  UN_List: for United Nations articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register Don't forget:
|
Posted on 03/15/2002 2:59:20 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) - Nestled among jagged mountains 120 miles south of the Texas border, this city in many ways is everything Mexico is not: It's modern, the residents are university graduates and you can drink the water.
Monterrey is also what anti-globalization activists fear, with its suburbs, mini-malls and U.S. chains.
When world leaders converge on Monterrey next week, Mexico will be presenting this industrial metropolis as the poster child for how to develop the third world.
Monterrey is playing host to the U.N. International Conference on Financing for Development, an unprecedented world summit on how to combat poverty and redistribute wealth around the globe. Fifty-two heads of state are expected to attend, including President Bush and Cuban President Fidel Castro.
U.N. spokesman Tim Wall said Mexican President Vicente Fox chose Monterrey to show world leaders its economic success "rather than a scenic place with great cocktails."
"Monterrey is not what you would call a great town for tourism, it's not a center of colonial architecture, it doesn't have a beachfront, but it's an economic powerhouse," Wall said. "It's the home of Latin America's first steel mill, it has manufacturing, trade, commerce, high-tech industries."
With more millionaires per capita than any other area in Mexico, the Monterrey metropolitan area of some 3 million people boasts the highest standard of living in Mexico.
Wages for laborers can be as much as five times higher than in the rest of the country - where the urban minimum wage is $4 a day - and the people of Monterrey study an average of three years more than other Mexicans. The crime rate is among the lowest for Mexico's metropolitan areas, and its police are considered among the least corrupt.
The city is home to Mexico's richest businesses, including Cemex, the world's third-largest cement company.
Dotting the green mountains outside the city are sprawling estates with swimming pools, helicopter pads and horse stables. Versace and other world-class designers have stores here.
Mercedes and BMWs zoom to strip malls and supermarkets. Many residents spend weekends at beach homes on Padre Island off the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and have adopted English words like "shopping."
But some anti-globalization activists say the glossy image is nothing more than a Hollywood prop.
"The restaurants are McDonald's, Los Kentucky (Fried Chicken), Los Carl's Jr.," said Marianela Madrigal, a Monterrey resident who is coordinating an anti-globalization meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. summit. "We are very Americanized. Little by little we are losing our own culture. We're losing our Mexican identity and instead absorbing the values of North Americans, which are well, consumerism, yes, consumerism and that's about it."
In many ways, Monterrey looks like a mini-middle America. At one busy intersection, Applebee's and McDonald's fight for attention against advertisements for Quaker State oil and Hampton Inn. Along the highway from the airport, a giant billboard features a smiling family under the words: "Now houses in front of Wal-Mart!"
"This is not an example to follow," Madrigal said. "The wealth is still concentrated among the upper class, and the poor here are spending an unlimited amount of money on things to keep up. I met a family who bought 20 or 30 stuffed animals because they were in fashion, but they lived in a shack. They spend their money on this rather than nutritious food, better homes and education for their children."
Patrocinio Vera, 35, came to Monterrey with a duffel bag of clothes and a willingness to work hard. Six years later, the stout Mixteco Indian man from Oaxaca - one of Mexico's poorest southern states - said life is better here, but far from easy.
Vera, who plays in a traditional Oaxacan music group at restaurants, bars and parties, has been able to buy a small plot of land and a van to cart his band's instruments.
But he lives in a cement hovel. Raw sewage flows down a dirt canal past his front door.
He said he tried to find a factory job, but no one would hire him because he has only a few years of schooling.
"I like it here because my sons have the chance to study, to do better than me," he said. "That's the only way to end poverty, to escape this sad life. Working hard is not enough. It's not fair to have to sacrifice so much and still have nothing. We just want to live like the people in the city who use their money to have fun."
Strictly speaking, Mexicans *are* North Americans. Central America starts at Mexico's southern border and ends at Colombia's border with Panama.
Which better than the tin and straw hovel he'd be in if still in Oaxaca. He said he tried to find a factory job, but no one would hire him because he has only a few years of schooling.
And whose fault is that? AFAIK, Mexico has free public schooling, (although it's pretty bad in some places, since it's teachers are often relatives of political types not really qualified for the job, or any other for that matter) and it's theoreticaly mandatory for more than "a few years".
You read my mind, for which I'm tempted to hit abuse. Please don't let it happen again.
;-)
|
UN_List: for United Nations articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register Don't forget:
|
Kinda sez it all.
The PRI is very successful at maintaining a two-tiered socio-economic structure.
But, but, it's such a benevolent organization, how could anyone be concerned about the UN?
Willie you really should not rub it in. The globalization cheerleaders around here really do not believe that this tide will lift all boats. They just plan on being the ones sitting on the veranda of the global plantation mansion sipping juleps while the peons labor away in the fields, or play mariachi music for them.
Regards
J.R.
Maximilian had the same dream.
The Mexicans shot him.
MEXICAN SEPHARDIC SOURCES. Keep in mind that Monterrey, and the state of Nuevo Leon, was settled by 695 Jewish families escaping the Inquisition in Mexico City. Texas was formerly part of Nuevo Leon. Also, Alonso de Leon, son of the governor of Nuevo Leon who lived in Monclova, was from a family who lost several members in the Inquisition. He led 11 expeditions into Texas to find La Salle's Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek, the last in 1691. Mexican Sephardic sources bibliography, etc.
Monterrey is Spanish for Mountain of the King. Nuevo Leon was originally "Nuevo Leon de Juda" (New Lion of Judah). A common last name in that part of Mexico is Montoya which is a name many Jews escaping the Inquisition adopted. It's short for "Monte de Y-h" or Y-h's Mountain.
.THE CONQUISTADORES AND CRYPTO-JEWS OF MONTERREY Borders Books, #809
Monterrey, among the cities of Mexico, has a mystique all its own, marked by an enduring and controversial “Jewish question” regarding its founding in 1596. Vito Alessio Robles, the eminent Saltillo scholar early on stated that “all the citizens of Monterrey descend from Jews.” After a public outcry Alessio Robles had to retract his statement. This book reviews the claim that many of the first settlers of Monterrey were indeed of Jewish descent.
The author focuses primarily on the Garza family and establishes beyond a doubt that they were conversos, New Christians from original Jewish families, sometimes labeled Crypto-Jews if they lapsed back to practicing their Jewish faith in secret, the persons pursued by the Inquisition He claims through new archival research that ancestors of the Garza’s were burned at the stake in the 1526 Auto de fé held in the Canary Islands.
In this work, the saga of the principal figures in the Monterrey region during the formative era-Luis de Carvajal, Alberto del Canto, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, Diego de Montemayor, Francisco Báez de Benavides and Captain Joseph Martínez family of Marin-are presented against the backdrop of the ongoing settlement efforts and battles with the Indians. Valley Village, CA, 2001, 1st Ed., 296 Pgs., HB $40.00.
Now that sentence wasn't very clear.
Is it saying that the minimun wage in Monterrey is $4 a day or that is what it is in other urban areas?
I read it to mean it is $20 a day in Monterrey.
Bump!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.