Of private religion,

TEACAPAN, SINALOA, Mexico — Fifteen things |
learned about this corner of Mexico during the 1980s:

1. I don’t know Mexico. If I
knew the whole count-y, f should
be the president. It is a auge na-
tion. The north is not like the
south. Rural Mexico is not like
urban Mexico. The men are not
like the women.

2. in this country the govern-
ment is not to blame for
everything that goes wrong. Fish-
ing in the lagoon here is the worst
for 25 years and nobody knows
why.

3. About 1,300 gringo com-
panies, most American, a few
Canadian, have set up plants calJ-
ed maquiladoras. Basic wage is a
mere $3.60 Canadian a day and
health and safety measures are not
major cost items.

Canadian and American
workers say they can’t compete
and that complete free trade,
which may be next, would be
disaster. Perhaps. But if cheap
labor were everything, all North
American production would al-
ready be in Mexico.

Even today, without free trade,
a Canadian company could

manufacture in Mexico and bring
its products back for a mere 25
per cent duty. Twenty-five pir
cent of $3.60-a-day labor isn’t
much.

3. With the collapse of Com-
munist party control in Eastern
Europe, Mexico may soon claim
to have the longest serving gov-
erning party in the world. The
PRI (institutional Revolutionary
Party) has governed for more than
60 years.

4. So many people say that
elections are rigged that there
must be truth in it. But in this
village it’s hard to escape the im-
pression that a simon-pure elec-
tion would return the PRI. People
are used to it aud, like all rural
people, they don’t like change.

5. In 1980, when Mexico had
just discovered an oil field rivall-
ing Saudi Arabia’s, cooking
onions cost 80 cents (Cdn.) a
pound at Chevalita’s grocery. At
that time they were 15 cents a
pound in Canada. When the Mex-
ican peso collapsed, onions sold
for about a nickel a pound. To-

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day, onions cost 48 cents (Cdn.) a
pound.

6. Mexicans don’t waste money
on lawyers. There is only one for
70,000 people in this vicinity and
he isn’t busy all day.

7. Nobody should believe
statistics, no matter what country
he’s in. :

The minimum wage set by gov-
ernment is a bit under $10,000

1990 $29,675 (retail)

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Friday, February 1, 1991 - Norih Shore News - 9

(Mex.) a day at present, but iocal
farmers are paying $22,000 (Mex.)
to get stoop labor. The same
farmers insist they are brake.

&. One of the year’s biggest
parades in this village occurs on
Virgin of Guadelupe day in
December. There are parades in
almost all of Mexico. Ail the
parades are illegal. Religious pro-
cessions are forbidden by the con-
stitution which insists that religion
must be a private matter, practis-
ec privately,

(The same rule applies to wife-
beating.)

10. They say that !0 per cent of
Mexicans are jobless and 40 per
cent are under-employed. They are
hard figures to dispute, particular-
ly the estimate of under-employ-
ment.

In Teacapan, people keep busy,
dawn to dusk, but few do it for
regular wages and of those who
do, some, like housemaids, work
for as little as $2.50 a day.

11. The rich are getting richer
and the poor poorer, just as in
Canada and the United States.

12. The poor are not talking too
much about how they feel, just as
in Canada and the United States.

13. The Mexican government is

G. S-T. REDUCED

lawyers and onions

even more bankrupt than the gov-
ernments of Canada and the U.S.
AS in the north, it doesn’t seem to
matter.

This community is far better off
than it was 12 years ago. It has a
water supply, of sorts, clean
streets, a reliable supply of elec-
tricity and regular garbage pickup.

14. One very quickly adapts to
rapid inflation. When we first
came to Mexico the peso traded at
12% to the Canadian dollar. It
was 2,500 to the dollar a few days
ago. It doesn’t matter that much.

It seenis normal io pay $50,000
for a tank of gas or $10,000 fora
beer. Canadians who think the
looney dollar is now their basic
coin of exchange should just wait
a bit. They will see a $19,000 coin
as the basic unit of exchange and
they'll pay municipal taxes of sev-
eral million dollars a year.

Once governments take the
power to print money any nation’s
currency is doomed.

15. In the country districts,
Mexican husbands get thin, Mex-
ican wives get fat. Exceptions to
this rule are as rare as explana-
tions. Both sexes work hard and
eat the same 2 Food.

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