4 - Wednesday, December 9, 1992 -. North Shore News

Inside Miexico Inc.

AFTER A week of driving, and driving, and driving, and
driving through an invisible cowl of ground-level ozone in
Mexico City, interviewing bureaucrats and writers and ar-
chitects and environmeatalists and anybody else 1 could get
a quote in English from, I have a much better sense of
what is going on dowr there than I had before, but, of

course, not that much better.

Nobody who knows anything is
really talking, especially to a
reporter and cameraman from
Canada.

Not that anybody in Mexico Ci-
ty seemed especially threatened by
us, Or by Canada. {it was hard
enough to get anyone to shake the
habit of thinking of us as Ameri-
canos, let alone get them worried
about heavy-duty competition
from the far high-tech North.

Everybody ! talked to had opi-
nions about the North American
Free Trade Agreement.

The bureaucrats loved it. The
environmentalists assumed it was
a plot by the multi-national cor-
porations to escape from tough
pollution laws.

Unionists saw it as a shameless
bid for cheap Sabor.

Mexican nationalists saw it as
surrendering more of Mexico's
sovereignty to the Yanquis.

If you’ve ever had the feeling
your guy Mulroney was actually
kidnapped during a visit to the
Whiie House and replaced by a
state-of-the-ast clone, either that
or the CLA implanted something
in his neo-cortex, then you will
know how a lot of Mexicans feel
about their guy, Carlos Salinas de
Gortari.

The president isn’t universally
loved. While he may not be actu-
ally as unpopular as his pal,
Brian, he is the leader of a de fac-
io one-party state, or at least one
in which a single party has held
power for so long it is routinely
accused of corruption and vote-
rigging, and violence seethes under
the surface.

At least one and often two cops
armed with weapons of choice —
Uzis, shotguns, sten guns — guard
the entrance to every bank.

On Independence Day this year,
i watched as the streets leading to
the Constitution Plaza were
blocked off by heavily armed
soldiers.

While the army clanked by on
its way to fill the plaza, jet
fighters and helicopters whecled
and plodded overhead.

When Salinas appeared on the
balcony, a formidable military
shield stood between him and the

people.
He embodies a kind of Mexico

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

Inc. infrastructure that holds the
place in an iron fist.

{tis a far more centralized
country than Canada or even the
United States, with power concen-
trated in Mexico City, a city with
an economy as large as ali of
Central America’s and
Venezuela’s combined: the
super-city of the North American
subcontinent, ruled by a mountain
people breathing poisons in
through the pores and iungs.

There is still something of a
surface impression of manana. It’s
not Japan, after all. Or Hong
Kong.

A thicd of the public telephones
are broken; there are potholes in
the sidestreets, and beggars of
every age.

But the subway system carries
millions of human beings back
and forth every day, the awesome
load of road traffic keeps Nowing,
aid the great concrete aquaducts
continue te pump up enough
water to keep people numbering
somewhere around the population
of California or Canada alive on a
dead lake bottom high in the
mountains,

For now.

T found it hard to avoid the
sense of impending apocalypse,
like being on the deck of a
tremendously large ship as its keel
begins to break in slow motion
upon the rocks.

It has only been seven years
since the last earthquake.

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The rubble has almost entirely
been cleared, and a water conser-
vation program is being im-
plemented to ease up on the
amount of water being consumed,
but it is slow work, rebuilding the
entire sewage and drainage
system.

As the aquifer under the city
shrinks, it leaves an underground
cavity, further destabilizing the
entire region. A race, you sec,
against time, -

The size of Mexico City is

alizes that one has come
from the boondocks. Canada's
biggest city boasts a mere three
million people. Hell, there are that
many cars in Mexico City!

Courtesy of NAFTA, we are
getting in bed with some big,
tough, sharp hombres who under-
stand power, and who have gotten
away with a lot over the years,
quite seasuned when it comes to
playing hardbail.

I think I understand the theory
of trade blocs, about how, if we
don’t get into one, we'll be left
out in the cold.

But one should also understand
that it’s not a question of ‘‘big’’
Canada partnering with ‘“‘little’’
Mexico — there are three times as
many of them as there are us.
Don’t let Mercator projection fool
you.

As for Mexico City itself, it is
not so much that people are
dropping in the streets. !t is that
pulmonary and respiratory disease
simply shorten human life, and, as
yet, the cost in ruined health has
not been measured.

Mothers, if they can, flee the
city the moment they know they
are pregnant to give the child a
chance to avoid lezd poisoning.

Not quite Utopia. The hope, |
guess, is that the Mexicans will
have a chance to become more
like us — richer, with cleaner air
and water -~ rather than the other
way around, Cough, cough.

i wonder what the Brian clone
is really up to?

SENIOR
SEWING. clu

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