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Today Villahermosa is a get-rich-quick enclave in a jungle of poverty. The city's population has jumped from 150,000 to 250,000 in four years. Villahermosa has sprouted three first-class hotels, all booked solid. Highly paid oil workers have kicked up the prices of everything from housing to tortillas. Reeking of oil and money, the town is attracting the usual motley con men and drifters, losers and locos. The trucks barreling between the town and the fields rarely stop when they hit a pedestrian. About one pedestrian is killed each night, often a bewildered campesino still unable to grasp the rapid changes. Whores flash their gold-toothed smiles while cruising the wide boulevards, which have been newly rebuilt with pink paving stone. Rifle-toting policemen patrol the downtown banking area because, as one shopkeeper laments, "this is the season of the rateros [thieves], and they know this is a money town now." The better bars echo with the accents of Texas and Oklahoma, since Americans have been quietly allowed in to market equipment and technical advice. Brazilians, Frenchmen and Israelis are also eager to buy Mexico's oil and gas if Pemex does not strike a deal with the U.S.
Despite the present differences, the chances of the U.S. making a deal with Mexico are excellent if both sides use some enlightened diplomacy. The U.S. needs Mexican oil and gas to ease its dependence on the unstable Middle East. Besides, it would be much easier to pay for imports from Mexico than from Araby. Unlike the Persian Gulf states, Mexico is poor and populous. It has 66 million people now and anticipates 132 million by the end of the century-and they will need tremendous quantities of what the U.S. has to sell: farm machines, computers, technology of all kinds.
Clearly the time has come to forget the Alamo, to struggle down memories of the glorious oil nationalization and to try some creative horse trading. President Carter will journey to Mexico in mid-February to trade abrazos and to parley in his struggling Spanish with President Lopez Portillo. Now that Congress has passed the energy bill and U.S. natural gas prices will rise in January, Carter can comfortably sweeten the price for Pemex gas. In order to encourage Mexico's struggling agriculture and industry, and to relieve its population pressures, he would do well to promise higher economic aid, lower trade barriers on imports of Mexican textiles and produce, and a reversal of present moves toward stringent immigration controls. Above all, the U.S. must be willing to deal with its neighbor as an equal. Only then will the fiercely proud Mexicans soften their suspicion of the northern colossus and join in a partnership that will benefit both sides.