Monterrey, Mexico Government building.
Hmmm, now what does this remind you of?
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."
For a 9 hour workday, that would still work out to $2.22 per hour.
Nobody's going to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps on that wage.
I am not to concerned with appearances. I am very concerned with presidential actions...and inactions.
Regards
J.R.
Kofi's hatred of Jews and Monterrey's growing Jewish population, ("lost Jews" coming home) makes me very suspicious as to why they chose Monterrey. Globalists elitists don't usually flock to a city with a "middle America feel", much less Walmarts. The UN admits the Monterrey conference is for the purpose of "stepping up its surveillance of all economies" and "strengthening international tax cooperation." Wonderful, looks like Monterrey is under surveillance as the first growing economy to destroy. Global tax man cometh.
Isn't history fascinating!
But a whole lot better than the $4 a day elsewhere. As the father said in the article, he isn't living so well but he's there
to be sure his children are educated and able to do better. That's usually how civilizations grow.
A strong Mexico is a better neighbor and ally for the U.S. too.
I applaud good conservation, I deplore environmentalists.
So am I.
Hmmm, now what does this remind you of?
Strictly speaking...everything North of the Panama canal is North America!
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."
OK now, let me get this straight, Jose. Your fellow countrymen ( 11 million +) break our laws by sneaking in across our borders in the middle of the night to, supposedly, have a chance at a better way of life. Yet it is this better way of life that you condemn when it exists in your own country. What gives?
You bitch about North American values of consumerism as being bad, if so why are so many of you over here trying to gobble it up as if there’s no tomorrow?
You say you are losing your Mexican identity based on prosperity so you should understand how we feel about losing our identity from hordes of illiterate illegals that do not speak our language, put a financial drain on our education systems, medical facilities and all municipal services and turn our neighborhoods into barrios with the God-awful murals on the side of every building in sight.
Tell you what Jose, you get your 11 million + brethren to hightail it back across the border and I’ll gladly write a letter to McDonalds asking them to change the name of their Mexican franchises to McPedros so as not to rob you of your identity. Deal?
Hmmm, now what does this remind you of?
JMO, but the picture you posted in reply #50 resembles the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
See the Volkswagon cabs running along side the horse and carts on paved highways..
Monterrey is a city full of warm and wonderful people..but a model I thnk not..
On second thought it may be what the US will look like in the One World Bush Order)
"They are excellent economists who can increase GNP and talk about economic policies. But the figures don't reflect the reality," said Susana Cruickshank, a Mexico City activist taking part in a side meeting of non-governmental organizations. "In the competitive business model, someone always loses." [End Excerpt]
Good grief!!
Well,those people,as parents,need to learn more discipline.I went w/ out alot growing up (though I didn't know that then)and we were middle class-I didn't have to have the latest 'anything' but I had what I needed,and that's what mattered.Hearing the word 'No, not right now' was something I naturally accepted and coming to understand later,that it was a 'Struggle' to BE middle class (which I didn't comprehend then)has made me value,EVEN MORE,everything I've earned so far in my life.Just because things are there, doesn't mean you HAVE to HAVE them.So,I have very little sympathy for the '20 stuffed animal' comment.It was a good attempt though.
I've returned recently and now, I'd say it has modern parts, but mostly is an industrial city that is popping at the seams. It's also Mexico, which means that it has incredible poverty at the lower end of the scale.
I'm glad it's continuing to modernize, and I hope it becomes completely Americanized.
But basically, it's a dump, and I don't care if I never see it again.
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