NORTHERN EXPOSURES

By MARGOT HORNBLOWER MEXICO CITY

High above the smog-smothered skyscrapers, on the parapets of Chapultepec Castle, the bronze statues of six young soldiers strike a gallant pose. The teenage cadets revered by every Mexican as the ``Boy Heroes'' died defending the fortress against Yanquis in 1847. Every Sept. 13, the President of Mexico, his Cabinet and the diplomatic corps assemble at the Mexico City fortress to recall the defeat that led to el despojo territorial, what Mexicans consider the unjust seizure of their land that now makes up California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

``The image of the U.S. has been of an imperialist country,'' says history teacher Samuel Vargas as he guides his sixth graders around the monument. Watching them, Luis Garcia, a castle guard, offers a different view. Unbuttoning his gray uniform, he reveals a T shirt emblazoned NEW YORK. In fact, since 1988 Chicago has become Garcia's second home. After 25 years guarding the Boy Heroes, he earns only $40 a week. For the past seven years, he has taken a May-to-October leave of absence, hopped a plane to visit his sister, then overstayed his tourist visa to work as a butcher for $260 a week. ``As soon as my children finish university, I'll stop,'' Garcia says. ``Money is like air--without it, you have nothing. The U.S. should allow us to come work when we can be helpful.''

America the bully. America the bountiful. So it has always seemed from the Mexican side of the 2,000-mile-long divide. The peso's latest melodrama only proves the paradox in the eyes of many Mexicans. American investors pour speculative money into Mexico, then snatch it back when times grow hard and Mexico needs it most. The U.S. rides to the rescue, but imposes such harsh conditions that Mexico will be forced into recession.

``The U.S. is both an opportunity and a problem for us,'' says Jorge Bustamente, president of Tijuana's Colegio de la Frontera Norte and a professor at Indiana's University of Notre Dame. ``We make money from our proximity, but the power is asymmetrical. The U.S. is boss. It calls the shots, and it wants us on our knees before it will deal with us.'' Adds former Foreign Minister Fernando Solana: ``I congratulate Clinton for being clever. He is helping U.S. investors who made a fortune on Mexico's high- interest rates, but now do not want to assume that risk.''

If Americans barely remember the Alamo, Mexicans see past and present as an eternal tug-of-war with their northern neighbor. Virtually any Mexican high school graduate readily recites a litany of humiliations most Americans ignore: the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forcing the sale of Mexico's northern half; a 1911 U.S.-supported coup; American invasions in 1914 and 1916; the expulsion of as many as 1 million Mexican immigrants from the U.S. during the 1950s' Operation Wetback. Now California's Proposition 187, aimed at denying education and health services to undocumented immigrants, is seen as an exercise in ethnic cleansing. ``History is taught one way in Mexico and another way in the U.S.,'' says former Public Education Secretary Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, consul in Los Angeles. ``It is our psychological trauma that the U.S. robbed us. But in the U.S. textbooks portray Mexicans as bandits who invaded Texas.''

Grudges notwithstanding, perceptions are growing more sophisticated with the rapid rise of Mexican immigration to the U.S. and the explosion of commerce since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect last year. The border, Mexicans like to say, is mostly imaginary, despite patrols, guard dogs and chain-link fences. ``They could plant land mines, and it would not stop people from crossing,'' says Mexicali writer Sergio Gomez Montero. ``We may not like gringos for historical reasons, but today the world is dividing into commercial blocks, and we are handcuffed to each other for better or for worse.'' Travel the country: it seems hard to find anyone without at least a cousin or two working al otro lado--on the other side.

The broken-down fence between Mexicali, Mexico, and Calexico, California, stretches directly in front of David Gomez Rocha's plywood shack. Seven days a week the 28-year-old rises at 3 a.m. for a two-hour trip across the border to pick asparagus for $4.25 an hour. Granted amnesty in 1987, Gomez Rocha is now a legal alien. His mother has a permit to pick grapes further north in California, returning to Mexicali on weekends. ``Who would do this backbreaking work if they closed the border?'' says Gomez Rocha. ``The U.S. does not have enough farmworkers, so they hire illegals. Mexico is the U.S.'s right hand. They should pay us higher wages.''

Cross-border strains are rare here. The Mexicali Cineplex offers a choice among Nell, Speechless, Junior and Disclosure. At the border checkpoint, housewives flood through turnstiles heading for Calexico's Wal-Mart. Calexico's mayor is Mexican American, as are most residents. Even on the university campus in Mexicali, says student-body president Pedro Ariel Mendivil, anti-American slogans are virtually unheard of. ``That's old-fashioned politics,'' he says, adding that he hopes to earn a master's degree in the U.S. to gain foreign experience. He will not emigrate, however: ``I love Mexico passionately. We have all the resources here, but they are not properly exploited.'' When Clinton announced the peso rescue package, Mexicali and Calexico rejoiced. ``San Guillermo is a man with vision,'' says a smiling Joaquin Ramirez Chacon about Bill Clinton. Ramirez Chacon employs 400 at his Pepsi bottling plant and sends his 10-year-old daughter to school in Calexico. As he puts it, ``You need us, and we need you.''

Fifteen hundred miles south, in the Sierra Negra, lies a poorer and more conservative Mexico. Here along the dry river beds suspicion of Uncle Sam remains pronounced. ``How did Mexico fall so quickly?'' asks Serafin Perez Nava, mayor of San JoseTetla (pop. 800). ``Under Salinas we thought we had prestige, but it washed away like a sand castle. Now they are mortgaging our country. What happens later if we can't pay our debts? Will the U.S. then ask for part of our territory?'' Carlos Garcia Moreno teaches 17 children in a one-room schoolhouse. His $70-a-week salary can no longer cover the pencils, notebooks and breakfast he bought for them. ``I don't know who to blame,'' he says. ``But the U.S. has an obligation to help its neighbor out of humanity.''

San Jose Tetla has an intimate relationship with its northern neighbor. Nearly 40% of town residents work in the U.S., many leaving families behind. They send back money for satellite-TV dishes, and each year the exiles return for the village fiesta, paying for food, music and shirts for the annual relay race. ``Without them it would be hard to have a fiesta,'' says Reveriano Garcia Garcia, 58, whose five children work as waiters in Queens. The New Yorkers contributed $1,000 for a new basketball court, now the village centerpiece.

Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra sees ``a revolution in the way the Mexican views the gringo.'' In the past, he says, ``the ruling classes emphasized our acute differences with the Anglo-Saxons in order to affirm our separate identity. But now hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mexicans have built bridges to the U.S. The frontier has become but a minor inconvenience. Perhaps it is utopian, but I look forward to its disappearance.'' From south of the border, at least, Mex-America beckons.