ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Trouble may be looming in Mexico

WASHINGTON -- New polling data scheduled to be released this week will bear troubling news for the Bush administration's Latin American policy-makers. They show that the U.S. image has continued to fall dramatically in three key countries -- Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Granted, the 18-country poll by Latinobarometro, a Chile-based firm, shows that there are other Latin American countries where the U.S. image has risen significantly, including Colombia, the five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic.
But when it comes to Latin America's three biggest countries, there is increasingly less sympathy for the United States, especially among its most educated people. The poll's overall trends were first released last month by The Economist magazine, but a new detailed section on Latin American relations with the United States will be made public Friday at The Miami Herald's Americas Conference.
What is likely to raise more eyebrows in Washington is the record decline in pro-American sentiment in Mexico, by far the most important country in the region for the United States in terms of border security, trade, oil supplies, illegal migration, drugs and environmental issues.
Iraq
Mexicans' positive opinion about the United States has plummeted from 72 percent in 2000 to a low of 41 percent this year, the poll shows. And when asked whether they agree with U.S. actions in Iraq, only 4 percent of Mexicans responded positively, one of the lowest percentages in the region.
By comparison, 62 percent of Mexicans have a positive opinion of the 25-country European Union, and 58 percent have a positive opinion of China, the new figures show.
Yes, you read right: Ten years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and despite the fact that Mexico more than doubled its exports to the United States, Mexicans have a better opinion of China than of the United States.
The U.S. war with Iraq no doubt plays a big role in the poll's results. Mexicans, who lost half of their territory to the United States in the 19th century, are especially sensitive to U.S. invasions, wherever they take place. And when the stated reasons for U.S. military invasions turn out to be dubious at best, such as with the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Mexicans don't take it lightly.
In addition, there is an element of human nature involved: People tend to idealize whatever is distant, and to direct their skepticism at whatever is closest.
Earlier this month, during a trip to Poland and the Czech Republic, I was surprised by the intensity with which most people there despise communism and the former Soviet Union, and how they idealize the United States and the late President Ronald Reagan.
When Mexicans profess a better opinion of China, a dictatorship, than of the United States, they may be expressing a similar beware-of-thy-neighbor sentiment. The grass is always greener on the other side of the world.
There are also domestic political reasons behind Mexico's growing anti-Americanism.
Leftist populism
President Vicente Fox may have oversold the idea that good ties with Washington would immediately speed up economic growth. And the two biggest opposition parties, the once ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, have reverted to leftist populism and anti-Americanism as a way to stress their differences with the Fox government.
"You have the entire PRD and PRI raising the anti-American flags, and the (ruling) National Action Party speaking out only halfheartedly," says former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda.
But the Latinobarometro data may help explain the high standing in the polls of Mexico City's leftist populist mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who leads the polls for the 2006 presidential elections despite a legal challenge that could prevent him from running.
My conclusion: While Washington's attention is focused on Iraq, and the few officials who care about Latin America are rightly concerned about Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba, they may be ignoring what may be the biggest upcoming trouble spot in this part of the world -- Mexico.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.