Mexico's poor get cash benefits tied to education, health care

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Mon, Jun. 13, 2005

Mexico's poor get cash benefits tied to education, health care

BY HUGH DELLIOS
Chicago Tribune

TEZOQUIPAN, Mexico - (KRT) - They have no running water in their cinderblock home. There is no chair to rest on. The family's income is mostly from tamales, which the mother makes and sells to neighbors for a dime profit each.

Celia Rojo, Manuel Mejia and their four children are the portrait of extreme poverty in Latin America. They may also be on the leading edge of efforts to combat it, according to the World Bank and others.

Rojo receives $15 each month from the Mexican government, as long as she continues visiting the health clinic, and $36 each month as long as she keeps her 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old twins in school. She would receive more, but her 17-year-old son dropped out.

The Mejia family reflects the successes and challenges of Opportunities, Mexico's $3 billion a year attempt to deal with the chronic poverty that plagues the region. At a time when parts of Latin America are suffering from instability and disillusionment with the free market and democratic systems, officials from Colombia and other nations have gone to Mexico to examine whether its anti-poverty program could help their struggling poor.
(snip)

The program began in 1997 but has been expanded by President Vicente Fox. While the president credits the program with lowering Mexico's poverty rate, others say the true impact will be judged over a longer term. But so far, there have been positive results in school attendance rates and health statistics, according to Mexican officials and independent researchers.
(snip/...)

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11883011.htm
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housing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, TX

"Poverty is pain; it feels like a disease. It attacks a person not only
materially, but also morally. It eats away one's dignity and
drives one into total despair."

-A poor woman, Moldova 1997 (from Voices of the Poor)

[TahitiNut]

1. "a dime profit each." Bullshit!

There is no "profit" ... that 'dime' is labor compensation. I get really disgusted with the pervasive misrepresentation of such terminology. Even owner-operators must compensate themselves for their labor, and it's sheer deceit to pretend that their labor compensation is zero.

[Igel]

5. And yet most of my income last year as a sole proprietor was

viewed as profit. And, in a twist of terminology, that was my income.

Personal income = profit = proprietorship income minus expenses.

At least last year I got to deduct mileage and the costs of supplies (and some really nifty new dictionaries), and a new computer the year before.

[TahitiNut]

7. I'd call it NIBT ... even in a Subchapter S

The twisted terminology we've been inundated with is insane.

[bemildred]

2. Now there is a stunning idea.

Fight poverty by giving money to poor people.
It can't be that simple, can it?

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Yes it can

it is done in other areas of the world, by peopel running banks giving loans to people like Mejia so they can get their business going. These loans don't ammount to much (five thousand dollars at most), and the interest if three percent. It has helped to get people off their feet.

The reason for the interest, the logic goes, as low as it is... it is not free money which people confuse with charity and many do not ask for it because they are ashamed of askng for charity

[damntexdem]

4. A poor country with limited resources to help its poor -- but with ...

RIGHTS to education and healthcare written into its constitution.

I just attended an anti-poverty conference in Mexico. Politicians of all parties, left to center to right, at least mouth anti-poverty rhetoric, and sometimes act on it. How different from the U.S., where the Administration and its minions are actively trying to grow poverty, domestically and internationally.

[Sgt. Baker]

6. I've been to Juarez

I went to NMSU, only about 30-45 minutes from ElPaso.

Juarez is really poor except for those who own the bars and get college student business. Little kids sell individual chicklets for $.25 each as you come and go across the border. There is also the Juarez slasher. Someone has been taking young women into the desert and killing them for about 10-15 years now. They still haven't caught him.

That is a great program BTW.