MEXICO : Progress and Promise : Viewpoints: Comment on the Emerging Mexico : Cancer of Corruption

Claudia Recules Velasco, 21, studies law at the Technological University of Mexico and business administration at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. She is a top student in both her classes.

Her parents, an auto mechanic and a beauty school instructor, spend half their $600 monthly income on her education. She does class work on a small desk in a cramped bedroom, one of two rooms her parents rented in a neighbor’s home after losing their own home in a court battle with prospective buyers two years ago. The bribery involved in that case prompted her to study law.

“The buyers lied in court and made some payoffs to get our 16-million-peso house ($30,000 at the time) for nothing more than their 3-million-peso down payment. We were evicted. . . . In Mexico corruption is a sickness that will be very hard to cure. . . .

“I vote against the PRI (the ruling party) because it does not deliver on many of its promises. But Salinas is a president with good intentions. The ones before him did nothing but steal. I wrote Salinas asking for a scholarship and he wrote back, saying that the secretary of public education will consider my request. Salinas has given people hope. But if the PRI doesn’t stop stealing elections, the country will never improve. . . .

“Economically, life is going to get better for the poorest people. As foreigners invest in Mexico, workers are going to be better paid and better treated than they are by Mexican companies. But most of the profits will go to foreigners.”

* 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.