why is mexico so poor??

Question

is it because most of their citizens dont want to invest & work hard in there own country but would rather come to the us??

well,sorry i didnt mean to offend anyone. :()

Answer 1

Why Mexico's Small Corn Farmers Go Hungry
MEXICO CITY Macario Hernández's grandfather grew corn in the hills of Puebla, Mexico. His father does the same. Mr. Hernández grows corn, too, but not for much longer. Around his village of Guadalupe Victoria, people farm the way they have for centuries, on tiny plots of land watered only by rain, their plows pulled by burros. Mr. Hernández, a thoughtful man of 30, is battling to bring his family and neighbors out of the Middle Ages. But these days modernity is less his goal than his enemy.
This is because he, like other small farmers in Mexico, competes with American products raised on megafarms that use satellite imagery to mete out fertilizer. These products are so heavily subsidized by the government that many are exported for less than it costs to grow them. According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, American corn sells in Mexico for 25 percent less than its cost. The prices Mr. Hernández and others receive are so low that they lose money with each acre they plant.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/ftaa/601.html



Experts cite several key factors to explain Mexico's enduring poverty.
First, two major economic crises since the 1980s have hampered overall growth, halted the creation of new jobs and pushed large numbers of the lower middle class into poverty.
Mexico's weak public education system condemns workers to low salaries in a global economy where skills count. Decades of systemic government corruption have robbed the poorest of everything from high school scholarships to subsidized milk. The broken banking system hands out little credit -- people without the cash to buy a house or start a small business must often do without.
Mexico's inability to enforce the rule of law also discourages the investment needed to create jobs.
Jorge Castañeda, Fox's foreign minister until January, said investors were repelled by images of angry farmers riding their horses into the halls of Congress and anarchists successfully killing a $2 billion airport project with machetes and firebombs. They see kidnappings, impunity, corruption and legal structures so anemic that little crime is ever punished.
"It is a state of disorder," Castañeda said. "This cannot go on."
But what has become painfully clear in Mexico is that free trade -- most famously NAFTA -- has failed to lift the country out of poverty.
Starting with Miguel de la Madrid, president from 1982 to 1988, a succession of Ivy League-educated presidents bet on a formula intended to create prosperity for all. They advocated opening Mexico's markets, making government smaller, and decreasing its involvement in agriculture and industry.
"There was heavy reliance on a rising tide carrying all boats," said Guerra, who served as spokesman for two presidents in the 1990s. "Well, free-market policies have done nothing to alleviate poverty."
Instead, such policies have helped the upper classes and widened the divide between rich and poor. Studies show that the richest 10 percent now control about half of the country's financial and real estate assets. Most of those who are extremely poor live in rural areas. Government figures show that more than 40 percent of Mexicans in rural areas earn less than $1.40 a day, unable even to feed themselves decently. As a result, people are bailing out of the countryside as if it were a ship on fire.
Mexico's rural population is less than half the size it was in the 1950s. Government surveys show that between 400 and 600 people a day are packing up fleeing to cities or to the United States.
Alberto Gomez, an influential farmers' leader who recently organized a march on the capital by tens of thousands of farmers, said the situation was desperate. "We don't want to come to the city and we don't want to emigrate to the United States. But people have no money," said Gomez, head of the 180,000-member National Union of Agriculture Organizations.
Gomez and many politicians blame much of their problem on NAFTA, which they say bankrupted Mexican farmers who cannot compete with their heavily subsidized, more technologically advanced U.S. counterparts. While a boon to the maquiladoras, or factory workers, and a blessing to certain bigger farmers, NAFTA has inflicted more pain on already ailing small farmers, most economists and analysts here agree.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2003/0322mexico.htm

Answer 2

Well, why not look a little closer at the corrupt government they have. There is great wealth in the country, but only a few people down there are rich. They have many resources, silver mines, and agriculture among other things, too bad the government only takes care of a few people, corrupt politics dude, don't blame the hard workers that come up here and pick your veggies and fruit and clean your house. You POS.

Answer 3

There is much more corruption and class distinction in Mexico than in the USA. As a result, hard work does not necessarily result in greater wealth for the worker. As you can see from emigrant Mexicans, the people of Mexico have a great work ethic. But if that won't earn them money where they live, they'll go where it does.

Answer 4

It is not the fact that mexico is poor, it is the fact that people who are more previliged do not want to move all the way to mexico to help them out, because if people don't have anything, then how will it be possible to prosper when there is nothing to prosper off of. How about you take you american *** down there and work in the heat all day long, for almost nothing, and see were it gets you, RIGHT BACK IN AMERICA TRYING TO WORK FOR SOMETHING MORE THAN THE NOTHING YOU GOT!!!

Answer 5

How insensitive of you to ask such a question! You obviously take your freedoms and opportunities in the US for granted. Have considered the fact that opportunities may not be available in their own country?

Answer 6

No, they are poor because their gov't is corrupt and it's a socialistic type of country. Yes we are like the no. 1 capitalist nation stuck between two socialist countries: Mexico and Canada.

Answer 7

Bad econemy and goverment. But however there are well off hispanics in that country who strive to succeed more than the others around them.

Answer 8

What are you talking about? Obviously you don't know what you are talking about; Mexico is not the poorest country in the Americas

Answer 9

Because it's just as poor as other countries.

Answer 10

The same reason North Korea is poor. Dictators require all the money.................keeps the people in line. (except for the ones who escape to the US to take our jobs and ruin our lives)