HENWOOD
I plead guilty. I paid it next to no attention, and I'm not sure why. I spent a lot of time in the 90s and early 00s being interested in Mexico,
but maybe the rot of the US has forced my gaze inward? I don't know.
GULICK
During the 1990's, NAFTA, the Zaps, and (less so) the cessation of PRI hegemony spurred a lot of interest in Mexico on the US left, by and from people who might not have been otherwise interested in Mexico. These conditions had largely disappeared by 2000. Yet the drop-off in interest by US'ers, including by your average leftist (broadly defined) without a particular interest in Mexico, seems quite sharp compared to 2006.
I think Doug might be on to something: for a lot of US leftists, the ongoing socio-political decay of the US leads to a kind of rubbernecking and inwards focus, with attendant changes in internet use habits.
I think (only a hypothesis, mind you) that the gravitation of "reading" (actually browsing) habits to social media vehicles has resulted in significantly less (not more) cosmopolitanism. In my experience, these instruments are more conducive to generating gossip and snark about already familiar subjects, than to the dissemination of information and analysis about new subjects, and thus are biased (so to speak) towards highly stereotyped domestic political "conversations".
It's entirely possible I'm engaged in a lot of projecting here.