoba, turned up a covey of Cubs fans who watch the games via satellite.
Author and naturalist Farley Mowat, a staunch Canadian nationalist, is one of those particularly incensed at the creeping American encroachment.
”Like most Canadians who think about it,” he said in a telephone interview from his summer home in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, ”I feel threatened, choked and infuriated by the dominance of American culture in Canada . . . we are saturated day and night with American radio and television. If I had my way, I would create an electronic barrier along that famous undefended border.
”It`s terrible with all that electronic stuff. There`s no way to keep it out. And the encroachment is massive in publishing, too. Some 70 to 75 percent of the paperbacks in this country are American titles. And look at the best-seller lists. Three fourths or more are American titles.”
In an attempt to stem the pervasive influence from south of the border, the Canadian government passed what became known as the Canadian content law in the late 1960s. In simplest terms, 30 percent of radio programming must be ”Canadian content.” In television, that figure rises to 50 percent for private sector television and 60 percent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The system for gauging content is based on points–with a certain number of points assigned to various slots such as director, producer, writer and performer. Obviously, a program in which all these jobs were filled by Canadians would earn more points than programs in which only one or two were. There are those who claim that Canadian singers like Anne Murray or Gordon Lightfoot never would have been such big names if their careers hadn`t been given a mammoth boost by the Canadian content law.
But the problem, as most are quick to recognize, is that there is no way to force a Canadian listener to tune his radio to a Canadian station or a viewer to spend the evening watching the CBC. If a viewer in Toronto wants to watch ”The A Team” on a station in Buffalo, N.Y., instead of a CBC documentary, so be it.
Among our southern neighbors the situation is more complex, reports Vincent Schodolski from Mexico City. The phrase ”Yankee go home” has been in vogue at one time or another for the last half-century in Latin America, from Mexico to Cuba to Nicaragua to Chile. These sentiments toward the United States, pro or con, are strong and contain a complex mixture of admiration, envy, jealousy and resentment. There is also fear in many Latin American countries that their economies and futures are out of their control, and at the mercy of the United States.
But in almost every case a distinction is drawn between the United States government and the American people. A vehement attack on the policies of whatever U.S. administration is in power is almost always followed by an apologia about how nice are the Americans and how fine are their ideals.
With the Reagan administration`s policies in Central America, the popular mood against the United States at the moment is strong, especially in Nicaragua where it is fed by rhetoric from the Sandinista government and propaganda in the tightly controlled local press.
A few weeks ago in a settlement of ramshackle huts on the southern outskirts of Managua, Christina Suarez, 25, was pumping water from a communal tap as she prepared to make dinner for her husband and two children.
”Yes, my life is difficult,” she said, straining as she lifted one of the two heavy buckets from the tap. ”My life is difficult because the President of the United States is making it difficult.”
She explained that she and her family have lived in a one-room shack without electricity or any form of plumbing for 18 months since they came to the capital from northern Nicaragua. They were fleeing the fighting between Sandinista troops and the U.S.-backed contras.
Her politics are uncomplicated and almost certainly similar to those of the 3,000 families living in the shantytown. Probably as a result of local Sandinista representatives who organize socially and politically in such communities, she blames all her problems on the United States.
A few houses away from the Suarez home is that of the Sandinista representative in the neighborhood, Marriel Flores. When three reporters from U.S. news organizations approached her, she was suspicious. ”You know we are going to kill your marines when they come here,” she said, as soon as introductions were complete. She was convinced that a United States invasion of Nicaragua was imminent.
She went into a 30-minute diatribe about the Reagan policies toward Nicaragua. All of it was right out of the Sandinista political creed.
But as darkness fell and the three reporters turned to leave her house, she followed them out onto the dirt road in front.
”You know I`m not against Americans,” she said, smiling for the first time. ”It is just that we are against your administration.”
The only real opposition left in Nicaragua at the moment is among the private sector businessmen who have hung on despite the increasing state control over all aspects of the economy.
After the trade embargo was imposed, many of them felt the act was misguided and would eventually hurt those Nicaraguans who hold ideological positions most similar to those of Washington.
But even here there was a distance kept. ”We are not in agreement with the Soviets, nor with the Cubans, nor with the Americans,” said Alfredo Montealegre Callejas, the president of a flour-milling company in Managua.
”Your government, like theirs, makes big mistakes.” He referred to the economic blockade of Cuba, which he said had failed and forced all reasonable opponents of President Fidel Castro out of the country, and the bombing of North Vietnam. ”It is up to us Nicaraguans, not the United States, or Moscow, or the Cubans, to decide what happens here.”
Just across Nicaragua`s northern border is Honduras, a country that is presently the object of much attention from the United States because of its strategic location. It is from Honduras that the contras operate against Nicaragua and it is in Honduras that the United States has been carrying out huge and almost non-stop military manuevers.
During the early days of a recent exercise, the lobby of the Maya Hotel in Tegucigalpa came to look more and more like a USO club. Dozens of U.S. servicemen, from young marines to a female Army captain to some Air Force pilots in their flight suits, sauntered through the hotel talking about their planes, their tanks and their manuevers.
In the south near the Nicaraguan border, the Texas National Guard was roving through the countryside. ”This all gets a little out of hand,” said one of the hotel clerks after checking in a group of Army officers. ”Where is the Honduran army? I think we still have one.”
At the Tegucigalpa airport, amid the crew-cut marines, a Honduran woman watched with bemusement as a group of arriving foreigners breezed through customs while agents pored through her bags. ”See, everything is okay with you,” she said to three reporters who had just been whisked through an inspection. ”They don`t want any trouble with you, and they know they won`t get any from me.”
But nowhere in Latin America are feelings about the United States, good and bad, stronger than in Mexico. This complex relationship, the result of intertwined histories, invasions, and lost territory, has produced a kind of paranoia among Mexicans. Many complain of the acute myopia of
”norteamericanos” when they look toward their southern neighbor.
”It makes me sad that (when) most Americans think of Mexico, all they think of is wetbacks and vacations,” said Alvero Nunez, a Mexican who works with Guatemalan refugees in southern Mexico. ”Give us credit, my friend, we are a bit more than that.”
He spoke over dinner in a small restaurant in the southern Mexican city of Campeche, not far from the vast offshore oil fields that once promised Mexico a bright economic future and greater economic independence from the United States.
”We admire your democracy, the system, the way it works is a marvel. But, frankly, we think it is money that makes the system really work. Isn`t it? With enough money you get your way, you even get to the White House maybe?”
He also pointed out a difference he saw between the U.S. government and the people of the United States. ”The (U.S.) government always wants to use its power, its force. There is a big difference between what the people in America say and what the government does. Look at the Vietnam War era. I don`t know why there is this difference,” he continued.
”I think the explanation is this; Americans have gotten used to their lives getting better each year. You want your children to have more and more than you did, to have a new car and a new washing machine, things like that. Since the (Second World) war, you have had that, and you expect it now. That makes you think about better and better lives first.
”If there are thoughts about other countries, they come later–much later–and they are, I am sorry to say, simplistic. Everything to you Americans is black and white, Russia is bad and black, America is good and white. You should learn about the color gray, my friend.”
