Salinas and Wilson to Hold Talks in S.D. : Trade: Mexican president’s visit comes at a time when U.S. and Mexican officials are working on a free-trade accord.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, widely credited in the United States with having opened up the long-sheltered Mexican economy, is scheduled to begin an intensive, three-day trip to California in San Diego on Saturday.

The Mexican president is slated to make later appearances in San Francisco, Los Angeles and at Stanford University in Palo Alto.

The visit, the president’s second to California since assuming the presidency in 1988, underscores the expanding commercial and cultural ties between Mexico and California, the state with the largest number of people of Mexican ancestry in the United States.

“He’s reaching out into the state in a way that no other president of Mexico has ever done,” said Francisco R. Herrera, assistant to Gov. Pete Wilson for international affairs.

The governor, a former mayor of San Diego, is expected to meet with Salinas twice--in San Diego on Saturday, and in Los Angeles on Monday.

The president’s visit comes at a time when Mexican, U.S. and Canadian negotiators are working out the terms of a proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, the repercussions of which will likely be a principal theme of the Salinas’ speeches. Trade between California and Mexico topped $8 billion in 1989, the last year for which figures were available.

Coming on the heels of the president’s scheduled swing through Baja California today, analysts say Salinas’s travel plans reflect the likely prominence of the U.S.-Mexico border zone during an anticipated period of greatly intensified trade between the two nations.

“I think there’s a general perception that the San Diego-Tijuana area will be a testing ground for economic integration and social cohesion,” said Cathryn L. Thorup, director of studies and programs at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego, which is hosting and coordinating the principal events of the president’s visit during his time in San Diego.

In the United States, President Bush and other U.S. officials have spoken in laudatory terms of Salinas’s sweeping economic and political reforms in Mexico.

But, south of the border, the moves have generated considerable criticism, particularly among opposition groups on the left who fear that relaxed trade barriers have mostly benefited U.S. corporate executives eager to make use of the vast pool of cheap labor in Mexico.

There is also great fear that more U.S. firms will move south in search of laxer environmental standards, creating the potential for a toxic cesspool along the border and elsewhere in Mexico.

“The president talks about his successes, but in Mexico people are starving,” said Pedro Arias, a representative in Los Angeles of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution, which is expected to march in protest of Salinas’ presence in Los Angeles on Monday.

Critics have also suggested that Salinas--standard-bearer of the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party--is more concerned about maintaining his party’s preeminent position than creating a true multi-part democracy.

Fueling the doubts were recent nationwide elections dominated by the ruling party, amid allegations of the same kind of electoral chicanery that many say helped get Salinas elected by a bare majority in 1988.

But Salinas’ spokesmen insist that the president is dedicated to an apertura-- opening--of the long-stagnant Mexican political system.

“President Salinas is in fact, committed to a democratic opening, and democracy is in fact stronger now than when he took office,” said Martin Torres, an official of the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles.

In San Diego, the highlight of Salinas’ visit will be a $250-a-plate luncheon in his honor Saturday at the Hotel del Coronado, attended by business and community leaders from the San Diego-Tijuana area. The president is expected to speak about the role of the border region in future economic development.

Proceeds of the luncheon will benefit the endowment fund of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.

Later, after an expected meeting with Gov. Wilson, Salinas is scheduled to participate in a 90-minute “informal consultation” on border issues to be held at the center. More than a dozen experts will address major topics, ranging from border infrastructure and environment to law enforcement and human rights, said Thorup of UCSD.

The president is expected to pose questions during the session at the center, Thorup said.

The center’s founder and current director, Wayne A. Cornelius, was a dissertation adviser for the young Salinas when the future president was working on his doctorate at Harvard University.

Since Salinas assumed the presidency, Cornelius has written a number of pro-Salinas commentaries for The Times and other publications, articles that have aroused criticism of Cornelius among academics and others in Mexico more publicly critical of the president’s record.

It is the first visit of a Mexican head of state to San Diego since 1970, when President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz participated in a state dinner with President Nixon.

Among those not expected to be present during the president’s visit is San Diego is Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who is vacationing in Europe.

Enrique Loaeza Tovar, Mexico’s consul general in San Diego, said he was “disappointed” that the mayor wouldn’t be able to receive the president, but he understood that her schedule prevented her from being present.

The president and his entourage are expected to spend Saturday night in San Diego before leaving early Sunday for Northern California, where Salinas has a full schedule, including a major address at Stanford University in Palo Alto. At Stanford, Salinas is expected to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

The Mexican chief of state is scheduled to arrive Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, where he is to meet with Mexican-American political and community leaders before attending a dinner celebrating the opening of a much-heralded exhibition of Mexican art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Salinas is scheduled to return to Mexico City on Monday evening.