All nations exhibit some degree of chauvinism, and embattled Mexico—“so far from God and so close to the United States” in the words of a distinguished ex-president—has certainly indulged in its share of nationalistic rhetoric and chest-pounding. But since the revolution in the early 1920s, Mexico has also opened out onto the world. It welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Spanish Civil War, and in general has pursued a cultural policy emphasizing the unity of Spanish-speaking peoples by means of prizes, symposia, invitations, and publishing houses that are open to all Spaniards and Spanish Americans. Just in the past year, for instance, the cultural arms of both the federal government and of Mexico City itself have been celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges with numerous symposia. As the editor of a recent bilingual edition of Borges’s Selected Poems (Viking), I was invited to take part in a roundtable on the poetry of Borges. The symposium— which included such distinguished figures as the Argentinian poet Juan Gelman and the Colombian poet and novelist Alvaro Mutis—went off without a hitch, and one could only be impressed by this example of Mexican cultural catholicity. It is not at all clear that Buenos Aires would do as much for a comparable Mexican figure like the late Octavio Paz.

That’s the good news about Mexico. My recent visit reminded me that there is plenty of bad news as well. Although I was there