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 Editorials | Issues | December 2006 
Long Hours, Low Pay are Standard in Mexico
 Arizona Republic
| | Reynaldo Patino and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pina, live with other relatives in a one-room cinder block home north of Mexico City. (AP) |
Reynaldo Patino makes $18 a day.
It's a normal wage for Mexico. And that is exactly the problem.
Patino gets up at 5 a.m. in a one-room shack in a poor suburb where he lives with his wife, daughter and niece. He works 11 hours a day cooking corn tortillas at a shop in central Mexico City. He gets home at 8 p.m.
The next morning, he does it all over again. Six days a week. No vacations. Ever.
Welcome to a typical life in Mexico: a world of long hours, low pay and prices that are much higher than in the United States. It is those economic pressures that drive Mexicans to the United States and that lie at the heart of the illegal immigration problem.
Mexicans do not come to the United States because they can't find jobs at home. In fact, unemployment in Mexico is currently lower than in the United States, at about 3.6 percent. Some 95 percent of newly arrived Mexican migrants had jobs before they came to the United States, according to a 2005 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center.
But in Mexico, having a job does not necessarily mean being paid well or even being paid well enough to make ends meet.
The average Mexican household earns $7,297 a year in wages, according to the government.
But because 39 percent of Mexico's wealth is concentrated in 10 percent of the population, most people actually earn less than the national average. In fact, 82 percent of Mexicans earn less than $21 per workday. Just like Patino.
For a one-room home, he pays $59 a month in rent. He and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pina, sleep in a twin bed. Their 8-year-old daughter, Ana Laura, shares a single bed with their 16-year-old niece, Abigail. There are two bare light bulbs.
The room's only luxuries are a television, a stereo, a collection of cheap animal figurines and a plastic Christmas tree. The floor and walls are bare concrete, and there is no heater to fight the 40-degree chill on December nights.
"I would like to live in a better house, maybe have a bit of luxury," Patino said. "But we don't have the money."
Patino is typical of Mexico's vast population of working poor. He lives in the Mexico City area, home to one of every five Mexicans. He has a wife and one daughter, a reflection of Mexico's trend toward smaller families.
He earns $5,672 a year, one-seventh the income of an average American household. At the same time, however, he and his family are paying close to U.S. prices for many necessities. Milk costs around $3.30 a gallon in most parts of Mexico, and regular unleaded gasoline is $2.32 a gallon.
Electricity is twice as expensive as in the United States. Electronics are 30 percent more expensive, one study found. Even mailing a letter is more, at 59 cents.
Most Mexicans live much more simply than their American neighbors. They eat out less, rely on staple foods and live in small houses. But even with the cost-cutting, Mexicans spend a bigger percentage of their wages than Americans do to feed, clothe and house their families: about 66 percent.
Pressures like that are what drive Mexicans to the United States, where they can earn seven or eight times as much for performing similar work.
Patino's older brother did just that a year ago, abandoning the tortilla shop for a new life in Los Angeles. Patino has not followed him. But, he says, the idea is tempting.
"I've thought about it," he said. "I've thought about it a lot."
At 5:30 a.m., Patino and his niece catch the first of two buses for the 90-minute commute into the city. By 7 a.m., Patino is firing up the tortilla machine at the Lisboa Tortilla Shop in downtown Mexico City. He started working there at age 15. That was 12 years ago; he is now the manager.
When Patino isn't snatching tortillas from the machine, he is answering the phone, weighing out purchases or delivering orders by bicycle. There is no time for a lunch break. Instead, the three workers share two large meatballs heated up on the tortilla machine.
Patino gets paid in cash every Saturday by the shop's owner. He does not pay income taxes.
For each 11-hour workday, he earns 200 pesos, or $18. That equates to $1.64 an hour. Patino has to work an hour and a half just to cover his $2.45 bus fare.
The low wages and high cost of living in Mexico have fueled angry protests and become a rallying point for opposition lawmakers in the wake of the July 2 presidential election. During a rally in downtown Mexico City, the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party issued a study showing that Mexicans pay more than Americans for everything from credit cards to cable TV.
Consider electricity: The average Arizona family used 1,034 kilowatt-hours a month last year and paid a monthly bill of $91.94, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The same usage in central Mexico would cost $187.01.
Fed up with the high rates, millions of Mexicans opt to steal electricity with clandestine lines known as diablitos, or "little devils." The theft drives rates even higher.
Mexico's inflation rate is lower than it has been in years, at about 4 percent. But the yearly increases add up. Housing expenses increased more than 20 percent, health care expenses went up 19 percent and clothing costs rose 12 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to Mexico's census bureau.
Educational expenses, especially, are a major burden for many Mexicans.
Schools in Mexico provide free textbooks only through junior high. There is an annual enrollment fee and often another fee to cover janitorial costs. Uniforms are mandatory, there are no free school buses and school supplies are about the same price as in the United States.
Like 40 percent of Mexicans, the family lacks health insurance. So Reynaldo had to ask his boss for a loan to pay for minor surgery his wife, Maria, had a few days ago.
After paying for gas, electricity, school supplies, bus fare and other necessities, little money remains. The family has no bank account and no savings.
"At the end of the day, there's usually nothing left," Maria said. "We're zeroed out." |
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