Word: pesos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more than two years, Mexicans have endured the imposition of one austerity package after another. They have watched government food subsidies shrink, unemployment rise, the value of the peso sink (it slid to an all-time low last week of 372 to the U.S. dollar). Yet now, on top of such belt tightening, Mexico City and four coastal states need major reconstruction programs that will consume already tight reserves of capital. "It is a tremendous psychological blow," says M. Delal Baer, an expert on Mexico at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "You begin to feel that...
...checkpoints, often daily, because there are more jobs and higher pay in the U.S. Merchants on the American side depend heavily on sales to Mexicans, who often find items of greater variety and higher quality than in their home cities. Lately, the strong U.S. dollar and the devalued peso have sharply cut Mexican buying power and caused havoc for some U.S. border businesses. Many American shoppers in turn have been flooding into Mexico in search of bargains...
...core of Alfonsin's program is a new national currency. The 104-year-old Argentine peso is being replaced by the austral, which at the moment is worth 1,000 old pesos or $1.25. Since the currency bears the same name as one domestic airline, whose emblem is a penguin, the austral was immediately nicknamed the "pinguino," the Spanish word for penguin. To maintain the value of the austral, the government vowed that it will no longer simply print money to cover expenses. In addition, it proclaimed a freeze on all wages and on the prices of 31 food items...
...Americans flocked there--more than 2 million to Britain alone--and estimates this year run to well over 6 million, some up to 7 million. (By comparison, 33 million Americans crossed the border into Canada in 1984 to spend the falling Canadian dollar; 4 million visited Mexico, where the peso has suffered three big devaluations since 1982; and 5 million frolicked in the Caribbean...
...unhappiness in the Camarena affair inflamed another increasingly sore point in bilateral relations, the safety of ordinary Americans south of the border. Mexico's declining peso has made the country an even more attractive vacation spot than usual for U.S. tourists; last year 4.1 million Americans paid a visit, a 32% increase over 1983. But Mexico's economic woes have also made those tourists attractive targets for criminals. Last year there were 627 reported incidents of violent crime against American visitors. Four Americans were murdered, and four were raped. In the vicinity of Guadalajara and the resort town of Puerto...