Martin Needler’s article on “Politics and National Character: the Case of Mexico” (1971) is perfectly correct as far as it goes, but it must be pointed out that the personality traits which he identifies as Mexican are products of a considerably wider and much older cultural entity. Mexico is a peripheral and very distinctive example of the Latin American cultural area which is itself a peripheral and somewhat distinctive example of the Mediterranean cultural area. Some time ago I identified the whole cultural area and the personality structure it tended to produce as aspects of “the Pakistani-Peruvian Axis” (1966:1112-1122, reprinted as 1968:452-463). If I am correct in this, Needler is parochial in attributing “Mexican national character” to a combination of “the Indian’s fatalism and the proud self-assertion of the Spaniard” (Needler 1971:757).

A broader view of this subject would show that Mexico is a peripheral example of the “Pakistani-Peruvian cultural area” and that Mexican national character is merely a local variant of the personality structure of this larger area. That is why Silverman’s picture of south Italian personality is so similar to Needler’s idea of Mexican character (Silverman 1968).

This Mediterranean personality type is marked by various traits mentioned by Needler: low self-esteem, fatalism, defeatism, distrust of all persons outside a narrow kin group, pessimism, preoccupation with death, self-assertion, and machismo. These traits, however, should be associated in clusters and correlated with other cultural manifestations such as: (1) low respect for manual work, especially for agricultural work; (2) higher esteem for urban residence than for rural living, associated with neglect of the countryside, damage to natural vegetation, and much cruelty to animals, especially to domestic animals; (3) emphasis on honor, both personal and family, as a chief aim of life; (4) dietary customs which mix protein and vegetables within a nest or container of starch, on the same plate and in the same mouthful, unlike the core of Western civilization, which tends to segregate these three kinds of food, on the same plate or even into separate dishes. The personality traits of this larger area tend to cluster about two points: (1) The restriction of personal trust and loyalty within the kinship group (usually the extended or nuclear family) with a consequent inability to offer loyalty, trust, or personal identification to residential groups (villages, neighborhoods, parishes), voluntary associations, religious beliefs, or the secular state, resulting in large-scale lack of “public spirit,” combined with “corruption,” and paralysis of these other kinds of associations. (2) The combination of powerful patriarchal social tendencies with female inferiority (except as a mechanism for producing sons) leads to many psychological ambiguities: strong emphasis on female premarital virginity (both as a symbol of family honor and as an economic good), segregation of the sexes in social life, fear of women as a threat men’s virility (witches and belief in “the evil eye”), the need to demonstrate male virility by social “touchiness” and other behavior, including fantasies of demonstrations of male dominance over bulls, other men, and unattached women.

In the last generation or two, we have had numerous local studies of the culture-and-personality type dealing with portions of this wide area (Pitt-Rivers and Kenny on Spain; Banfield, Moss, Cancian, Silverman, and others on Italy; Campbell, Kavadias, Kanelli. and others on Greece; and numerous studies of the Near East or North Africa). Many of these consider the personality types they observe as consequences of local conditions of economic, national, religious, or historic origin. A few have seen the wider range of what they observe. Thus Balikci (1966:164) wrote, “Behind obvious cultural differences, many Mediterranean societies share certain basic cultural patterns… [with] basic cross-cultural similarities in regard to sex behavior, certain family roles, the position of the family in society, and the dichotomy of kinsmen and strangers.” Opler (1970:866) recognizes both the areal spread and the deep historical roots of these traits when he writes, “The Southern Italian family is in great measure understood if one considers it as a peasant society, as a circum-Mediterranean type, as one influenced by Roman history or even by the earlier pagan Classic Greek, or later Hellenistic traditions.”

What I wish to emphasize is that this personality structure is geographically wider than the Mediterranean, since it extends to Latin America, and is the consequence of historical experience going back even earlier than the ancient Greeks. There are works (Peristiany 1966) which see some of the geographic range, but from both points of view, the most suggestive work is Raphael Patai’s Golden River to Golden Road (1962), whose original title (now abandoned in a 1971 edition) shows that his attention extends from Rio de Oro to Samarkand.

The Pakistani-Peruvian axis does not now demark the area of a functioning society or civilization. This is one of the chief keys to its personality types. It is now largely an area of debris of traits and peoples surviving from the wreckage of deceased civilizations. The existing traits have historical origins covering thousands of years. For example, the diet, sexual symbolism of bull and “eye,” architecture, and other traits come from the archaic cultures before 600 B.C., including Minoan Crete; the urbanism and low esteem for manual labor derive from Classical Mediterranean society; while the emphasis on honor, female inferiority, and kinship groups flow from pastoral invaders, both from the northern grasslands (Indo-European) and the southern grasslands (Semites).

Other traits, such as fatalism, distrust of strangers, cynicism toward the state or the local community, come from the difficulties of farming in the Mediterranean environment or from Mediterranean history. Historically the Mediterranean has passed through three distinct experiences: (1) as a frontier area of cultural diffusion from Western Asia during the Archaic period (4500-600 B.C.); (2) as the central backbone of Mediterranean civilization in the Classical period (600 B.C.-A.D. 600), and (3) as a boundary conflict area between the three post-Classical civilizations (Byzantine, Western, and Islamic) since A.D. 600. The shift from the second to the third of these was so disruptive of community life in the area from the Golden River to the Golden Road that its problems have not been solved since, especially in view of the social and ethical failures of the two post-Classical religions, Christianity and Islam, on either side of the line from Tangier to Batum. These failures of religion, whose consequences were clearly seen by Christ and Mohomet, made it impossible to create any religious, territorial, or social community, and forced living patterns back toward the “amoral familism” of the extended family. In extreme cases this broke down further to amoral nuclear familism or even to amoral individualism. This basic outlook and personality type was given a distinctive twist in the Iberian peninsula, from Saracen and anti-lslamic influences. The export of this distinctive type to America and the changes made in it by the shattering of American Indian cultures gives us the distinctive Latin American personality patterns which Needler (1971) sees as “Mexican national character.” These patterns have been modified in various circumstances by the “culture of poverty ,” by modem industrialism and nationalism, by various nineteenth century ideologies such as Marxism, and by other influences, but the basic Pakistani-Peruvian outlook is still identifiable. What is distinctly Mexican, and potentially revolutionary, is the new political ideology which Needler reports thus: “the cynicism and alienation of Mexican respondents. . . did not extend to two elements of the political system: the president himself and the idea of the Mexican Revolution” (1971:760). Any discussion of Mexican national character should recognize the revolutionary implications of these exceptions and the remote sources of the other aspects of Mexican personality.

Silverman, who has a good appreciation of this Pakistani-Peruvian cultural area, has also glimpsed the nature of its northern boundary. This boundary, which roughly follows the lines of the Highland Zone of the Old World, is marked by the southern limits of the archaic peasant cultures, in which rural life was valued higher than urbanism, the land was loved (as a female entity), pride in skillful tillage was evident, fertility was prized over virility, and the cow was more valuable than the bull (whose usefulness was increased by castration). In this peasant culture the southern concept of honor was non-existent, female virginity or chastity were considered unnatural, pre-marital sexual relations were practiced (often condoned by a betrothal ceremony), and marriage often followed pregnancy, rather than preceding coition as in the south. This peasant culture accepted a female centered house-hold and tended to revere local, semi-pagan, female saints (or Mary seen as a Mother rather than as a Virgin) instead of the rather war-like male saints popular farther south. Above all, in the north the basic social units were territorial (villages or parishes), not kinship groups, and functioned as communities.

Studies of these distinctions are frustrated today by academic specialization, both areal and chronological, so that students attribute cause to whatever social feature strikes them as significant. This includes ethos (Banfield 1958), agricultural organization (Silverman 1968), transhumance pastoralism (Campbell 1964), Bedouin Arabism (Carmichael 1967), urbanism (Pitkin 1963:123.129), social hopelessness (Cancian 1961), and many others. A comparison of the similarities of values and personality between a rural pastoral people like the Saracatsan (Campbell 1964) and a modern, professional, urban Greek family (Kanelli 1963) will show the need to seek explanation on a wider and deeper areal and historical foundation.

This foundation must be a historical-cultural framework similar to that used in historical geology, so that local outcroppings of earlier cultural strata can be identified and coordinated. I gave a brief outline of such a framework for the Old World in 1961, but other historians have rather scorned any efforts at establishing a matrix of macro-history. Feeble efforts are now being made to remedy this lack in other disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, but these attempts will find almost insurmountable difficulties so long as historians do not do their part of the task.

An article by Carroll Quigley in the American Anthropologist, Volume 75, Number 1, February 1973.

The New York City of the 1970s looked very different from the gentrified metropolis we know today. The Bowery, now lined with luxury apartments, housed much of the city’s illicit activities, while drug dealers and prostitutes worked openly from Park Slope to Times Square.

Industrial decline, economic stagnation, and white flight led to the dramatic downturn for America’s largest city.

Gotham had an unprecedented fiscal crisis in 1975, and two years later the city descended into chaos after the power went out for 25 hours. New York City saw 1,814 homicides in 1980 — three times what we have today — while the population declined to just over 7 million from nearly 8 million a decade before.

At the same time, crack and heroin infested the city, driving the crime rate even higher.

Robert Stutman, a former special agent for the NYC DEA, told Frontline, “Crack literally changed the entire face of the city. Street violence had grown. Child abuse had grown hugely. Spousal abuse. I had a special crack violence file that I kept to convince the geniuses in Washington who kept telling me it wasn’t a problem.”

By 1990, the annual homicides in New York peaked at 2,245. The city lived in fear.

In 1976, 2,383 arrests were made for prostitution citywide. Of these, 1,165 were girls between the ages of 15 and 20.

There were an estimated 40,000 prostitutes in New York City in the ’70s, many with sad stories. This picture shows a hotel where a 15-year-old prostitute died in 1975.

Authorities were of little help. In this picture, Sydney Biddle Barrows, the “Mayflower Madam,” celebrates with champagne after pleading guilty to promoting prostitution in return for a $5,000 fine and no prison sentence.

During the ’70s, the New York City Planning Commission estimated the city had about 245 stores with “adult uses,” like adult movie theaters, massage parlors, adult bookstores, or peepshows.

By the mid-’70s, an estimated 200,000 people abused heroin in New York City.

Cheap and destructive crack also spread rapidly through the city in the ’80s.

Dysfunction in the NYPD didn’t help the city’s drug problems. This picture shows detective Frank Serpico (with beard) during his famous 1971 testimony about widespread corruption, as officers bought drugs, took bribes, and paid prostitutes while on duty.

Fiscal problems forced the NYPD to lay off 50,000 employees in 1975. In the next five years, as cuts continued, the police force would shrink by 34%, while serious crime increased by 40%.

The financial crisis coincided with the blackout of 1977, which led to looting and arson throughout the city. 1,000 fires were reported.

1,600 stores were looted, contributing to a $300 million tab for the city.

In a little more than 24 hours, police arrested 3,700 people.

David Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam” serial killer, also terrorized New York City the year of the blackout. He murdered six people and injured seven during a 13-month blood-lust ending in 1977.

A couple of years later, parents had cause to fear for their kids. Etan Patz became the first “kid on a milk carton” in 1979. He disappeared in SoHo after a short walk to the school bus stop.

The city’s budget problems affected the Transit Authority, too. The organization cut much of the subway’s maintenance to save money, leading to a build-up of graffiti.

Graffiti even covered Grand Central Station, shown here in 1973, the most popular subway stop in New York City.

Much of New York City’s crime happened on the subway in the late ’70s. The Lexington Avenue Express landed the nickname the “Mugger’s Express.”

In the first two months of 1979, six murders occurred on the subway. Nine occurred that whole year. By September 1979, the police recorded over 250 felonies on the subway every week, the highest crime rate for any mass transit network in the world.

Turnstile jumping was common during those years, giving thieves a chance to mug people without having to pay high fares.

Bernhard Goetz, who shot four youths in a subway train in 1984, became a symbol for the paranoia New Yorkers felt about getting robbed or attacked.

Much of the tension and fear was related to race. One man was killed and another was beaten in a string of racially-motivated attacks in Howard Beach, Queens in 1986.

Police escort Jason Ladone, center, 17, one of four teenagers charged in connection with the death of Michael Griffith. The Trinidad-born man was run down on the highway by a car and killed.

A female investment banker was raped, beaten, and left to die in Central Park in 1989. Four black males and one Hispanic man were later falsely charged with the crime.

Five teens went to prison for the crime. But 13 years later, a convicted rapist named Matias Reyes admitted he alone attacked the jogger. The assaulted woman became known as the “Central Park Jogger.”

Movies like “Death Wish” (1974), “Taxi Driver” (1976), and “Escape From New York” (1981 — pictured) chronicled the decline of New York City in pop culture.

The number of murders in New York City peaked in 1990 at 2,245, but then the tide began to turn.

High profile crimes pressured Mayor David Dinkins to hire more police officers. One of the worst was the 1990 murder of 22-year-old tourist Brian Watkins, who was killed when four teenagers attacked his family on the subway. This photo shows a memorial for Brian in Flushing.

In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins proposed a $1.8 billion plan to “fight fear,” which involved hiring around 8,000 new police officers.

Dinkins also hired a police commissioner with a fresh outlook on stopping crime. Lee Brown (left), sworn-in as the city’s police commissioner in 1990, subscribed to the idea of “community policing.”

Brown believed in cops walking the streets, getting to know people, and solving problems — rather than just responding to 911 calls. After one year in his position, crime decreased in every category.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani, elected in 1993, subscribed to the similar “broken windows” theory of crime, which held that minor offenses like vandalism were gateways to more serious crime.

By 2001, crime had fallen 56% in New York City. More and better policing helped, as did the booming economy and the national decline of hard drugs.

Crime also fell 33% nationally. Berkeley Law professor and author of “The City That Became Safe,” Frank Zimring gives Giuliani “derivative credit” for making New York safer. What he calls the “great American crime decline” had a huge effect, as well.

Obama will abandon complex policies on emissions, clean coal and refocus on achievable goals like applying deodorant daily, learning what to say when you burp.

A photo has been released by TIME showing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a “Arabian Nights” themed party wearing blackface makeup with his black-painted hand on a woman’s chest.

The picture was taken in the spring of 2001 at a private party held at Vancouver’s prestigious West Point Grey Academy and released to TIME by a parent at the school. At the time Trudeau was a 29-year-old teacher at the school. The photo was published in the school’s 2000-2001 yearbook called The View.

According to the TIME article, the party was attended by school faculty, administrators and parents.

Liberal spokesman Cameron Ahmad confirmed the photo is of Trudeau, who is on a plane at the moment.

“It was a photo taken in 2001 while he was teaching in Vancouver, at a school’s annual dinner which had a costume theme of “Arabian Nights”,” Ahmad said. “He attended with friends and colleagues dressed as a character from Aladdin.

Trudeau told media that were with him on a flight from Halifax that he should have known better, but he didn’t.

“Obviously I regret that I did it and I’m really sorry I did,” Trudeau said.

He said that when he was in high school he dressed up in black makeup at a school performance.

“It’s something that I didn’t realize was racist at the time, but know I recognize it was something racist to do and I regret.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who was taking part in a town hall meeting when the news broke, said it’s becoming clear that Trudeau’s public persona may not be an accurate reflection of who he is.

“I think he needs to answer for it. I think he’s got to answer the question why he did that and what does that say about what he thinks about people who, because of who they are, because of the colour of their skin, face challenges and barriers and obstacles in their life,” Singh said.

“Who is the real Mr. Trudeau? Is it the one behind closed doors, the one when the cameras are turned off that no one sees?” Singh asked. “Is that the real Mr. Trudeau? Because more and more, it seems like it is.”

The National Council of Canadian Muslims wasted little time calling on Trudeau to explain the “deeply saddening” photo.

“The wearing of blackface/brownface is reprehensible, and hearkens back to a history of racism, slavery, and an Orientalist mythology that is unacceptable,” said executive director Mustafa Farooq.

“While we recognize that people can change and evolve over two decades, it is critical that the prime minister immediately and unequivocally apologize.”

Calls to the West Point Grey Academy have not been returned.