Mexico has broken a decades-old tradition of rejecting US aid workers, granting permission for the first group of US Peace Corps volunteers ever to work here.
Mindful of national sensitivity over US influence, Mexico plans to keep the group out of public view and will continue to reject US projects in other areas, such as drug-crop substitution.
But for a country that has kicked out or criticized US experts in the past -- and one still sensitive about being viewed as underdeveloped -- this is a big change.
The first 15 Peace Corps volunteers, scheduled to arrive this summer, won't be performing their usual work in construction, rural schools and clinics or in training farmers.
Instead the Americans will be tucked away in government research centers, where they will work on information technology, science and business development.
"This is not the typical [Peace Corps] program. These people are not going to be working out in the villages," said Efrain Aceves Pina, international affairs director for Mexico's National Science and Technology Council.
The corps is happy to follow Mexico's rules, but it is accustomed to more contact with the common people, said corps spokeswoman Barbara Daly.
"The Peace Corps always works to integrate ourselves in the local culture," she said. "The volunteers live in the community and live with host families during the training."
Even though it hasn't been decided yet, the Mexico volunteers' stay "in the community" may mean a stint in an upscale Mexico City suburb.
After years of rejecting Peace Corps help, Mexico agreed to the program last year after US-Mexico relations hit a low point over the war in Iraq.
Mexican officials say the idea came up as a natural extension of existing US-Mexico scientific and technical cooperation programs. But many analysts believe Mexican President Vicente Fox accepted the program to try to smooth over relations with US President George W. Bush.
"After the clash on Iraq, Fox is eager to please the United States," historian Lorenzo Meyer said. "He's trying to prove that he and Bush are the best of buddies."
Compared with the billions spent on US military aid, development and crop substitution in other Latin American countries, Mexico gets next to nothing, apart from some small training programs for police and soldiers.
Yet news of a US training program for the Mexican army made headlines here in October, stirring such controversy that the US Embassy issued a statement clarifying that the total amount of aid was US$1.25 million -- compared to US outlays of about US$700 million per year in the Andean countries.
Mexico has rejected other US programs aimed at persuading farmers to substitute legal food crops for illegal harvests like opium and marijuana, two illicit crops now widespread in some regions of Mexico.
"It's not that we have declined any aid out of spite," said Jose Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor. "It's just that we think our sister nations (in Latin America) have a greater need for these programs, so out of solidarity we decided to let them have the scarce funding."
For a nation inclined to view its northern neighbor as a bully, accepting aid "leaves a bad taste in your mouth," said Meyer.
"Mexico has never wanted to accept aid," he said. "It's like accepting charity, a pittance."
Part of Mexico's hesitance comes from bad past experiences.
US anthropologist Oscar Lewis didn't mean to offend anyone when he came to Mexico to interview a poor, problem-plagued Mexican family for his 1961 book The Children of Sanchez. The book became a social science landmark, defining what came to be known as "the anthropology of poverty."
But it angered some Mexicans so much that the country's Society for Geography and Statistics filed a criminal complaint against Sanchez in 1965 for sedition, violating public morality and defaming Mexico.
Prosecutors decided not to bring the case to trial, despite the society's complaint that Lewis had "dragged the name of Mexico through the dirt." But the feeling of insult didn't fade, and in 1966 private publishers in Mexico put out a biting book about social problems in US ghettos entitled Stories for Oscar Lewis.
Perhaps the most troubled US project was the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a group of researchers who were invited in the 1930s to work on improving literacy rates in Mexican Indian villages.
The linguists studied dozens of Indian languages and translated the Bible into those tongues. They set up medical services and agricultural training programs.
By the 1980s, the linguists -- affiliated with a Protestant Bible-translation society -- were being accused of being everything from missionaries to CIA agents. The Mexican government withdrew permission for the project, and most volunteers had been asked to leave the country by 1990.
"Our people are not preachers ... they are linguists whose work has been recognized and valued in academic circles," Summer Institute spokeswoman Rebeca Rivas de Lopez said.
No matter how the Americans saw their work, it did help lay the basis for some of Mexico's most stubborn, bloody religious conflicts. In San Juan Chamula, dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Catholics and Indians who converted to Protestant faiths following the linguists' stay.
Still, officials haven't ruled out the possibility that Mexico could accept more Peace Corps volunteers, or other aid.
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