Word: mexicali
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While he says he does not know the Champion factory well, he says all of the factories in the city have high standards, better than the conditions in other cities in Mexico such as Mexicali or Tijuana to the west...
...explosion of commerce since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect last year. The border, Mexicans like to say, is mostly imaginary, despite patrols, guard dogs and chain-link fences. ``They could plant land mines, and it would not stop people from crossing,'' says Mexicali writer Sergio Gomez Montero. ``We may not like gringos for historical reasons, but today the world is dividing into commercial blocks, and we are handcuffed to each other for better or for worse.'' Travel the country: it seems hard to find anyone without at least a cousin or two working al otro lado...
...broken-down fence between Mexicali, Mexico, and Calexico, California, stretches directly in front of David Gomez Rocha's plywood shack. Seven days a week the 28-year-old rises at 3 a.m. for a two-hour trip across the border to pick asparagus for $4.25 an hour. Granted amnesty in 1987, Gomez Rocha is now a legal alien. His mother has a permit to pick grapes further north in California, returning to Mexicali on weekends. ``Who would do this backbreaking work if they closed the border?'' says Gomez Rocha. ``The U.S. does not have enough farmworkers, so they hire illegals...
Cross-border strains are rare here. The Mexicali Cineplex offers a choice among Nell, Speechless, Junior and Disclosure. At the border checkpoint, housewives flood through turnstiles heading for Calexico's Wal-Mart. Calexico's mayor is Mexican American, as are most residents. Even on the university campus in Mexicali, says student-body president Pedro Ariel Mendivil, anti-American slogans are virtually unheard of. ``That's old-fashioned politics,'' he says, adding that he hopes to earn a master's degree in the U.S. to gain foreign experience. He will not emigrate, however: ``I love Mexico passionately. We have...
...background is no-frills working class. He grew up in Mexicali, where his electrician father installed movie screens. A Mexican-government scholarship sent him to Yale, and there he wrote a dissertation about his country's external-debt crisis. Zedillo then came home to a central-bank job, which paved the way for his appointment as Budget Minister and later Education Minister under Salinas. These days he lives in a comfortable though not ostentatious house in Mexico City, a far cry from his childhood home. With his own five children, Zedillo is an avid mountain biker. Though he has been...