Mexicans Struggle to Learn What They’ll Have to Do Without : Economy: Prices of some imports rise; other items disappear from stores. Critics fear hardship will imperil social order.

The joy had gone out of the joysticks at the Coney Island Arcade on Thursday. The video-game parlor, a favorite haunt of businessmen on lunch break since it opened a few years ago in a mall near downtown, was nearly empty.

Nearly half the games were broken, many awaiting spare parts that now cost a third more than they did two weeks ago. And the price to play Lethal Enforcer, Terminator 2 and the other state-of-the-art video games had jumped 50% overnight.

“It’s because of the emergency,” said the young woman in the cashier’s cage, explaining why game tokens went from one peso to 1 1/2 pesos in one day. “Everything costs more now--everywhere.”

Indeed, as Mexico’s economic crisis crashed down onto the marketplace this week, most computer stores in the capital had shut for inventory to determine how much more their big-ticket imports will cost. Taxi drivers already were trying to mark up their meters; shoppers fretted and borrowed to buy before prices went up even more, and supermarket clerks scrambled to scribble new prices on imported meats, canned goods and vegetables that soon will be unaffordable for most Mexicans.

This is the price balloon that the government concedes is the most bitter short-term impact of Mexico’s 35% devaluation of the peso and the emergency economic plan that President Ernesto Zedillo is implementing in an effort to solve the ensuing crisis.

As the government announced revised economic estimates for 1995 late Wednesday night--now predicting inflation of 19% this year, from an original projection of 4% last month and 15% two days ago--it was clear that the worst fears of most Mexicans were beginning to take shape.

The prices of some imports have already started rising; other items have simply disappeared from the shelves. There was widespread confusion about what is covered by new price freezes and what is exempt. Most shopping centers were as empty as the Coney Island Arcade, as Mexicans waited to see what their future spending power will be.

There was little or no anger in the shops or on the streets. But there was concern among everyone--even the president--that people will have to settle for less.

“Poor Mexicans. We’re going down,” declared the wife of an unemployed mechanic identifying herself only as Mrs. Nieto, who spoke Thursday morning outside a Mexico City store that specializes in imports. “We came looking for toys, but there are very few. And in other stores we noticed that there is little furniture available.”

“And televisions,” added her 29-year-old son, Javier. “There are no televisions.”

“Right now, it is difficult to understand how things will be,” his mother continued. “We will just have to take life as it comes. One will have to make do with only the essentials.”

In a speech that called for just such sacrifices when he unveiled his emergency plan on Tuesday, Zedillo himself underscored the importance of making do with less and forgoing excess profits to control inflation.

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“Inflation most hurts the wage earners and those who have the least,” he conceded. “We must do everything that needs to be done so that prices and the value of our currency stabilize again in a very short time.”

Consumer affairs officials are mobilizing their 550 inspectors nationwide in an effort to do just that. A spokesman said investigators were following up on more than 700 complaints throughout the country--all alleging illegal profiteering on everything from cigarettes and candy bars to bread and sugar since prices on almost all goods except imports have been frozen.

In most cases, though, the consumer affairs office said, offenders have been small grocery stores, tortilla shops and liquor stores. A spokesman said that the office has yet to receive complaints of wholesale price-gouging.

Independent Mexican economists, such as Rogelio Ramirez de la O, said they did not expect large-scale profiteering. “There is a very high consciousness” among manufacturers and wholesalers that such practices should be avoided, Ramirez said. As a result of this and the fact that many Mexicans already are deeply in debt, he said the government’s 19% inflation is a reasonable estimate.

But Ramirez stressed that the impact on the consumer--on Mexican society as a whole--”is going to be worse, of course. It will mean a lot of suffering. The economy will be in an extremely poor state; there isn’t going to be enough liquidity to drive inflation much beyond 19%,” he said. Overall consumption will fall 6% nationwide in the coming year, he estimates.

Religious groups, labor activists and consumer advocates all express deep fear that the inflationary spiral accompanying this crisis will have far-reaching effects. Beyond cutting into consumers’ luxury purchases and emptying video-game parlors, they say, it will probably tear at Mexico’s social fabric.

Bishop Leopoldo Romero Yanez, speaking for a Roman Catholic clerical organization, warned of more uprisings in the countryside--similar to the Zapatista National Liberation Army rebellion that began New Year’s Day, 1993--and of increased prostitution, murder and street crime in the cities.

“There is a great deal of concern in the church, because this situation will lead to major damage throughout the country, but above all because every parent now is going to be poorer,” Yanez declared.

All of them predicted protests--such as a mass demonstration that drew tens of thousands of peasants and urban laborers into the streets of the capital Thursday afternoon. Carrying placards and chanting slogans denouncing the new emergency plan and condemning organized labor’s agreement to hold minimum-wage hikes to just 7% this year, the demonstrators said their march was only the beginning of a series of planned protests.

As the protesters strode beside sound trucks and buses through the downtown business district, they hoisted banners declaring, “Enough price increases! We’re miserable already!” They also carried giant posters of a much more dire sort: Many of them expressed solidarity and support for the armed Zapatista uprising in the southernmost state of Chiapas and called for it to spread nationwide.

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