I speak from two years of living South of the Border (although in Baja California, which is one of the more prosperous states).
1) PAVE THE FUCKING ROADS! Boy that felt good to say that. Even for the people who don't own cars, paved roads would be a GREAT help. The micros (buses used for public transport) wouldn't break an axle trying to get from one place to another. Also, when roads are paved, there aren't huge clouds of dust thrown up by every passing car. There are towns where the roads are impassable during the rainy season and the dirt gets EVERYWHERE. Cars would also run better if they didn't have dirt in the engine, dirt in the trunk, dirt in the oil, dirt in the gas tank, dirt on the windows...you get the picture. If they doubled the amount of road construction each year for the next 5 years, then they might soon get to the point where the country was a nice place to live. Also, it would put lots of people to work and greatly improve the community.
2) Commit to a plan to get everyone in the country on piped water and phase out the use of pilas for each house. Americans take for granted the local water company or co-op and have forgotten what it was like to have to fetch water or have it delivered to you. This is another idea that would save money in the long run, for pumps and pipes are long term investments, while old trucks just make for more wear and tear and pollution and are not a cost effective way to deliver water.
3) Institute some quality control and local oversight for CFE (Comision Federal de Electricidad
http://www.cfe.gob.mx/en/) so that they are answerable to the locals instead of the bureaucrats in Mexico City. A program similar to the Rural Electrification of the New Deal would be of great help to rural Mexicans.
If this teacher is quoting Thomas Friedman, then that is exactly the wrong prescription for Mexico. Instead of wrapping their economy tighter around the US axle, they need to free it up, work to develop their OWN country instead of sending millions of their able bodied workers to work construction in the United States. If every one of those people standing in front of Home Depot was back home, installing pavers in the town plaza, or laying water and sewer lines, or setting up solar and renewable energy plants in villages that are off the grid, the country could make great strides.
Mexicans are blessed with a wonderful climate and the best beaches in North America. They have developed the tourist industry in various project towns like Cabo, Cancun, Ixtapa, Zihuatenejo, etc., which were nothing before the oil money came in. It has not been fully exploited and could still expand to provide many jobs. Right now, large hotels are playtoys for the wealthy, they get to play the bigshot, but little money actually trickles down to the staff. What is needed is some way to raise the minimum wage of 48 pesos per day (around $4.50) to make it a livable wage, preferably through some type of enforced profit sharing. The worker ALWAYS gets the shaft in Mexico and the boss ALWAYS ends up with extra pesos in his pocket.
Politicians on both sides of the border point to the maquiladoras as having helped the economy there. How? How can $100 a week lift a family out of poverty? What it does do is drain their time, so that they have no energy left to be able to work and improve themselves, their homes and their communities. Again, Mexican labor, making Mexican products with local Mexican materials should be used to build communities, not be sold off to the global capitalists who drive a hard bargain by threatening to move to China.
If you want specific proposals that would help everyday Mexicans, there is no better source than the website of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the man who should legitimately be Presidente (
http://www.amlo.org.mx/).
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