Monterrey, Mexico, Touted As Model

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."

Mexico: Party leadership election seen as key to PRI's future Feb. 22, 2002--[Excerpt] The other danger is that the two factions will not be able to heal the wounds opened by the elections. Many analysts believe the risk of fissure within the PRI would be highest should Madrazo lose. But they say that festering resentments could obstruct coordination regardless of the winner.

Paredes has more of the PRI's 19 state governors on her side. But Madrazo has enlisted the support of the powerful teacher's union, which has a national presence with lots of activists.

Both candidates have a proven capacity to mobilize the infamous PRI electoral machine, which for decades turned out the vote by busing peasants, factory workers, housewives and residents of poor neighborhoods to the voting booths. That mobilization will prove key Sunday, because only about 10 percent of the normal number of voting precincts will be open for the party election. [End Election]

Madrazo Declared Winner in Mexico Mon Mar 4, 2002 [Excerpt] MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's former ruling party officially declared Roberto Madrazo the winner of disputed internal elections, saying he had won the race for the party's presidency.

Madrazo won with 1.52 million votes compared with 1.47 million votes for congresswoman Beatrice Paredes, Sen. Humberto Roque, who supervised the Feb. 24 elections, said Sunday.

Paredes had disputed the results, charging Madrazo's supporters with widespread fraud.

Madrazo, the former governor of oil-rich Tabasco state, was scheduled to be sworn in Monday as the leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Considered a possible presidential contender in 2006, he has cast himself as a successor to his father, a former PRI leader who tried to open up a party dominated by the nation's president.

Still, the younger Madrazo has been plagued by accusations of fraud. During his 1994 gubernatorial campaign, he was accused of spending $72 million, which he denied.

He was also accused of encouraging fraud and misconduct during elections for his replacement in Tabasco state. PRI candidate Manuel Andrade was declared the winner of elections in 2000, but the federal Supreme Electoral Tribunal later annulled the disputed victory. Madrazo had hoped a win would help him in his then unofficial campaign to lead the PRI. [End Excerpt]

Mexico's new opposition leader a critic of U.S. ties March 5, 2002 [Full Text] MEXICO CITY - Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran the country for most of the 20th century, installed as its leader Monday a critic of closer ties to the United States.

Roberto Madrazo, 49, a self-proclaimed nationalist wary of increasing U.S. investment in Mexico, becomes the key opposition leader to President Vicente Fox, whose election in 2000 ended more than 70 years of rule by the PRI, as the party is known in its Spanish initials.

Madrazo, the former governor of the Mexican state of Tabasco, is a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and the United States, which Fox strongly supports.

He is the first leader of PRI chosen in an open election. For generations, the PRI controlled Mexico through patronage, corruption and backroom deals.

Although Madrazo hopes to change the party's image, his own selection as leader was marred by accusations of fraud. It took a week to confirm his win by a margin of fewer than 50,000 votes out of nearly three million cast, despite a nearly two-year campaign for the post.

Even though it lost the presidency to Fox, the PRI continues to dominate politics in Mexico, where it holds slight majorities in both chambers of Congress and 17 of 31 governorships.

Because of his outspoken opposition to Fox, Madrazo's efforts are likely to bear on Mexico's relations with the United States. Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive and an advocate of closer ties to Washington, has been hamstrung by an unruly Congress since taking office 15 months ago. A divided PRI left Fox with no strong opposition leader with whom to negotiate sweeping economic and social reforms. [End]

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