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Opinion Viewpoints Locals Hit By Economic Slump
Opinion Viewpoints Locals Hit By Economic Slump | Locals Hit By Economic Slump |
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| Written by ALLYN HUNT | |
| Saturday, 28 April 2007 | |
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Item: JP Morgan forecast April 23 that Mexico's economy will expand this year at its slowest pace-2.8 percent-since 2003 because of a contraction in industrial production in the first quarter.
Item: Pepe Medrano, a jefe of construction crews for several years, unable to find steady work, takes a job as an albanil (mason). Item: Existing U.S. home sales are in a tailspin, as the National Association of Realtors reports a 8.4 percent drop in March. Item: Toņo Rivera, a "maistro" of construction crews in the Chapala area for three years, has a four-year-old son afflicted by a blood disease. Unable to find long-term or overlapping projects, he takes a job as a gardener. Both Rivera and Medrano took significant downward steps in terms of pay. But those steps also represented a descent in terms of prestige and status. The problem, particularly for Rivera, has been the lapses between construction and/or renovation projects. His situation leaves him with no buffer for sporadic employment, even though he is well paid when working. He has eight children, and he wants them all to get a good education. But there are times when his two older daughters miss school to take care of the smaller kids, wash clothes, iron, and prepare comida while their mother works as a maid for wealthier neighbors. Rivera's mother helps out with these tasks, but Toņo's youngest boys, who go to pre-kinder and kinder, are more than the older woman can comfortably handle. Medrano's employment shift hurts his pocketbook less than Rivera's, but his pride is more fragile than Toņo's, though he seldom mentions these feelings. It's on Saturdays, when he's drinking a caguama of beer with his friends, that his usual emotional steadiness and good humor escape him, and he bitterly damns his luck, the government's "idiotic" policies and personnel, and the war in Iraq, which he believes is stymieing Mexico's economy. He also damns the housing slump north of the border, which has meant that his brother, in the U.S. illegally, has gone from earning about twelve dollars an hour in obra (construction), to earning just seven dollars an hour working in tomato fields. It also means the money his brother sends home to his wife and three children has shrunk sharply. Pepe's wife takes care of the children when his brother's spouse is at work as a maid. But there are times when money from the north doesn't arrive, and Pepe has to give his sister-in-law money. When the money doesn't come, Pepe wonders what his brother is doing up there in gringolandia. Toņo Rivera, a short, stocky man of thirty-five, is a bright, relentless worker, who always was gently joking with his construction crews, keeping morale up when the job was hard, or the builder in a hurry. He is more quiet these days, grins a bit less, but his working pace has not slowed. He had an accident just as his last construction job was ending. With his pick-up heavily loaded with two 50-gallon drums, construction tools, and some leftover sacks of cement and cal, he lost his brakes and ran into a slow-moving car. This was a financial setback, even though the driver of the car agreed not to call the police. Toņo, an honest man, is paying off the damage he caused. Though he doesn't complain about the cost of the accident-he sees it as his fault-he does wonder aloud when the millions of jobs Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, has promised will begin showing up. |
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