Constructing NAFTA: Myth, Representation, and the Discursive Construction of U.S. Foreign Policy Amy Skonieczny University of Minnesota The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in Novem- ber 1993 signified the acceptance of Mexico as an equal trading partner with the United States and Canada. However, accepting Mexico as an equal partner challenged a deeply ingrained U.S. image of Mexico as inferior, childlike, dependent, and suspicious. How was it possible for the U.S. public and its congressional representatives to accept equal economic integration with a country that embodied such a negative image? Addressing this dilemma through a constructivist approach, this article argues that the existing image of Mexico remained intact. The passage of NAFTA instead resulted from a discursive construction of NAFTA that emphasized a positive U.S. self-image through American myths thereby allowing the simultaneous acceptance of Mexico as infe- rior and as an equal trading partner. American myths and other repre- sentational elements constructed NAFTA for the American public and created a policy success for President Clinton. This article relies on an empirical investigation of newspaper advertisements to demonstrate how myths contributed to the discursive construction of NAFTA. The successful passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement ~NAFTA! by the U.S. Congress in November 1993 signified the acceptance of Mexico as an equal economic partner with the United States and Canada. For the first time in history, a developing nation successfully established itself in a regional trade bloc with two powerful, wealthy, and developed nations. However, accepting Mexico as a country worthy of equal partnership and as an acceptable risk for economic integration challenged the traditional U.S. image of Mexico, and Latin America in general, as inferior, childlike, dependent, and suspicious ~ Johnson, 1993; M. Cottam, 1994! . The Mexican NAFTA lobby quickly realized this negative image while promot- ing NAFTA in the United States. It found Mexico depicted as a “low wage, socially troubled, environmentally polluted country that exports illegal aliens to Author’s note: Earlier versions of this article were presented at the California State University Research Compe- tition, California State University, Bakersfield, May 7–8, 1999, the International Studies Association–West, San Francisco, October 1999, and the International Studies Association, Los Angeles, March 14 –18, 2000. I would like to thank and gratefully acknowledge the Department of International Relations at San Francisco State University where much of this article was conceived and developed. I have immensely benefited from the generous assistance and helpful comments of Sanjoy Banerjee, Roxanne Doty, Bud Duvall, Martha Cottam, Gavin Duffy, and Hellmut Lotz on various drafts of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments as well as the editors of International Studies Quarterly. International Studies Quarterly ~2001! 45, 433–454. © 2001 International Studies Association. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.