6 April 1996

Almost fifteen years ago I decided to leave my country Mexico and
to come to the USA the bastion of Liberty, Democracy, Free Markets, and the
country of the rule of law.

I made such a decision after years of frustration,
disappointment, and the feeling of impotience to do something about what I
had to witness after I got out of college in the early 70's, when Luis
Echeverria was taking over as a new President of Mexico.

For the next twelve years I saw the destruction of the country
through socialism, protectionism, collectivism, corruption, inflation, lack
of democracy, statism etc. The government in Mexico by 1984 was controlling
80 % of the economy, was in charge of banks, the telephone company, oil,
railroads, mines, everything. The organization of agriculture through the
ejido system (collectivism) had destroyed the production of food and raw
materials, all of them loosing money, so the printing office of the Central
Bank was always working, 24 hours a day.

After attending a private and conservative college in Monterrey,
Mexico where I learned about free markets, free trade, sound of money, free
enterprise, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Milton Friedman, and because I am an
economist, I could never understand what I was witnessing in my country. It
never made sense to me, and I used to ask my father: why did you send me to
that college? He used to tell me, because they have the truth, what is
happening in Mexico is not right, and some day all will change.

Finally, after my family lost the bank we used to own when the
government took over the Banking System in 1982, and we lost 170,000 acres
of the best cattle land in the north of the country, because the State had
decided that we had too much, so they just expropiated half of the ranch to
give it to the ejidatarios ("poor peasants"), they called it AGRARIAN
REFORM, I got fed up, and I decided to come to this country looking for new
horizons.

I always had the dream that some day I was going to see in Mexico
what I was looking on in disbelief in the USA: REAGANISM IN ACTION. After so
many years of frustration in Mexico, seeing corrupt politicians applying the
same recipes that had kept the whole Latin Amenrica in the stone age
(keynesianism, socialism, populism, statisim etc.) I was witnessing for the
first time in my life free markets, free trade, competition, supply side
policies, economic growth, democracy. But at the time I thought this was
just a dream that I could never see.

Over seven years ago my dream started to come true when Carlos
Salinas took over as a President in December 1988. Salinas, to the disbelief
of the international community started the most aggressive program of
reforms in this century, perhaps in Mexico's history in the whole context of
the economic, political, social and structural reforms. After 70 years of
status quo, Salinas started breaking with the past, to give life to a new
modern Mexico.

Mexicans never understood that in order to go from where they had
been for so many years, to a new, modern, free market, free trade structure,
where now the State was not going to be the sollution to all their problems,
to a new country which had to compete in the international markets, which
had to be productive etc, the way was going to be painful, they were going
to have a hangover befor getting economic sobriety.

Salinas started a bold program of privatization, fiscal
responsibility, supply side policies, unilateral free trade, an aggressive
fight against inflation, tight money policies etc, with the help of a new
young politicians and public officials, who had a new vision of the country.
They were not talking about a Mexican revolution any more, they were talking
about the modernization of Mexico, free markets, federalism, about Mexico
competing in the markets of the world, and about the openness of the country
to foreign investment.

The old guard of the political establishment felt this as a direct
aggression against them, and their interest. They were not willing and ready
to share the power that they had had for almost 70 years. Salinas however,
with the unique attribute of presidentialism and the right kind of controls,
carried through all his reforms, especially in the macro economic scenario
of the country. The results were amazing, inflation was controlled, foreign
investment came, privatization's, surplus in the budget, record
international reserves, low borrowing in relation to the GNP, economic
growth, economic freedom, participation by the oposition party's in the
political life of the country etc.

Mexico was on its way to the next century with a new attitude, new
vision, new leadership; Salinastroika was in high gear, the MEXICAN
MIRACLE. Salinas needed two things to secure his vision for this new
country; NAFTA, and his succesor as President of the country, who had to
follow through with the same neoliberal (capitalist) model. He got the first
in November 1993, when the US Congress approved NAFTA, and a few weeks later
the official party chose Luis Donaldo Colosio to be its Presidential candidate.

Colosio was my friend. We were from the same State, Sonora and we
were classmates in college for years, I knew him very well. He was a man
from the north as he said it in his famous speech of March 6 (He got killed
on March 23), He was the man who Mexico needed to land the economic,
political and social transformation of the country, but he was not the man
who the old guard of politicians wanted in order to take the country back,
where it was to where they wanted it. The rest is history, the debacle of
1994 started in January with the " Guerrilla " in Chiapas, a very well
executed plan to destroy Salinas creation and convince the Mexicans about
the evil of markets, free trade etc, and best strategy to get that was
creating an economic mess, that finally the accomplished through the
devaluation of December 1994.

Luis Donaldo Colosio was a victim of the changes that the Mexican
people are demanding, and have been much more, and probably are going to be
more. But nobody is going to stop the process. There is no way back to the
same Mexico that impoverished the citizens decade after decade, there is no
way back in this process which will take the country to be among the most
prosperous, democratic, and developed in the world.

A big struggle is going on right now in Mexico, between the old and
the new Mexico, the history and the future of the Mexicans, but history is
history, and the future is here and now, and is the new Mexico, the Mexico
that is going to emerge after this collapse of generations, of eras,
ideology, is the new Mexico leaving behind its links with the past, the
prehispanic, the colonial, the independent, the imperial, the dictatorial,
the revolutionary, the obsolete Mexico, the one with opportunities for
everyone, workers, businessmen, peasants, teachers, professionals, but must
of all, for foreign investors willing to participate in the construction of
our new country " The Mexico that is going to prevail ".

Mexico is going to be a market economy, a democratic, a free trade,
low inflation, strong currency, free enterprise country. Mexico is going to
be a market of a hundred million people with buying power. Is going to be a
country of laws, not privileges, and is going to be a country of low taxes,
high returns, and low risk.

We, the generations of Mexicans need the participation of people
like you. We don't want aid, we want to trade. We want to do business. We
don't want to export people, but goods. We don't want devaluations to
compete, we want fair competition. We need people like you to understand
that Mexico is not its government, or the party (PRI), Mexico is its people
who want a different country, the new people of Mexico who now are inviting
you to participate int the rebirth of our country, taking advantage of what
we already have, NAFTA, 2000 miles of border, our labor, your technology,
our natural resources, your capital, but must of all, the union of our
minds, hearts, efforts, work, purpose, vision, and our good will, in order
to construct a better world for us, for our children, and for future
generations.

My vision and my purpose is to build this bridge between our
countries, and not to leave this important responsibility to the bureaucracy
and the politicians. Let's take advantage of this historic opportinity, so
please give us your ideas, your advice, your experience. As you say in the
US: Let me pick you brain. I am not trying to be the savior of the new
relation between Mexico and the US, I just want to make my best effort in
all areas, fields, in order to get all the help we Mexicans can use to
accomplish our purpose: our new, free, democratic, just country, driving by
markets, not politicians, controlled by the people, not by the State, with
an economic system of freedom and prosperity, laws, not influnce, a good
neighbor and business partner for the USA, not another political welfare
dependent or a burden.

If I was able to capture your interest, our even your curiosity,
you can contact my by phone, letter, fax or e-mail chero@azstarnet.com, and
I assure you that you are going to have a very sincere and greathful new
Mexican friend, with which you can establish a long term professional and
personal relationship, looking for ways to advance in Mexico the ideas that
made your country greate, at the same time trying to avoid the mistakes that
have already cost so many problems. As Alvaro Obregon used to say:
Expirience is the capitalization of the failures. We have the best role
model in the history of the USA, so let's take the best, and help us avoid
what is causing the problems.

We are about to close the last pages of the history of the XX
century, and open the door to enter the next millennium. Let's do it the
right way. Help us to take Mexico were it belongs. We have this historic
responsibility, because to be a man, is presicely, to be responsible, and
every man, as every country, is the architect af his own destiny.

I am sending you also some information about myself, my
organization, so you can know who we are, and what we do. But must important
I am sending you my ideas, my vision, and an invitation to join forces to
build the Mexico af the XXI century, not as a dependent, or political
welfare, as I said before, but as a good neighbor who wants to be better,
because as one of your former First Ladies said: "When we cease to make a
contribution, we begin to die".

We are agoing to build a new country out of this war of ideas
because war educates the senses, call into action the will, perfects the
constitution of our man, bring them into such swift and close collision in
critical moments that man measure man, and out of this coallition our new
country will be constructed.

Ricardo Valenzuela
Tucson & Hermisillo