From a recent story on the Borat Brothers, mistrust of authorities runs deep:
The parents have been adamant the brothers were set up and continue to proclaim their innocence. Similar sentiment is evident in Dagestan and Chechnya, where mistrust of the authorities runs deep and graffiti shouts Dzhokhar is innocent.
This ought to get us to similarly wonder: what is the historical level of distrust of government amongst Mexicans toward their own government? Because whatever it is, such a view may, in time, become the dominant view within the United States.
Cursory evidence suggests Mexicans have a high level of distrust of government insofar as government in Mexico has a long history of one-party rule and thorough corruption, to the highest levels.
A 2007 Washington Post story quotes Mexico’s own deputy attorney general bemoaning politicians who “take advantage of the eternal distrust in our institutions.” The Post adds:
If the Mexican public is skeptical, it is not without reason, political analysts said. Seven decades of one-party rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party fostered an ethos of fraud and untouchability.
NPR is now running a series on violent crime throughout Latin America. This morming, they mentioned a study which demonstrated 20% of the violent crimes committed in the utopian republic of Venezuala is committed by… the police.
What do you figure the rate is in Mexico?
Here is the abstract of a political science article from 2007 titled “Trust in North America: Why Do Mexicans Distrust Their Continental Neighbors?“:
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes individual-level factors that help explain why some Mexicans trust Americans and why many more distrust them. The author develops a statistical model based on survey data that explains the determinants of Mexicans’ trust in the United States government and citizens and compare it to trust in Canadians, Mexicans living in the United States, and other Latin American national groups. The aim is to identify structural and attitudinal traits and orientations among Mexicans to help us understand their views of their North American neighbors. The results show that Mexicans’ trust in Americans is distinctive and particular and has a different rationale than that of trust in other countries and nationalities. Sharing some values and ideological orientations fosters trust, whereas sticking to certain types of nationalist sentiment –not all types– undermines it. A strong and distinctive predictor of Mexicans’ trust in the United States is social interconnectedness, a bridge built by immigration.
With racial-conscious leftists (in both Mexico & the U.S.), the U.S. education system, the MSM, and the Hollywood Culture Industry pushing a Mexican collective consciousness of historical grievance against the U.S., with polls that show Mexicans living in the U.S. identifying as Mexicans first and foremost, will Mexican distrust of government translate into legions of small-government libertarians (not likely) or into legions of ‘get whatever you can out of the government’ corruption, racial nepotism, and welfare dependency (more likely)?
