Davis Builds Bridges in Relations With Mexico

MEXICO CITY — In an effort to ease cross-border strains, Gov. Gray Davis met Tuesday with President Ernesto Zedillo and announced that the pair will convene again this spring in California, which the Mexican president will visit for the first time since 1994.

Davis’ 48-hour tour here marks “the beginning of a new relationship between Mexico and California,” Zedillo told the governor and a delegation of state officials, even as he acknowledged his nation’s recent strains with the Golden State.

“Now we have on the California side, leadership that has shown . . . enormous respect for Mexico,” he told the delegates. Davis “was not afraid as a candidate to speak out about the importance of having a good relationship with Mexico.”

Dates and other details of Zedillo’s California visit have not been determined, said Davis, who arrived in Mexico City on Monday evening and is scheduled to return to Sacramento today. The trip requires approval from the Mexican Congress, which is expected to be a formality.

Davis said he hopes Zedillo will address a joint session of the state Legislature in Sacramento. And he suggested the president might tour California, including perhaps the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

The governor also proudly announced Tuesday that Telmex, a Mexican communications corporation, has agreed to relocate its U.S. headquarters from Houston to San Diego.

Telmex chairman Carlos Slim, who hosted the Davis delegation at a lavish party at his estate Monday night, told reporters he will open 15 offices in California this year that will eventually employ 600 workers. The company now operates four offices in California, including three in Los Angeles.

The offices are intended to allow California residents to pay the phone bills of their family members in Mexico. Davis aides said the deal was tentative until the governor met privately Monday with Slim, the richest man in Mexico with a conglomerate that includes coffee shops and copper in addition to Mexico’s largest telecommunications company.

Slim said the improved relations will help commerce. “Business deals are done between people, between businesses, in the right atmosphere,” he said. “This rapprochement between Mexico and California is very important for both California and Mexico.”

Davis said he hopes to have more specific plans for mutual cooperation when Zedillo visits California. He said he would like to focus on four areas: problems of abuse on the border, pollution problems on the border, educational exchange opportunities, and a new task force for joint scientific and technical research.

Zedillo, who attended Yale University and was raised on the California border in Mexicali, has visited at least five states in the U.S. since he became president and had visited Los Angeles when he was Mexico’s education secretary.

But Zedillo has not been back since his 1994 election as president. That year, California voters passed Proposition 187, a ballot measure to end benefits for illegal immigrants that was widely interpreted in Mexico as a hostile action. More Mexican emigrants live in California than anywhere else.

On Tuesday, Zedillo characteristically declined to take questions from reporters. But observers said that in his private meeting with Davis and nearly two dozen California lawmakers, business leaders and academic officials, Zedillo expressed disappointment in recent relations with California.

The president did not mention Proposition 187 or former Gov. Pete Wilson, who was vilified by the Mexican government for promoting the initiative during his reelection campaign.

But the topic is still a sensitive issue for Mexicans, and reporters packed into a news conference Davis held at the presidential mansion repeatedly asked how his policies might differ from Wilson’s.

Davis offered few examples beyond his support for a $60-million program to provide prenatal care for pregnant illegal immigrants that Wilson had opposed.

When Davis included such an allocation in his proposed budget, released last month, his spokesman, Michael Bustamante, said it was “first and foremost because the courts ordered us to do so.”

Davis said he will “enforce the law in California,” including Proposition 187 if it clears the courts. The governor also said immigration to the U.S. should be limited to legal applicants and not include illegal border crossings.

“I have no power to change [immigration laws], but even if I were in a position to change them I would not change them,” he said. “I think people should enter the country legally.”

But in a message that he hopes will go a long way, Davis emphasized that all immigrants, regardless of legal status, should be treated “with dignity and respect.”

“I’m confident that in time people will realize there is a new governor in California and his name is Gray Davis,” the governor said. “And he has a new attitude.”

That is welcome news for the Mexican government, which has frequently been criticized for not doing enough to protect its emigrants abroad. The videotaped beating of fleeing immigrants by Riverside County sheriff’s deputies in 1996 was widely broadcast in Mexico and remains a prominent example of the abuses that Mexican officials hope to end with a better California relationship.

“There is a total change in the style of dialogue . . . from the black period of Pete Wilson in what Gray Davis is saying,” said Sen. Jorge Calderon, one of about 15 members of the Mexican Congress who met Davis during a lunch Tuesday.

At his news conference, Davis dismissed some of the immigration complaints as a matter for the U.S. federal government, not California. But Juan Rebolledo, Mexico’s deputy foreign minister, said the state can play an important role.

“Riverside wasn’t done by the Border Patrol,” he said. “Congress sets the policy, but much of the application is by local authorities. This is often a problem of local or state police.”

Rebolledo called Davis’ meeting with Zedillo “extremely friendly” and suggested that the mutual respect will improve business and cultural opportunities between Mexico and California as well as the resolution of difficult problems.

“This will begin to change the climate,” he said. “There are things we can’t change immediately. . . . But the commitment of this visit is, ‘Let’s look for those things we can do together.’ This tone is what is important.”

Davis has minimized expectations for specific policy agreements during his visit, suggesting instead that the trip is intended as a first step in repairing a damaged relationship that has valuable implications for trade and for the cultural ties between Mexico and its largest emigrant community.

With $12 billion in annual imports from California, Mexico is the state’s second-largest trading partner, behind Japan. California exports to Mexico have nearly doubled since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement four years ago.

But they are still less than half the level reported by Texas, which has a much smaller economy.