MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexicans know a little something about what the
                  collapse of a currency can do to an economy. Four years ago, the fall of the
                  peso triggered a crisis from which the country still hasn't recovered.

                  This time, the crisis is in Brazil, but Mexicans are again bracing for a
                  battering. The peso, Latin America's only major free-floating currency, lost
                  about 31/2 percent of its value against the dollar on Wednesday, threatening
                  a new round of inflation.

                  "As much as we work, we're barely making it. Now, it'll be even harder,"
                  said Maria de la Cruz, 48, a mother of three who was picking through
                  discarded fruit at Mexico City's produce center on the day of the
                  devaluation.

                  Her husband, a construction worker, has had trouble finding steady work
                  since December 1994, when an overvalued peso lost half its value against
                  the dollar within three months and plunged Mexico into its worst recession
                  since the 1930s.

                  Tomas Alvarado, a 33-year-old farmer, despaired that the country is still
                  recovering from the recession of 1994 and now it has to deal with the new
                  crisis.

                  "We Mexicans work hard -- we'll get by, if only the government would
                  manage things better," Alvarado said as a group of produce dealers nodded
                  in agreement.

                  Finance Minister Jose Angel Gurria urged Mexicans to remain calm.

                  "Surely ... we will return to the normality we had up until a few days ago,"
                  Gurria said, blaming Mexico's problems on Brazil's exchange restrictions --
                  the Brazilian currency is pegged to the U.S. dollar -- and that country's
                  failure to implement austere economic policies.

                  In fact, Mexicans have been tightening their belts for free-market policies
                  promising better times to come since 1982, when giddy government
                  borrowing based on bungled calculations of oil revenues led to a major debt
                  crisis.

                  The country's minimum wage averaged about $235 per month in 1982 and
                  declined steadily to about $73 dollars in 1997.

                  Many Mexicans who heard the government's explanation were unsure why
                  Brazil's market problems has hit Mexico so hard after four years of painful
                  austerity measures meant to make the economy less vulnerable.

                  Economist Lars Schonander of Santander Investment brokerage company in
                  Mexico City said much of the answer lies on Wall Street.

                  "Even though the economic contact between Brazil and Mexico is fairly
                  limited, a lot of people hold the two countries in the same portfolio," he said.

                  So when investors sell off Brazilian stocks, Mexican shares are dumped
                  along with them.

                  The most frightening aspect of the Brazil crisis is that it may be harder to
                  solve than Mexico's 1994 economic plunge.

                  In Mexico, "the peso devaluation was the answer to a liquidity problem: We
                  saw a steep recession and then a swift recovery. Brazil's problem is one of a
                  big government, a fiscal situation, and the devaluation does not really answer
                  that problem," Schonander said.

                   Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.