MEXICO : Progress and Promise : Viewpoints: Comment on the Emerging Mexico : Taking a Road North

Antonio Munoz, 32, a slim father of three from the rural northern state of Sinaloa, stood among a group of Mexicans atop the southern flood-control levee on the Tijuana River the other night, waiting to attempt el brinco --the leap--across the international boundary into San Diego.

It’s an illegal crossing he has made several times before in his much-traveled career as a journeyman laborer.

“Maybe Americans think we like crossing as ilegales , that we enjoy living as indocumentados . But we come out of necessity. We have no choice. In Mexico maybe I can earn 15,000 pesos ($5) a day. On the other side I can earn the same amount in one hour! Anyway (15,000 pesos) is not enough to feed a family. Nothing is cheap any more. I’d be happy to stay in Mexico if I could earn, say, 30,000 pesos a day. Mexico is my homeland. I don’t want to leave my family. But it’s not easy for a poor person. . . .

“I’ve worked all over the United States. In construction, mowing lawns, picking crops. There are always jobs there. You can find phony (immigration) papers if you need them. You meet good people and bad people in the north, just like anywhere. I’ll say this: the American government takes care of its people, not like ours. . . .

“They say that this free-trade agreement will make things better in Mexico, that we won’t have to come north any more, risking our lives. I don’t think so. Always in Mexico it seems that it is the rich who profit from these arrangements. I fear there will always be a small number who become wealthier while the rest of us have to fight for the scraps.”

* ABOUT THIS SECTION

The principal writers for this special report on Mexico were Marjorie Miller and Juanita Darling of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau, and Richard Boudreaux of The Times’ Managua Bureau. Don Bartletti, of The Times’ San Diego Edition, took the photographs.