bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 16
(Editor’s note: Sidney Freifeld’s new book about some of the amusing sidelights of the Department over the years, Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service, was published by Hounslow Press in October. See our review on page 40.)
Around this time of year my thoughts often go back more than a quarter century to an odd little episode that took place just after I arrived in Mexico City to take up the post of First Secretary at our Embassy. In retrospect, it turned out to be unique in my three-decade foreign service career.
In 1955 I had been working as the United States desk officer. When I was offered the post in Mexico, and after talking it over with Crenia, I eagerly accepted and began studying Spanish for the first time. In addition, I began reading about Mexico. For the most part, this country’s history and international relations seemed to be inextricably intertwined with her huge neighbour to the North.
As I read on, I soon became appalled to read about Mexico’s tortuous relations with the United States, exacerbated by the American conquest over the years of such prime real estate as California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. But even more appalling was what I read about the behaviour of American petroleum and mining corporations and their buccaneering personnel in Mexico. I was reading American, not Mexican, histories, and they conveyed a caricature of the worst features of nineteenth-century big-stick imperialism.
Mexico is quintessentially a mestizo (mixed race) country; the bulk of its population combines Aztec, other Indian, and Spanish blood, with negro admixtures in certain areas. There is a small minority of whites. Prejudice about race and colour seem all the more intolerable in the Mexican mestizo setting. Mexican hypersensitivities to, and resentment of, everything American pervaded the works that I read. And they seemed hardly less pervasive when my family and I arrived in Mexico City in September of 1955.
The American Embassy in Mexico is one of the United States’ largest, and I assumed that its staff would have been selected for their understanding of, and sensitivity to, Mexican complexes about colour and race as well as Mexico’s manifold concern about relations with its dominant neighbour. Indeed, on perusing the American Embassy’s personnel list in the local diplomatic handbook, I noted that the Labour Attaché was Ben Stephansky; I had read that Mexican authorities esteemed him greatly for his sensitive handling of the complex bracero (wetback) illegal immigration problem, as divisive then as it is now. The revered ex-president, Lazaro Cardenas, had said that Ben had a better understanding of the problem and its impact on Mexican-United States relations than anyone in Mexico.
And I was delighted to see in the diplomatic list that my opposite number in the U.S. Embassy was Bill Snow. Bill had been Canadian desk officer in the State Department while I was U.S. desk officer in Ottawa and, although we had never met, we knew of each other by remote control. External would get telegrams from our embassy in Washington saying,, “Snow on the Canadian desk told us today that…’ and the State Department undoubtedly received telegrams from its embassy in Ottawa referring occasionally to me as the source of some information.
Very quickly after arrival in Mexico City, I arranged to have a chat with Hugh Morgan, the number two at the British Embassy. I also fixed an appointment with Bill Snow for early the next afternoon.
Snow couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful when I called on him. He gave me a run-down for nearly two hours on the important subjects and personalities of the day, and he then took me around his embassy to meet section chiefs who, he promised, would give me any help I might wish after settling in.
It was getting to be around four o’clock and I indicated, after profuse thanks for his helpfulness, that it was time for me to break away. But Bill insisted that I take a few more moments to meet his Ambassador, Francis White; he was, Bill had said, a political appointee of President Eisenhower’s and, by profession, a Maryland banker.
Bill took me into the Ambassador’s office and introduced me. The Ambassador opened the conversation by asking the usual question of a newcomer: where I had served prior to coming to Mexico. When I replied that I had just arrived from Ottawa, where I had been serving on the United States desk, he asked whether I had ever served at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
To this I replied that, regrettably, I had never served in Washington and hardly knew the city at all. But, I went on to say, I had worked for many years in New York before joining External Affairs and then for several more years in New York at our Consulate General and at our Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
“Oh you must know New York well, then,” said the Ambassador. “Do you know what we in Maryland say is the difference between Washington and New York?”
Sensing that I should play the “straight man” for a joke, I said: “No, Mr. Ambassador, what do people in Maryland say is the difference between Washington and New York?”
“Well,” the Ambassador replied, “Up in Maryland we say that in Washington you get pushed around by the niggers and in New York you get pushed around by the Jews.”
I shall never forget the look on Bill Snow’s face as he blanched and froze. In a grim voice, hardly audible, he told the Ambassador that he had already taken too much of his time and that he knew I had to go to another appointment. We quickly left the room.
Nearly speechless on our way to the elevators, I thanked Bill for the useful briefing he had given me and how interesting it was that — after being opposite numbers for many months in Ottawa and Washington – we had finally met in Mexico City.
But I thought it the path of wisdom not to mention to Bill that I indeed was in a hurry to get to my next appointment – to meet my family for dinner before sundown and then go on, for the first time in Mexico, to take part in the Kol Nidre services, which begin Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 16. Read the rest of this issue →
