Salem, Oregon _ The Sunday Oregonian - nov 27-2005 page B7
Dollars earned in Oregon could be key to the stability or undoing of some mexican communities.
The Money that migrants send home-- some $218 millioin last year, most of it to Mexico-- has helped sustain some villiages and improved conditions in others. yet, that same money creates tempatation when people see returning migrants wearing nice clothes and shoes.
" The children see that and think the American Dream is real," said Valentin Sanchez , a co-founder of Organization de Communidades Indgenas Migrantes Oaxaquenos ( Organization for Migrant, indigenous communities from Oaxaca) in Salem.
In Oaxaxa, for example, that money primarily is used to pay for daily needs, such as food and clothing, or add floors and roofs to homes., said Jeffery H. Cohen, an economic anthropolgist at Ohio State University. Although there is an investment of remittances, there also is a great dependency on them, the professor said.
Remittances are Mexico's second-largest source of income after petroleum. Although some Americans think Mexico encourages migration because of the money, Fernando Sanchez Ugarte , Mexico's Consul General in Oregon, said the government would like to stem migration out of Mexico.
" For us, as a country, this is not our best interest," he said, " we're losing our communities"[/i]