Americans, when they think of Mexico, see it as a pleasant place for midwinter holidays, a rich source of (perhaps authentic) pre-Columbian treasures, an accommodating provider of divorces, or a more or less permanent refuge from the demands of 20th-century industrial life. However, Mexico presents no problems, and therefore Americans do not think about it very much. But for Mexicans, the United States is the big problem and they think about it all the time. They have been doing so with renewed intensity during the current administration of President Luis Echeverria, a proud, ambitious man in a proud, small country. Mexican relations with the United States have long been founded on humiliation and dependence. Mexicans know that the United States is usually strong enough to work its will - whether conquering all the land from Texas to California or invading in pursuit of bandits or closing the border to punish Mexico for lax drug enforcement. All this is seen by Mexicans as a reflection of their weakness as much as American strength. It is not an easy assessment for them to accept. No matter how urbane he may seem, a Mexican official has trouble keeping resentment out of his feelings when he deals with the United States...

On the bridge of a ship moving through the Panama Canal, you can see Gatun Lake high above and then feel the locks by the Atlantic Ocean elevate you up to it and later drop you down from it on the Pacific side. The experience conjures up all the schoolbook stories about the American Army Engineers who succeeded where Ferdinand de Lesseps of the Suez Canal had failed, wiping out the malaria that had slaughtered his men, devising the system of marvelous locks to take the place of his useless ditch. The Canal is the last splinter of Teddy Roosevelt’s Big Stick. The Canal is an engineering marvel, but it is also a colonial anachronism. To feel that, you must leave the bridge of the ship and sit in magistrate's court in Balboa, capital of the U.S. Canal Zone. I listened one morning to the American judge who, with his white hair and resonant though gentle voice, looked and sounded like Lewis Stone playing the judge in the old Andy Hardy movies. The judge was lecturing a seventeen-year-old Panamanian after convicting him of driving in the Zone without a license...