Thread: Remittances Slowdown has a long reach {Update}

May 27, 2008, 10:03PM
Remittances Slowdown has a long reach

As the U.S. economy softens, families and entire villages in Mexico suffer from the weakening flow of money

By GREG BROSNAN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle



LA PAROTA, MEXICO — Freddy Arroyo's wife was nearly nine months pregnant, but the $10 a day he earned delivering water couldn't feed his two children, let alone a new baby.

It was time to do what generations of young men in the parched village of La Parota in Mexico's western state of Michoacán have traditionally done in tough times — head for Houston.

Catalina Orozco did not speak to her husband for weeks. Then five days after her daughter was born, the phone rang in the shack where the 26-year-old lives among other desperately poor relatives.

Calling from Houston, Arroyo listened with joy to the baby's cries and then gave his wife the bad news.

"He said there was no work and that he couldn't send us any money," she said.

Villages across Mexico depend on money from migrant workers in cities like Houston. But now, as the U.S. economy slows, relatives in industries like construction are increasingly limited in what they can give.

"These days you just scrape by, nothing else. You can't afford to send anything back," Alberto Cruz, an illegal Mexican day laborer, said by telephone from Houston.

After oil, remittances are Mexico's biggest source of foreign cash. By 2006, remittances had soared to $24 billion a year, but last year they barely grew and, in fact, fell in some states, like Michoacán.

"It's worse than a recession," Javier Aparicio, an economist at Mexico City think tank CIDE, said of the effect the decline in remittances is having on places like La Parota. "It's like a big depression."

With about 500 inhabitants, La Parota is an outpost of dirt roads and shacks separated by rusty barbed wire about 200 miles southwest of Mexico City.

Little rain falls, and temperatures often exceed 104 degrees.

Work is virtually nonexistent.

One recent scorching weekday afternoon, the only visible economic activity was an old man roasting peanuts in a blackened barrel.

Houston connection
The roots of migration from La Parota to Houston are lost in time.

As with other such links, the movement of workers north likely began after a pioneer migrant sent word home.

But there are connections to the Bayou City on every corner.

"It's very hard to find anyone here without a relative in Houston," local teacher Alfredo MartÃ*nez said.

Houston has been the lifeblood of 63-year-old corn farmer Constantino Santos' family for three generations. His father worked in the area under the post-World War II bracero program.

He himself toiled illegally in a downtown pizza parlor in the mid-1980s.

"It was beautiful, and you could find work," he recalled of the city.

Santos' sons Javier and Victor took his place in Houston while still teenagers, supporting the family for two decades.

Now in their 30s, they are unemployed and can barely send $100 a month because of the slowdown.

Feeding 12
Since her daughter's birth on March 27, Catalina Orozco has only received $150 from her husband, who has struggled to find work painting houses. She has moved back to her family home — a tumbledown shack that lodges 12 people who depend on relatives in Houston for money.

Orozco sleeps with the baby, her 7-year-old daughter and
8-year-old son on a battered red sofa and armchairs.

Her diabetic grandmother, Maria Patiño, who can barely walk, depends on three sons and a daughter in Houston. Their dwindling remittances also support Patiño's son Angel, a 25-year-old with Down syndrome.

Wearing a "Texas Lone Star State" T-shirt his brother sent, he proudly shows off blisters on his hands from roasting peanuts, but his work only brings in pennies.

"If I don't owe any money, I can get by just eating the most basic things," Patiño said of the money her children send.

"If I ate good food, it would be finished in a week."

Construction halted
The migrant cash crunch is extinguishing any economic activity there was in La Parota.

Salomón MunguÃ*a, 51, worked enough double shifts at a Houston restaurant as an illegal immigrant to buy a small plot of land.

He was building a modest house on dusty wasteland with money wired home by two sons in California, but they have had their hours cut.

The construction is frozen, and as MunguÃ*a struggles to support his wife and mother-in-law, he is getting desperate.

"They sent $100, and this is all we have left," he said, holding up a cardboard box of dwindling beans and rice bought with the last money wire. "I don't have enough to eat. I'm scared."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5804650.html

Less remittances to Mexico have an impact on families left behind.

Many of the crops grown in Mexico are drug not food crops. It provides the farmers with money but with food prices rising and fewer fields devoted to food crops, food becomes costly and scarce.

They've raped our land , with our leaders blessing . So much money has cross that border what was legal and what was drug money ? The Rich keep getting Richer , at everyones cost.

The remittance money all too often has gone to enabling farm families to buy packaged food instead of farm improvements. If their money had been properly spent it would not cause these problems when the remittance flow went down because Mexican village production would be up instead of down.

Salomón MunguÃ*a, 51, worked enough double shifts at a Houston restaurant as an illegal immigrant to buy a small plot of land.

He was building a modest house on dusty wasteland with money wired home by two sons in California, but they have had their hours cut.

The construction is frozen, and as MunguÃ*a struggles to support his wife and mother-in-law, he is getting desperate.

"They sent $100, and this is all we have left," he said, holding up a cardboard box of dwindling beans and rice bought with the last money wire. "I don't have enough to eat. I'm scared."

Three words: Get a job.

What is the deal with some of these illegals' parents? They turn 50 and expect for their children to provide everything for them? I've worked with and known many illegal aliens and a few of them told me that they had to send money home because their parents were alcoholics and/or just too lazy to work. It's no wonder that some of these parents have such large families: They see their kids as a future meal ticket.

Where are the stories of American workers with hungry babies crying in the background as they beg their mortgage banks for mercy unable to meet the required taxes and interest payments?

The attention is always externalized toward people suffering in other nations instead of Americans that are falling down like flies in a sealed jar.

Why are these human interest sob stories always about others and not Americans?

The American dream is circling the bowl on the way down and they want to transfix us with concern about others instead of our own people!

W

Instead of sneaking into the US, why don't they move to other parts of Mexico that have jobs? Lots of farms in Mexico need laborers.

I wonder if SOB stories like this are posted in Mexican newspapers where it would have more of an effect than American news rags.

And how come all the SOB stories I read like this say nothing about farming? How come nobody farms back there? I just planted some squash, tomoatos, peppers and herbs in my garden yesterday! And I'm not even poor! Good grief.

Charity begins at home, illegal aliens cause great suffering for Americans.
Sleeping on a couch 12 to a shack, sick relatives how is that our problem?

Spend the on remittances building a future in Mexico? No way

Americans are all rich and don't need the jobs Mexicans take. Sure

Make $10 a day and just keep breeding. our fault?

Diabetic grandmother can't walk? All Americans are in perfect health

Most American families have two working adults, some 2 jobs and pay taxes, health insurance, auto insurance and receive no food stamps or welfare

how much does an illegal alien pay that works in a restaurant?