NAFTA 10 YEARS LATER
After Initial Boom, Mexico's Economy Goes Bust
Supporters say the free-trade zone has been a success, but critics point to the loss of jobs, factories and investment.
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writer

8:20 PM PST, January 1, 2004

MEXICALI, Mexico — The heady early years of the North American Free Trade Agreement brought Oscar Garcia opportunities he had scarcely dreamed of.

An electrical engineer raised in Mexicali, he became manager of the biggest factory the city had ever seen — a Mitsubishi plant the size of three football fields where workers assembled computer monitors. Garcia bought a new sport utility vehicle. He paid cash for a new home.

Then, it all came crashing down. Unable to compete with more sophisticated flat-screen monitors made in the Far East, Mitsubishi in August shut the $250-million plant it had opened in 1998, putting Garcia and 1,200 others out of work and leaving most of its machinery to rust in a junkyard. A cluster of high-tech companies that had come up around the factory also closed.

"I thought I would retire with Mitsubishi. It was such a good place to work," Garcia, 36, said. "But I don't see much chance of a new industry coming along to replace it."

Garcia's story mirrors the course of the Mexican economy since NAFTA opened up cross-border commerce and investment 10 years ago.