MEXICO : Progress and Promise : Viewpoints: Comment on the Emerging Mexico : The Word is Plastics

Luis J. Herrera, 49, inherited a Mexico City bicycle parts business from his father and built it up from a three-man operation to 42 employees. Threatened by U.S. competition under a free-trade agreement, he is retooling his plant to make plastic housewares--a product line he believes to be less vulnerable to imports.

The idea came to him while he was attending a plastics trade exposition in Chicago last June. Herrera admitted feeling a bit like Benjamin Braddock, the fresh-out-of-college character in the movie “The Graduate,” when a family friend approached him and summed up the future in one word: plastics. “That’s more or less my story,” Herrera says, laughing. “In plastics, I see the future with more optimism. . . .

“I am certain that American businessmen are going to attack Mexico as if it were Ohio or any other American state. They will be able to fly their executive jets from Los Angeles to Mexico City in three hours, make a sale and be home for dinner. The Americans are going to cause a revolution here. . . .

“Mexicans have a natural intelligence and ability to adapt. The proof is that there are millions of Mexicans working in the United States. . . . Small businessmen have to change our way of working. We have to be better prepared.

“Having the United States so close, we can learn a lot. If we stick to the American way of life, things will change for the better. . . .

“To manage a business in Mexico today, you need the agility of a bullfighter. The future is a dangerous bull. We must face it with courage.”

* ABOUT THIS SECTION

The principal writers for this special report on Mexico were Marjorie Miller and Juanita Darling of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau, and Richard Boudreaux of The Times’ Managua Bureau. Don Bartletti, of The Times’ San Diego Edition, took the photographs.