As tortilla prices rise, so do Mexicans' tempers

                  'Mexico is the tortilla, the tortilla is Mexico'

 
                  MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- For decades Mexicans have suffered through
                  one economic crisis after the other knowing they could always feed their
                  families thanks to a subsidy on tortillas, a corn-flour staple for millions of
                  poor.

                  But the government announced plans this week to scrap the subsidy that has
                  been a centerpiece of social policy since the 1910-1917 Revolution -- a
                  move that elicited cheers from economists but jeers from ordinary Mexicans.

                  "Some people in Mexico survive on tortillas alone. Mexico is the tortilla, the
                  tortilla is Mexico," said Jorge Garcia, a 35-year-old worker at one of
                  thousands of tortilla mills in Mexico City that turns corn flour into small round
                  pancakes.

                  The government has more than doubled state-controlled tortilla prices so far
                  this year. Despite official assurances tortilla prices are near market levels,
                  tortilla industry officials on Wednesday said they expected prices to rise up
                  to 50 percent in the next year.

                  Revolutionary ideals

                  Ending the tortilla subsidy has made millions feel abandoned by the
                  governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has been in power
                  since shortly after the revolution toppled dictator Porfirio Diaz.

                  "The Mexican Revolution: Forgotten," El Heraldo newspaper said in a
                  banner headline on Wednesday.

                  The move comes as part of Mexico's 1999 budget, which also calls for a
                  sharp hike in gasoline prices and some new taxes in a bid to keep a narrow
                  fiscal deficit and woo foreign investors spooked by global financial turmoil.

                  Outside Garcia's tortilla store in middle-class San Miguel Chapultepec
                  neighborhood, dozens of people in line accused the government of tampering
                  with their livelihoods.

                  "As usual, the people suffer so that government officials can line their
                  pockets. It's a good move for the haves, a bad move for the have-nots," said
                  Eduardo Carvioto, 25, echoing a common feeling the price hikes will be
                  abused by greedy politicians.

                  'People are angry'

                  Political analysts say stability in Mexico, where some 60 million earn less
                  than 50 pesos, or about $5, a day, has largely rested on the principle that if
                  the government takes away with one hand, it gives back with the other.

                  That stability has been tested by a series of economic crises from the 1970s
                  that have cut real wages by a third, including the 1994-95 peso crisis that
                  sparked the deepest recession in 50 years.

                  A cartoon in the respected El Universal newspaper on Wednesday depicted
                  a Mexican official standing next to poor Mexicans holding signs saying
                  "We're hungry" and "stop raising tortilla prices." Alluding to Marie Antoinette
                  before the French Revolution, the official said: "As a woman whom I admire
                  once said, 'let them eat cake."'

                  "People are angry," wrote El Universal columnist David Fernandez. "The
                  fiscal package ... is a blow to the great majority of Mexicans ... who are
                  being asked to carry the costs of (economic) reform."

                  Mexican's purchasing power has been falling steadily for the past two
                  decades. Mexico's daily minimum wage can buy roughly 32 pounds of
                  tortillas now, compared to 70 pound in 1976, a study by Mexico's National
                  Autonomous University said.

                  "I'll buy fewer tortillas, and my family will eat less. What else can I do," said
                  taxi-driver Antonio Gutierrez, 45, who since Saturday has had to pay 15
                  percent more for the price of gasoline to run his taxi.

                  "I don't regret being a Mexican, but I do regret living in this country."

                  Copyright 1998   Reuters.