United States and Mexico shared lot things throughout the period of time. Dialectic in intercultural communication exists between the history past and the present-future. Much of the functionalist and interpretive scholarship investigating culture and communication has ignored historical forces. Other scholars added history as a variable in understanding contemporary intercultural interaction, prior intergroup interaction variable that influences degree of intergroup anxiety. In contrast, critical scholars stress the importance of including history in current analyses of cultural meanings.
A dialectical perspective suggests that we need to balance both an understanding of the past and the present. Also the past is always seen through the lens of the present. For example, Oliver Stone's film, Nixon, was criticized because of the interpretation Stone made of (now) historical events and persons. As Stone pointed out, we are always telling our versions of history. (Alan Knight, 1987, 131)
Investigations of alliance in ethnic relationships reveal the tensions of the present and past in ethnic relationships. The importance of balancing an understanding the history, for example, of slavery and the African diaspora, the colonization of indigenous peoples, the internment of Japanese Americans, relationships between Mexico and the U.S., as well as maintaining a focus on the present in interethnic relationships in the United States.
Mexico faced an erratic American policy, which oscillated between territorial annexation and the most "vanguard" positions of a commercial expansionism to secure the desired Asian market by means of controlling the interoceanic route or the internal market through transcontinental communication. In this story we find diplomacy, or, better yet, some diplomats interested in one or many projects. The direction of their businesses did not always agree with that of the executive either the President or the Secretary of State. In the U.S. legislature contractors fought for a concession or their business through legislators, many of them being participants in these enterprises.
