Mexico, D.F., November 28, 2011:  The head of Mexico’s Environmental Agency Mr. Juan Rafael Elvira Quezada recognized The Tecma Group, a Juarez / El Paso based company.  Tecma has demonstrated a continuous commitment to the environment and has been awarded for the second year in a row, the highest recognition to environmental excellence.  Tecma is one of only 20 companies recognized that have implemented programs that will allow Mexico to move towards a green economy.  On Monday, November 28  Mr. Toby Spoon, Executive Vice President, accepted the award on behalf of Tecma during the Forum in Mexico City.  Mr. Spoon commented, “This award is a tribute to the efforts of our people and to our overall corporate goals. Mexico has taken a leadership role in Latin America with these type of environmental programs and Tecma is proud to be on the ground floor.” Tecma is a Shelter Manufacturing Company that helps US manufacturers benefit from “near shore” low cost solutions helping North America compete directly with the China alternative.

 

by Diana Washington Valdez \ El Paso Times

Posted: 11/27/2011 12:16:03 PM MST

A worker at a maquila measures wire used in weed whackers and motors for boats. The maquiladora is part of TECMA, a business that manages maquilas and businesses in Juarez for companies around the world.

The El Paso border economy, and not just the Mexican peso, may be in for a bumpy ride if the U.S. recession returns and European markets remain shaky, experts say.

The peso fell by 20 percent during the past four months, and it can be expected to reach 17 pesos to the dollar at retail outlets. Last month, some retail outlets in Northern Mexico were trading the currency at 18 pesos to the dollar.

Grupo Banamex reported the interbank exchange rate at 14.14 pesos to the dollar, and the teller rate at 14.25 pesos to the dollar.

Politics, violence and foreign investment trends south of the border will also affect the local economy as well as the peso’s strength, experts say.

“Given the precarious nature of economic conditions in the United States and Western Europe, there is substantial downside risk facing the borderplex economy,” said Tom Fullerton, J.P. Morgan Chase professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“Widespread sovereign debt default risks across Europe and debt rollover debacle in Washington have already contributed to a steep decline in the exchange value of the peso in recent weeks.”

Sergio Kurczyn, an analyst for Grupo Mexico, also said in a recent study “Review of Mexico’s Economic Situation” that instability in European financial markets will continue to put pressure on the peso.

Juárez resident Gina Gutierrez, 58, said devaluations, no matter how small, have an adverse effect on the pocketbooks of low-income people who rely on stable currency-exchange rates for business or shopping.

“One of my neighbors sells decorative hairpins that she makes herself,” Gutierrez said. “She buys her supplies for the pins in El Paso in dollars, but whenever the peso loses value, she complains that she can’t make enough of profit for her business to be worthwhile. Her customers buy her products with pesos, and so she can’t raise her prices too much.

“Devaluations are good for people who deal in dollars, but not for those of us who receive salaries or microbusiness income in pesos.”

What Gutierrez said reiterates the notion that casas de cambio, or foreign currency exchange services, amount to the poor man’s stock market in Mexico.

Carmen Martinez, who sells used clothing in Juárez, said a weaker peso makes her items more expensive for her customers. “They are less likely to buy clothes because the dollar has become more expensive,” she said.

Martinez buys the used clothing with dollars and sells them in pesos.

On the flip side, a cheaper peso has helped U.S. manufacturers who operate in Mexico, including those who have maquiladoras in Juárez, because their costs, including labor, go down.

But Fullerton said that while a cheaper peso “helps export manufacturing prospects in northern Mexico, it also hurts retail performance on the north side of the river as a consequence of reduced purchasing power for prospective customers who reside in Ciudad Juárez and elsewhere in the state of Chihuahua.”

It may become less expensive to make products, but consumers who hold pesos will not be able to afford them if the dollar continues to gain against the peso.

Mike Haskell, vice president of the Valuta currency exchange service, said earlier market reports indicated that the dollar was going to weaken, but that just the opposite happened. “I believe the dollar rather than the peso is the currency to watch,” he said.

Politics and violence will have an impact on the border’s economic trends.

Community leaders have complained that the ongoing violence in Mexico may be scaring investors away from the border. However, the violence and adjacent criminality have mainly affected small businesses and not major industries.

Mexican authorities have attributed the continuing violence to drug cartel wars that have evolved into turf battles between competing organized crime groups.

Nathan Ashby, another economics expert at UTEP, said his research indicates that violence is not keeping other countries from investing in Mexico, although the countries that are most likely to invest are those with a history of organized-crime-related violence, such as Colombia, Brazil and Italy.

Mexico will elect a new president next year, and the possibility of a shift in political party rule is bound to add to uncertainty about the Mexican government’s future role in the crackdown against the cartels.

“Some are finding that the violence across the border has become more predictable, even though homicide rates stay about the same,” Ashby said. “Our sources in Mexico believe that the PRI may be willing to negotiate with organized crime if a PRI president is elected.”

At least one political leader in the Mexican border state of Coahuila is using the Internet to sound an alarm over previous devaluations under presidents of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Erick Zapata, an official of the state National Action Party, or PAN, in Monclova, Coahuila, warned in an Internet posting about Mexico’s previous currency devaluations under PRI presidents.

“Bad government and the excesses of PRI governments caused this country to collapse on various occasions,” Zapata said. “We only need to recall the devaluations by PRI members after they said they would defend our economy, and then how we lost control of the peso at the end of their sexenios.” Mexican presidents serve six-year terms or sexenios.

Vicente Fox was the first opposition party candidate (PAN) in Mexico’s modern history to defeat the PRI to become president in 2000. His successor, Felipe Calderon, is a member of the PAN.

“Politics can affect the economy, if it results in uncertainty about what’s going to happen, or it can create more certainty” Ashby said. “We don’t know if presidential politics will affect the peso exchange rate. Usually, when there is uncertainty, there is a flight to the dollar.”

But “Mexico’s fiscal policies have been sound, and the government has allowed the peso exchange rate to float, instead of artificially holding it up,” Ashby said. “Mexico had major peso devaluations after the government spent like crazy and then fixed the exchange rate to the dollar.”

Trade accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have integrated the economies of nations, including those with disparate economies like the U.S. and Mexico, to the point that it’s impossible for one country’s economic woes not to affect its trade partners.

Experts say this is why the world is worried about whether or not Greece can recover with a bailout. If it doesn’t, then its problems will spill over in different ways to other parts of Europe and North America.

The U.S. provided Mexico with a $50 billion bailout after the 1994 peso crisis that crippled that country’s economy and set back its middle class for an additional 10 to 15 years. The Mexican government repaid the bailout money.

Back then, a severely weakened peso resulted in fewer customers for retail stores in South El Paso, some of which relied on shoppers from Juárez for up to 70 percent of their business.

Ashby and Fullerton both agree that the border’s fortunes, including a healthy peso-dollar exchange rate, hinge on when and how quickly the U.S. economy rebounds.

“Preliminary simulations with the UTEP Borderplex Econometric Model indicate that local economic growth will be moderate in 2012, but only as long as a national business cycle downturn is avoided,” Fullerton said.

Juárez resident Ruth Navarro, who shops regularly in El Paso, said she knows the dollar has gotten more expensive over the course of the year. But she is not likely to stop crossing the border to hunt for the occasional bargain.

“Some commodities are more expensive in El Paso than in Juárez, and sometimes it takes me a long time to cross the international bridges,” she said, “but it’s still worth it to me to shop in El Paso.”

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 915-546-6140.

The Mexican peso
Mexican peso devaluations and their presidents:

1975: -29.4 percent, Luis Echeverria Alvarez.

1982: -56.1 percent, Jose Lopez Portillo.

1986: -38.7 percent, Miguel De La Madrid Hurtado.

1994: -26.9 percent, Carlos Salinas De Gortari.

1995: -24.6 percent, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon.

2006: +12.1 percent (gain), Vicente Fox Quesada.
Source: Banco de Mexico, INEGE figures.

By TIM JOHNSON

McClatchy Newspapers

November 30, 2011.  GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexico’s two most powerful criminal gangs are locked in a titanic battle for control of the country’s heartland in a struggle that’s redrawn Mexico’s map of violence.

Violence has dropped along the U.S. border, with Ciudad Juarez, once considered the most violent city in the world, seeing a 35 percent decline in homicides this year.

That good news is balanced by bad news in Guadalajara, Culiacan and Veracruz, where the Sinaloa cartel, whose bulwark has always been Mexico’s Pacific coast, and the Zetas, a violent gang that originally was created to protect the Gulf cartel along the Gulf of Mexico coast, are locked in a spiraling struggle that’s seen each gang invade the other’s territory.

The conflict has thrust Guadalajara, an important manufacturing center of 4.4 million people, into the battlefield. After overcoming a spate of drug violence in the mid-1980s, Guadalajara quieted down, perhaps because the Sinaloa cartel held a monopoly on operations in the surrounding state of Jalisco.

“Here in Jalisco, we’ve seen this as a distant thing. ‘Oh, this is happening over in Michoacan.’ It felt like it was far away,” said Dante Haro Reyes, a law professor and public security expert at the University of Guadalajara. “Now it feels like it’s around the corner.”

The wakeup call came at daybreak Nov. 24, when mobsters abandoned three vehicles filled with 26 dead bodies at the iconic bright-yellow Millennium Arches that straddle a Guadalajara thoroughfare. A message on a poster board was signed “Z,” a signature of Los Zetas.

“Look how we leave you these dead people,” the poster said in part. “We are in your kitchen.”

Boasting of their penetration deep into Sinaloa turf, the Zetas claimed to be “the strongest cartel at the national level, the only cartel that doesn’t pass information to the gringos,” a reference to the son of a Sinaloa boss who claims to have been a Drug Enforcement Administration informant before his 2009 arrest.

Just a day earlier, the Zetas had dealt another blow to Sinaloa, leaving a truck filled with 16 charred bodies in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, from which the Sinaloa cartel takes its name.

The war between the groups – clearly the alpha dogs of Mexico’s underworld – pits not just weapons but also two very different business models and geographic strongholds.

“This is a kind of death struggle, a definitive struggle between the Zetas, who have no remorse and expand constantly, and Sinaloa, which is trying to consolidate itself,” said Bruce Bagley, an organized crime and narcotics expert at the University of Miami.

Sinaloa operatives appear to have set off the conflict over the summer, forming a group called “Matazetas,” or Zeta Killers, to exterminate Zetas in Veracruz, a Gulf Coast state that’s a bottleneck on a key smuggling route. The group went public in a big way at afternoon rush hour on Sept. 20, parking three vehicles packed with dead bodies near an urban underpass. Security agents found 35 victims at the grisly scene, nearly all asphyxiated and partially naked.

The “Zeta Killers” released videos of masked gunmen promising to hunt down Zetas and end their rampant extortion in Veracruz against common people.

Even as they execute plenty of their own rivals, Sinaloa bosses are thought to detest the brutality of the Zetas, which they think brings increased law enforcement pressure on crime groups.
“The Matazetas quite clearly tried to win a kind of public approval and government tolerance. They said, ‘Get out of our way and we’ll take care of this problem,’” Bagley said.

With the latest Zetas blows against Sinaloa, experts say tit-for-tat violence is taking on its own momentum.

“The theory going around is that this is a battle for total control,” Haro Reyes said, adding that reprisals wouldn’t take long to occur. “When you get attacked on your own territory, you’ve got to attack in your rival’s territory or you look weak.”

Sinaloa and the Zetas have vastly different histories.

Smugglers from Sinaloa began packing marijuana northward half a century ago. Today, the Sinaloa cartel’s tentacles loop as far as Australia and West Africa, making it the most powerful drug syndicate in Mexico, and perhaps the world. The group, which is also known as The Federation, is loosely organized and more inclined to negotiate with rivals and bribe authorities.

In comparison, the Zetas are upstarts. A militia formed by former Mexican special forces commandos recruited to protect the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas broke away early last year. Unlike the Sinaloa crime group, which sticks largely to drug trafficking, the Zetas branched into extortion, kidnapping, human smuggling and the sale of pirated goods. Brutality and beheadings have become their hallmark.

Only a year or two ago, Mexico had half a dozen significant crime groups, including the Tijuana, Juarez, Beltran Leyva and La Familia Michoacana cartels. Security forces have crippled some of those groups through arrests and killings, while others have splintered, leaving remnants to struggle for allies.

One of those fragmentations occurred in Guadalajara after the slaying of Sinaloa boss Ignacio Coronel on July 29, 2010. Some of his enforcers have allied with another group, Milenio, and moved under the umbrella of Los Zetas.

If the Zetas win control of Jalisco state, their territory would bisect Mexico, stretching from Tamaulipas along the Gulf Coast through San Luis Potosi and into Jalisco, giving them access to Manzanillo, the nation’s busiest port.

While body dumps are becoming common in central Mexico, residents of Ciudad Juarez, where homicides have dropped this year, are finding unusual periods of calm. For 65 hours over Nov. 19 to 21, Juarez tallied no homicides at all, the longest such period in three years.

“There are clear signs of Ciudad Juarez’s recovery,” Gov. Cesar Duarte of Chihuahua state said last week. “Instead of streets congested with security forces, we have restaurants congested with clients.”

To be sure, Ciudad Juarez has tallied 1,832 killings so far this year, an unacceptable rate of about 5.5 homicides day. But the trend line heartens residents.

Ciudad Juarez’s police chief, Julian Leyzaola, a former army lieutenant colonel who gained notoriety for tough tactics in quelling crime in Tijuana in an earlier posting there, notes that the drop in murders coincides with his arrival in March.

There may be other reasons, however. The Sinaloa Cartel appears to have reached a settlement with onetime rival cartels in Tijuana and Juarez, negotiating a 60-40 split in drug trafficking profits, “with Sinaloa taking the lion’s share,” Bagley said.

The agreements may explain why Ciudad Juarez and border areas to the west all the way to Tijuana on the Pacific coast have seen violence drop, he said.

America’s 20 Can-Do Capitals

By Clark Merrefield and Lauren Streib

Economic experts fear a 50 percent chance of a new recession, but some parts of the country still have it going on. From business development to sustainability, livability to transportation and infrastructure, Newsweek offers a glimpse not just of how our nation’s 200 largest cities are performing across these categories, but how they’re progressing.

The largest 200 cities in the United States were on the hook for a maximum of 25 points for each category, for a total possible score of 100. Differences in the yearly ranges of data used are due to data availability.

For sustainability we took into account 2008 county emissions data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 13 major air pollutants, with total emissions divided by population to determine a final carbon footprint; we also took into account the change in total park acreage from 2008 to 2009 with data from the Trust for Public Land, and the percent change in LEED-certified buildings from 2006–08 to 2009–11 with data from the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

For livability we considered the change in the percent of people with health care from 2008 to 2009 and the change in the percentage of people over 25 with at least a bachelor’s degree, both with data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We also considered the change in cost of living from 2005 to 2009, with data from Moody’s.

For transportation and infrastructure we looked at the momentum of new construction via the percent change in new building permits from 2005 to 2010, and we looked at how people travel with the percent change in people who take public transportation or walk to work from 2007 to 2009, both with data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For business development we considered the change in Moody’s cost-of-doing-business index from 2005 to 2009; the change in unemployment from 2006 to 2011—with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; the percentage change in patents issued from 2005 to 2010 with data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; the small-business growth rate from 2005 to 2009 with data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Payscale; and venture capital growth for new startups (a combination of the percentage change in the number of venture-capital deals and the number of venture-capital companies from 2005 to 2009) with data from the National Venture Capital Association.

1. El Paso, Texas

Sustainability: 21.46

Livability: 18.45

Transportation and Infrastructure: 20.37

Business Development: 11.15

Final Score: 71.43

For additional rankings, see:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/galleries/2011/09/11/american-can-do-cities-oakland-boston-philadelphia-photos.html

Posted August 22, 2011

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO (Aug. 22, 2:50 p.m. ET) — Crime has threatened to ruin this border city’s popularity as a hub for international export manufacturing plants for a decade.

But Juárez has survived and is preparing for a new influx of investors.

With El Paso, its business partner across the Río Grande in neighboring Texas, the city of 1.3 million forms one of the most successful cross-border industrial corridors in the world.

The statistics on villainy, however, are grim: hundreds of murders of women, several thousand men and women executed in drug-related gang warfare, numerous cases of kidnapping and extortion.

Like feral rats, the criminals by and large operate with impunity. Whether because of police incompetence, corruption or fear, most crimes are unsolved.

In early August the federal government, having already sent in the army, threatened to withdraw all law enforcement funding for Juárez unless the municipality adequately trained its police force. It subsequently relented.

In the 46 years since the Antonio J Bermudez Industrial Park in Juárez housed the country’s first maquiladora, the number of such plants in the city has grown to about 300. Plastics processors number about 30.

The value of products made from rubber and plastics in Juárez and adjacent towns in the state of Chihuahua in 2010 was $106.6 million, up from $104.1 million the year before, according to the office of economic development (Desarrollo Económico de Ciudad Juárez AC),

In the first five months of this year, rubber and plastics processors’ sales reached $45.3 million, only slightly down ($500,000) from the same period in 2010.

In 2008 the Juárez maquiladoras employed 250,000 workers. The global downturn led to 80,000 being laid off in 2009. Hiring began again in 2010.

Up to 30,000 have been re-employed, said Alan Russell, president and CEO of the Tecma Group of Companies, of El Paso, TX, which lies across the Río Grande from Juárez.

Tecma helps foreign companies establish themselves in Mexico. It finds factory space, gets permits, imports and installs equipment, hires workers, and so on. It lists 40-plus client companies on its website and is currently making proposals to three potential clients a week, Russell said.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service (CS) has also been busy. Its El Paso U.S. Export Assistance Center opened in February 2009, after which it launched the Border Trade Initiative (BTI), a series of promotions to encourage trade with Mexico and its maquiladoras.”

According to Robert Queen, the CS director in El Paso, the initiative has been effective.

At one event, sponsored by the state of New Mexico and the CS, in June representatives from 40 maquiladoras and 600 US business people showed up, he reported.

The United States provides 47 percent, or $41 billion worth, of all inputs to Mexico’s 2,800 maquiladoras, 60 percent of which are on the border with the United States, Queen said. Asian companies are the second largest providers.

Russell believes that “for the first time in modern history Mexico can be a head-to-head competitor with China.”

“When the recession occurred, the banks pulled lines of credit from manufacturers. So, as the recession is ending, and slowly, I might say… companies are seeing where they can increase their manufacturing low cost initiatives.

“The minimum wage, and the overall cost of operating, in China have continued to increase this year by as much as 30 percent,” he pointed out to Plastics News.

“Many manufacturers that moved to Asia in the past 10 years now realize the total cost of manufacturing and transportation back to the US consumer is higher than manufacturing on the U.S./Mexican border and are increasingly looking at production plants here in El Paso/Juarez,” Queen said in a separate interview.

He declined comment when asked about the security problem in Juárez. But Russell, while lamenting the violence across the river, said: “Fortunately, the criminal element has allowed our industry to continue.

“We’ve not had any type of assault on plants or personnel. Our shipments have not been obstructed or blocked. We have not had our vehicles hijacked.”

He said crime is declining in Juárez, a claim also made by Chihuahua state governor César Horacio Duarte Jáquez in a speech in August.

“Our biggest obstacles to growth are not the corporate board of directors but news reports” about violence in Juárez, Russell said. “We do take precautions. We have training seminars for our clients… They have not kidnapped expats for the most part.”

Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner and US merchandise exports to its neighbor south of the border reached $163 billion in 2010, an increase of 27 percent over the previous year, said Queen.

El Paso is the fourth largest exporting city in the US, he said, behind Detroit in first place, Los Angeles in second and Houston. “Over 75% of El Paso’s exports go to Mexico.”

Plastic Molding Technology Inc, formerly of Bridgeport, CT, moved to El Paso 10 years ago in search of business opportunities presented by the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

CEO Charles A. Sholtis said the move has paid off handsomely. With just under 100 employees and 58 presses, their clamping forces ranging from 20 to 500 tons, PMT doubled its sales to about $14 million two years ago,

Founded by Sholtis’s father, Charles E. Sholtis with one Arburg press in the mid 1970s, PMT specializes in manufacturing injection molded plastic components with extremely high tolerance. The company serves the automotive and household electronics sectors, which account for 75 percent of the business, principally.

He sees a bright future for his company. “With Nafta established, a number of things have been put into place to promote trade between the two countries,” he said.

“From a freight standpoint, steps have been taken to streamline points of entry”, with multiple crossing points and a beltway around Juárez.

Stuart Roberts, owner of Sun Cross Marketing Inc, of El Paso, which represents companies making plastic molding and extrusion equipment and supplies, said 95 percent of his business is across the border in Mexico.

Business in the area is “on the up and up,” he said.

Alan Russell agreed: “It’s not a boom. We’re growing at a nice pace. We’re back to where we were in 2008” – criminal activity in the city notwithstanding.

Click to listen to audio interview

by Jason Beaubien

August 4, 2011

Over the last four years of the Mexican drug war, the country’s northern border has become one of the most violent parts of the country. Yet recently that same part of Mexico has been booming economically.

The duty-free maquiladora assembly plants along the border are rapidly adding jobs, and exports to the United States are reaching record levels.

Juarez, just across from El Paso, Texas, is the murder capital of Mexico and one of the world’s most violent cities. Drug-related violence in Juarez killed more than 3,000 people last year. Extortion, carjacking and kidnapping are rampant.

That might not seem like an ideal business environment, but foreign companies are investing heavily in Juarez and other violence-plagued cities along the border. Cheap labor and proximity to the huge U.S. market are outweighing concerns about security.

Juarez Bouncing Back

El Paso-based TECMA is one such company. It runs a huge, 180,000-square-foot factory near the Juarez airport.

Some of the maquiladoras — plants that can import raw materials and ship out finished products across the border duty-free — produce a specific product for a specific company. But in this plant, TECMA runs seven different operations for seven different U.S. companies. One area manufactures customized dashboard covers. Another produces electronic components for modems. Yet another makes plastic mannequins.

The company’s business also includes “reverse logistics” — refurbishing used products. For instance, the factory will take an old or inoperative credit card reader from Wal-Mart, clean it, replace any worn-out parts, update its software and then send it back to the retailer.

TECMA runs a total of 17 plants across Juarez.

The border city, with a population of just over 1 million people, was hard hit by the recent recession. Between 2008 and 2009, Juarez lost nearly 85,000 jobs out of 250,000, or 33 percent.

But the city is rapidly bouncing back, and local officials expect that by the end of this year employment levels will have returned to their 2007 peak. Even with a smaller workforce, exports in 2010 reached an all-time high. The value of trade between Juarez and El Paso jumped a stunning 47 percent from 2009 to 2010. And similar gains are being reported in other border cities, such as Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo.

Workers at a maquiladora assembly plant in Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, make mannequins. While other parts of Mexico are moving slowly out of the recent recession, the maquiladoras have been rapidly adding jobs and boosting exports to record levels.

Alan Russell, TECMA’s president, says the Mexican border has a huge logistical advantage over China or other industrial hubs in Asia.

“We have another operation that ships the same day that the orders are received,” he says. The specialized medical products are made that day, sent to the border, go through customs and are shipped via FedEx or UPS for next-day delivery anywhere in the U.S.

Foreign Factories Unscathed By Violence

But one issue about Juarez that Russell always has to address with potential clients is security — what he calls “the elephant in the room.”

Convoys of thousands of Mexican soldiers and federal police racing back and forth across Juarez are an everyday reality. The nervous troops wear full battle gear and clutch assault rifles.

Yet Russell and other business leaders say that for the most part, violence from the drug war hasn’t affected the maquiladoras.

“To date, we have not had those kinds of problems, as you would think that could happen in an environment like this — but just hasn’t happened,” he says.

The factories don’t have much cash in them or products that could be easily resold on the black market — for example, air filters for the latest model GM car. The gangs also may be leaving them alone because the maquiladoras are an established and important source of income for much of the population.

But if the foreign companies working in Juarez have been immune to the recent crime wave, local businesses have not.

The local newspaper El Norte estimates that 90 percent of small businesses in Juarez are forced to pay local gangs for “protection.” The head of the local restaurant association pegs the extortion rate at 60 percent to 70 percent.

Those who don’t pay risk being killed or having their businesses torched. The gangs have even been trying to extort teachers and parking lot attendants. “Everyone pays,” says one restaurant owner, who closed temporarily late last year because of criminal demands for “rent.”

‘Two Different Realities’

Maria Soledad Maynez, the head of economic development and promotion for Juarez, says extortion is dampening the city’s economic recovery.

“There [are] a lot of small businesses that … right now, if they want to work, they have to pay. Yes, it’s a big issue for the small businesses, more than the big ones,” she says.

However, Maynez says she’s confident that Juarez will overcome its current crime problem soon. There seems to be a feeling from her and others that at some point the violence simply has to pass. And she says foreign businesses continue to be interested in moving into the area.

For instance, a new slaughterhouse is being built in a free-trade zone on the western edge of Juarez. Maynez says the plant will be able to slaughter and process animals at a significantly lower cost than in the United States.

She says many companies currently operating in the U.S. could operate far cheaper in Juarez. Wages in the maquiladoras start at about $10 a day. Once products are moved back into El Paso, they can be moved quickly by truck, rail or plane throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Manuel Ochoa with the El Paso Regional Economic Development Corporation says the violence doesn’t appear to be significantly affecting the rebound of the Juarez economy.

He says it’s as if there are “two separate realities” unfolding in Juarez: The city’s murder rate rivals that of a war zone, yet its factories are exporting products at a record level.

This is part of an occasional series looking at U.S.-Mexico trade and the economy along the Texas-Mexico border.

EL PASO ? Freight-laden forklifts zip through the city’s warehouses, some manufacturers run extra shifts to keep up with demand, and trucks idle in queues at the Mexican border waiting to cross international bridges. This border metropolis is back.

After a debilitating recession in 2009 that led to layoffs and business failures on both sides of the border, companies that make parts in the greater El Paso region are working hard to keep up with sales from Juarez, where automobiles, electronics and other goods are assembled.

The irony is that today’s surge is happening amidst bloody battles as drug cartels fight each other and the Mexican government. Juarez, which borders with El Paso, seems like ground zero in this national drug war.

“Our business is absolutely booming right now,” said Amy Noyes, vice president of operations for J.H. Rose Logistics, a transportation company that moves unfinished and assembled goods between the U.S. and Mexico. “We’re going to have a record year.”

Business is going so well that the 64,000-square-foot facility may no longer be big enough.

“I’m quoting a lot of business. If we get it, I’m full, then I’m going to expand,” Noyes said as workers unloaded rolls of blue vinyl from a container at the warehouse in Santa Teresa, N.M., about 14 miles northwest of downtown El Paso. The Chinese vinyl will be used for automobile seats manufactured in Juarez.
Today’s rebound is courtesy of a booming maquiladora business in neighboring Juarez, where workers are churning out parts for everything from automobiles to airplanes as well as assembling laptops and other consumer goods.

“Whatever happens to that industry across the border has significant impacts here,” said Roberto Coronado, economist with the El Paso branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Both cities complement each other.”

Like many other border communities, El Paso and Juarez are closely intertwined. When manufacturing plummeted in Juarez in 2009, so did plant production in El Paso. Business at El Paso transportation companies also suffered as trucks didn’t need to shuttle merchandise back and forth across the border.

“The maquiladora industry is like a harbinger for the U.S. economy,” said Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the New Mexico Small Business Development Center Network. Factories and warehouses in the desert of southwestern New Mexico, near El Paso, are also benefiting from the growing maquila production.

Leader in growth

U.S. trade with Mexico is booming now. But no other Texas port of entry’s imports and exports grew by a larger percentage than El Paso’s did last year.

El Paso’s trade with Mexico increased last year to $69 billion, compared with $47 billion in 2009, according to Customs and Border Protection data. That’s higher than the $50 billion traded in 2008.

By comparison, Houston’s trade with Mexico increased to $22 billion in 2010, compared with $16 billion in 2009. Despite the headlines about crime in Juarez, that hasn’t driven manufacturing plants out, locals insisted.

“We are not aware of a single company in Juarez that has left because of the violence,” said Bob Cook, president of El Paso Regional Economic Development Corp.

Instead, those that were forced to shutter did so because of the slowdown in the global economy, and more so, the U.S. economy, he said.

Took message to Asia

Cook and other El Paso and Juarez leaders spent several days in March traveling through Asian cities to extol the virtues of the region to companies interested in opening international plants.

Not many manufacturers need much convincing to come to the greater El Paso and Juarez region, some say.

“Companies are coming and knocking on the door more than I’m recruiting,” said K. Alan Russell, president of  Tecma, an El Paso company that helps others run their maquila operations in Mexico, and he’s seeing more companies eager to open plants in Juarez.

But many do believe that had it not been for the shoot outs in Juarez, more businesses would have set up shop in the Mexican border city.

“As brisk and healthy as the economy in El Paso is, it would have been twice or three times as much if not for the violence,” said Jerry Shapiro, plant manager of Eagle Brass’ southwest division in El Paso. “I think there are more companies who would move to Juarez. There are plants that definitely didn’t move here.”

Staying out of Juarez

Until the violence started, Shapiro traveled to Juarez frequently to visit customers interested in buying coils of metal used for automobile, appliance and medical parts, among other things. After Juarez became more dangerous, he and friends would travel together to make sales calls. He stopped even doing that after friends witnessed gunfire.

It’s a sentiment many in El Paso echo. “I used to take customers to entertain them. I still do it, but now in El Paso, not on the Juarez side,” said Guillermo Lopez, plant manager for Monarch Litho, a printing company in Santa Teresa, a short drive from El Paso.

Russell said criminals have not targeted the maquilas. “Our factories have nothing of value for a criminal influence to want to infiltrate,” said Russell, whose clients manufacture everything from dog toys to store mannequins. “In 2008, we had a few robberies where armed men came into several factories. There wasn’t anything of value in there,” Russell said. “Since then, we haven’t had any robberies.”

However, plenty of maquilas are investing in armored cars to protect their executives and foreign visitors.

Only with armor

Adolfo Bernal, who runs the El Paso offices of Tijuana-based Car Armoring, said many people won’t go into Juarez unless they travel in an armored car.

“They’re expecting to drive into a war zone,” said Bernal, whose company sold 14 armored vehicles in the first three months of the year. His expectation was to sell 18 vehicles in the entire year.

Many of the Juarez businesses hurt by the violence are those that depend on tourism, such as restaurants and dentists, said Robert Queen, director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Assistance Center in El Paso.

Working to stop violence

Juarez government officials vow they are working to control the violence so it’s no longer an issue. In the meantime, they try to carry on business as usual.

Next year, Juarez will open a maquila-style slaughterhouse, for example, said Soledad Maynez, director of the Juarez Economic Development Department, who is upbeat about the city’s economic future.

You can tell that Alan Russell, president and CEO of outsourcing manufacturing firm TECMA Group, was a commercial airline pilot once upon a time.

His demeanor is cool and undisturbed, his words are clear and measured. Most importantly, he knows what to do when there’s turbulence.

TECMA provides facilities, workforce, cross-border transportation and logistics support for companies that operate in Mexico. The company operates 15 plants in Mexico with more than 30 clients, ranging from Helen of Troy and Fisher Price to Christmas ornament manufacturers.

In the last three years, TECMA’s business took a dip because of the global economic crisis and the violence in Juárez. But since the middle of 2009, the company has been recovering lost altitude.

And while the flight is still bumpy, making some nervous about the future of manufacturing, Russell is riding the thunderstorm with a steady grip and not a small dose of optimism.

Despite the bloody war for drug profits in Juárez, Russell is confident that the maquiladora sector is not a target of organized crime, and the city can still provide a safe environment for business.

The region still attracts and retains investment, he says, and the pros – like Juárez’s proximity to the United States, plenty of industrial space and a trained and readily available workforce – still outweigh the cons.

What’s more, Russell is confident that the worst part is over and that the industry in the region is ready to take off. As Mexico continues to gain ground on China as a source of low-cost labor, Russell predicts favorable winds for the country’s manufacturing sector.

Russell sat down with El Paso Inc. to talk about Mexico versus China, vintage biplanes, weathering the recession and why business opportunities in Juárez still trump security concerns.

Q: Did all your plants remain open during 2008 and 2009, the toughest years of the recession?
We did not close any plants, but production was reduced considerably in some of them. We did close one in ‘09, but we reopened that same plant in ‘10.

The automotive sector took a heavier hit than most categories of the economy, and since Juárez is a heavy automotive area, we had a number of clients get in trouble. From ‘08 through ‘09, we had seven out of 32 clients file bankruptcy or sell or consolidate in some form.

But some of that resulted in us getting even larger, stronger and better clients, because when the economy falls, it creates consolidation. And we’re starting to see the automotive sector coming back on.

Q: What did that mean for your company?
2009 was pretty static. It was kind of the heart of the recession, and clients weren’t making a move. A lot of them were visiting, exploring and talking, but nobody was making decisions.

2010 was very active and we started seeing decisions being made. Out of the 50 weeks of active business, we probably exchanged conferences with 60 viable clients, so about an average of better than one a week. Out of those we started five new operations in 2010, probably the most we’ve ever done in one year.

Q: In the last few months of 2010, 14 plants closed in Juárez.
Certainly 14 plants closing is not good news, but it’s part of the great recession. This is the worst one that we have seen in modern history, so some of those plants probably closed as a result of worldwide restructuring. And some of that was that they just didn’t have enough projection to justify keeping the plant open. But I would also anticipate that those companies will be back as the economy turns.

Q: How were revenues in 2010 compared to previous years?
We started down in 2008, probably 30 percent. Our goal was to be back to 2008’s equivalent by the end of 2010. We fell just short of that. I believe that by the end of the first quarter of 2011, we will be back at the same pace we had at the end of 2008.

Q: And employment?
We went from a high in 2008 of about 4,000 employees, to a little bit below 3,000 during the middle of ‘09, and then we started back up again, and now we are just short of 4,000 again. We started hiring again in June 2009 and we have reached an average of hiring 20 people a week since then.

Q: What’s your turnover rate?
We boast the lowest employee turnover of anyone in the industry. I don’t mean just in our contract manufacturing or shelter industry, but in the maquila industry. We had about 1.1 percent per month employee turnover for 2010.

Q: Do you have plans to expand?
We anticipate that we’ll start up an entirely new plant this year, just to handle our existing clients and production. Based on the amount of inquiries and flow that we’ve had, I would expect that we’ll start a second new plant this year with new clients.

We are busier responding to inquiries from new clients right now than we have been at any other time in the 25-year history of our company.

Q: You’ve said that those who survived the last two years are going to see the greatest opportunities of their lives in the next five years. How will those opportunities materialize?
I’ve been doing this for 25 years and that has given me a lot of experience and a lot of ways to see how all the stars have lined up.

And with the recovery of the economy, with the advantages of Mexico over the other low-cost options such as China, the attitude of the public and businesses to stay in North America to protect intellectual property rights, as well as the many advantages of being here, I see it as a launching pad.

We have 8-million square feet of empty manufacturing space in Juárez, and some say that’s terrible, but look at the opportunities we have to fill that space. It’s there and it’s ready. Our industry laid off 60,000 to 80,000 people; all those people are ready to get back to work.

We tell our clients everyday that whatever talent they need, whether it’s plastic injection molding, engineering for welding or precision machining, there is a talent pool in Juárez that can fill that slot.

Q: What advantages does Mexico have over China?
For the first time in modern history, China is not your obvious answer for your low-cost initiative. Mexico tips the scale and actually provides a lower-cost advantage for many product categories than China does.

The North American Trade Agreement provides favorable conditions between the United States, Mexico and Canada, which gives us an advantage over China when it comes to tariffs. The minimum wage is also up in China because of world pressure.

The Chinese are becoming a consumer nation. The currency exchange between the United States and China is causing things from China to be more expensive. And all of those things are the opposite for Mexico.

The peso-dollar exchange rate is very attractive now, compared to China. The minimum wages have remained stable. When it comes to transportation, what we produce today can be on a dock in Denver tomorrow morning.

And the amount of available employment is plentiful, so the advantages of working in Mexico keep getting greater all the time.

Q: What kind of precautions do you take when you go to Juárez?
I’m probably there three days a week. I have offices on both sides of the border and we are not coy about security issues. The data is there that says you need to take precautions.

First we go through training, and we do it frequently, to learn how to handle ourselves in the event we encounter an act of violence, whether it be a carjacking, getting caught in a crossfire, or just being victims of a robbery at the plant.

The idea is to walk away, survive and continue with our lives, so we don’t want anything in our cars that we aren’t willing to walk away from. We don’t want to drive a car we are not willing to walk away from. But how do you conduct yourself when someone comes up to you at a stoplight and wants to steal your car?

You should rehearse what you’re going to do. You answer “yes sir, no sir,” you keep your head down and you walk away as rapidly as possible. And you make sure you don’t have any material items that are worth risking your life about, period.

Q: Is it common now for Americans who work at maquiladoras to work part-time in El Paso?
It is. A lot of those executives have taken offices in El Paso, as well as a lot of Mexican businessmen, attorneys and accountants who have offices on both sides and spent most of their time in their El Paso offices.

We still go to meetings in Juárez, but we do our socializing on the U.S. side of the border. We cross back over before it gets too late, so we’re not exposing ourselves to a greater degree than is necessary.

Q: What’s it like working in Juárez?
There are more patrols and more evidence of security. So far there have been no documented cases of any expatriate being kidnapped or killed. The data tells us it’s a safe place to conduct business, but there are definitely times of the day and places where you shouldn’t be if you’re working in the maquiladora.

The data also shows us that the casualties that we see are for the most part hits, not random shootings. That’s not what the environment is like at all. You cross over the border and there’s something short of two million people going about their daily business and conducting life as if absolutely nothing is going on.

Now all of us know someone that has been a victim of violence, whether it’s a carjacking or had loved ones killed. Like I said, the data is there and we don’t want to ignore it. But it’s not a failed state. It’s a much different environment. This war is not about ideals, religion or any historic grudges from years past, this is purely economics.

Q: Just last month a Black and Decker manager was killed in Reynosa. Isn’t it a little hard to believe that people in this industry are not high-risk targets?
Well, let’s reflect on that news report. That person lived in that area, worked in Reynosa, was a mid-level manager, and he was strangled. That does not sound like a hit of the kind we’re used to, and doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with the drug business.

The fact that he happened to work at Black and Decker probably has nothing to do with the reason he was killed. Somebody seemed to be angry enough at him to strangle him. That’s all we know. And there are other maquila workers that fall victims to shootings, but with the number of employment in the maquilas that we have in Juárez, some of them are going to be casualties in this war.

Q: What lessons have maquilas learned from the November attack on employee buses from the Eagle Ottawa plant near Juárez that resulted in four deaths?
There are probably investigations and information that we don’t know, so we can only respond to what we hear. Evidently a worker or some workers at the Eagle Ottawa operation were involved in criminal activities, and this was a hit on those people.

So if there was a lesson to learn, it’s for us as employers to do better background checks and try to make sure that we don’t hire people and bring them into our fold that have criminal backgrounds or have criminal intentions from their employment.

Q: The security manager at a large manufacturer in Juárez recently told me that in the last three years, he has had to deal with extortion cases and that every maquiladora that he knows of has dealt with these cases. Has this been a problem for you?
Absolutely not and I couldn’t disagree more. Now, everything I’m telling you does not relate to a Mexican businessperson. They have another set of preoccupations. I know of no single case of expats being extorted, and I don’t believe this person distinguished among them.

We have experienced none of that in our operation. Out of a couple of hundred management level people in our company, we’ve not had any of that.

Q: When Electrolux and Whirlpool announced they wouldn’t expand operations in Mexico, they mentioned the violence. What has been the impact of the violence in the decisions maquiladoras make?
Very little. I think the economy has been making the decisions. Now with Electrolux I understand they chose another city, they just didn’t choose Juárez. I don’t believe the violence was a factor in that decision, you’d have to ask an Electrolux person more specifically.

It’s like the rumor that companies said they were leaving because of the violence. I know of no company that has left because of the violence. That might be a convenient thing to say if the economy has worn your business down and you have to close your plant.

I think businesses make their plans based on long-term visions. I don’t think any of us sees any of this as permanent. When you build a factory, you’re building it for the next 10 years. You’re not building it based on what’s going on today or even next year.

Companies like Electrolux or Foxconn that have huge operations tend to look at geographic diversity, in case there’s an earthquake or a border closing or some catastrophic event close to their plants. They want to spread the risk.

Q: You’ve said it’s against organized crime’s interest to target maquiladoras. Why?
Well, there’s no money inside those maquilas, and for the most part, no assets that are quickly exchanged for money. All of us that used to have money in our plants for the most part have eliminated.

The workers don’t bring anything of value to work with them, they can’t even bring jewelry. Plus it’s more difficult. If you’re going to rob something, you can find a much easier target than a maquiladora.

Q: What about drugs smuggled with goods shipped back to the U.S?
We all have tightened up security in our factories, we’re just making sure that our docks and transportation systems are secure. We use certified transportation companies and most of us are CTPAT certified, meaning that we have upper security access to our docks, video security surveillance, and when our trucks leave the plant with seals on them, we track them all the way to the border, either with a car escort or with GPS tracking.

Q: Tell me about your biplanes.
I have an affinity for aviation and own several airplanes. My fondest are vintage war birds. I have a 1945 and a 1941. One’s a biplane that was used for executive transportation that is fondly referred to as Lady McGregor. It was named after its previous owner, Malcolm McGregor, a well-known attorney here in El Paso and an aviation enthusiast who had the airplane for 35 years.

After his passing, my wife Patty and I were able to buy the airplane from his sons and we named it after him.

We take it everywhere, it’s extremely fast. We have traveled the country in it and have been as far north as Canada. It was the fastest executive transportation of its day.

Q: You fly the corporate plane?
I always fly the corporate plane. It’s kind of a deal I made with myself when the company could afford to have an airplane. That’s one of my passions, so I get to fly.

Associated Press

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Despite a weak U.S. economy and a drug war that has turned this city into Mexico’s deadliest, the maquiladoras are on the rebound.

These assembly-for-export plants that crank out everything from brake pads to plasma TVs for U.S. companies are opening new facilities, expanding existing ones and hiring more employees. Some firms looking for lower costs have even begun shifting production from China back to Juarez.

The recovery of the about 350 maquiladoras is the single bright spot in a city where drug violence has killed 7,000 people in three years. The maquiladoras may also be a sign that the economy in the region is finally turning the corner, after gross domestic product for Mexico shrank by almost 7 percent in 2009, the worst contraction in decades.

“There’s some real competing realities in Juarez at the moment,” said Bob Cook, president of the Regional Economic Commission in El Paso, Juarez’s cross-border sister city. “The violence has not targeted our industry, and the cartels… have not destroyed all the advantages of doing business there.”

Unemployment for Juarez is high, at 7 percent compared to Mexico’s national average of 5.4 percent. But plants that furloughed employees in 2008 and 2009 are now offering overtime as well as jobs.

The Juarez maquiladoras added about 26,000 new jobs from July 2009 until August 2010, when they employed more than 192,000 people. But there’s still ground to make up – three years ago, the sector employed about 250,000 out of Juarez’s population of 1.3 million.

Cook said that since 2008, 106 new permits for maquiladoras were granted in Juarez. An additional 15 companies have notified the commission of plans to locate or expand in the city, which would create up to 11,400 more jobs.

It’s difficult to compare Juarez to other border cities because, starting in 2006, the Mexican government began simply listing maquiladora jobs nationwide under “manufacturing.” There has also been anecdotal evidence of a recovery in the Baja California city of Tijuana, Mexico’s other major maquiladora hub, according to Dale Robinson, president of the Western Maquiladora Trade Association. He could not provide figures.

Carlos Pascual, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said a record 12 maquiladoras returned from China last year to locations along the border, often states with heavy drug violence such as Baja California, Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, home to Juarez. It is unclear how many plants have headed to China over the same period.

Nationwide, the maquiladora sector has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs since peaking at 1.3 million employees in October 2000, but Mexico is now catching up fast with China. U.S. imports from Mexico exceeded $168 billion through November, expanding by 35 percent over the past year, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. Imports from China, meanwhile, were up nearly 24 percent to about almost $264 billion through November.

With credit less available globally, some companies can no longer afford to wait for profits delayed by lengthy shipping times as goods travel from Asia to the U.S. It may work out cheaper to use Juarez, Tijuana and other Mexican locales a stone’s throw from American soil.

Pascual said Mexico also is increasingly attractive compared to China because of the devaluation of the peso and the strengthening of China’s currency. And the disparities in wage rates are shrinking: China’s labor costs have increased as the government works to adhere to environmental regulations, especially after criticism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“The difference was about $1.50 to 40 cents (per hour) in 1996 and $3.50 to $3 now. Mexico is still more expensive, but not that much,” Pascual said in an interview.

Juarez has been Mexico’s leader in maquiladoras for decades. Other companies increasing their presence here include:

• Swedish appliance maker Electrolux, which is closing two Iowa plants, laying off 850 workers and shifting nearly all its production to Juarez – where it already employs around 6,000 people.

• Delphi Automotive LLP, a parts supplier for General Motors, which has 12 Juarez plants and a technical center employing more than12,000 people. Production is still a long way from the days when Delphi had 20,000 workers in Juarez, but the company added about 700 new jobs through late 2010.

• Taiwan-based Wistron Corp., which produces components for BlackBerry, made by Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd., which declined to comment.

The maquiladora industry ran into the drug violence in Juarez on Oct. 28, when gunmen opened fire on a trio of buses carrying night-shift maquiladora workers to communities outside the city. Four people were killed.

Investigators suggested the attack was tied to a dispute involving the bus company. No arrests have been made – not unusual in a city where almost no murders are solved.

Since the shooting, employees say, vans of armed guards have provided security escorts. Converted American school buses, painted green and white and marked “Transporte de Personal,” rumble everywhere in Juarez, bringing workers to and from maquiladora shifts that run around the clock.

“Of course you’re scared, but you’ve still got to go to work,” said Luis Garcia, 36, who makes 800 pesos, about $65, a week cutting car-seat leather for the Eagle Ottawa company of Michigan, and who rides the same bus route where the shooting occurred.

The violence may be taking a toll even on companies. Electronics giant Epson, a division of Japan’s Seiko Epson, pulled 25,000 jobs out of Juarez this fall. The company says it closed its printer cartridge plant because of the global economy, not violence.

El Paso Mayor John Cook said some other firms have devised “exit strategies” and are ready to put them in action if violence gets worse. But Alan Russell, president of El Paso-based Tecma Group, feels safe enough to operate maquiladoras in 18 Juarez plants for 33 companies. All 33 firms have added jobs since 2008, he said. Four clients shut down production in Juarez in 2009 due to the poor U.S. economy, but the group added five companies in 2010.

Unlike Eagle Ottawa, Cook’s company recommends not traveling with armed guards, and his security personnel don’t carry guns.

“This is not a war of ideals or a war of religion,” he said. “It is purely financial and these killings are targeting players involved in the drug business.”

Maquiladoras have increased security, but they would not discuss specifics or say how much such measures cost. Russell said his company recommends clients eat at their Juarez factories rather than go in the city and spend the night in El Paso.

“You don’t play golf in a thunderstorm. You take precautions,” he said.

Bill Parisen is vice president for an international manufacturer that moved a California plant to Juarez, reaching full operation with 60 employees in July. He asked that the firm’s name not be published because he is not authorized to speak for it.

“China’s costs just don’t make sense for us to be manufacturing there anymore,” he said.

Parisen said that none of the 71 Fortune 500 operations in Juarez were withdrawing, despite drug violence. He himself spends two weeks a month in Juarez but sticks to “executive safe routes” created by the government of President Felipe Calderon amid spiking violence and fortified by federal police and the Mexican army.

“People ask me, ‘how can you travel to Juarez?’” he said. “But then I cross and there are people jogging, people walking their dogs.” He’s even gotten used to soldiers at roadblocks: “They’re very friendly.”

Product tester Alberto Hernandez has worked at a Cisco Systems Inc. plant in Juarez since he was 15. He said many workers who lost their jobs to the recession have found work at his factory, which never went through layoffs.

“At work, you are safe,” Hernandez said, now 22. “Outside, there’s no control. No laws.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Board of Directors of the Association of Maquilas (AMAC) elected last Wednesday in their regular assembly Mr. Carlos Miranda as Pro-term President of the Association substituting Ms. Soledad Maynez Bribiesca, who has been assigned to the cabinet of Juarez mayor elect Héctor Murguía.

Mr. Miranda will assume his position as temporary leader effective October 6th.  Mr. Miranda currently holds the position of vice-president of the Board of Directors.

A specialist in the human resources field in the manufacturing industry, and following the AMAC statues, Mr. Miranda will call for an election on November 4^th, 2010.  During this election, he will challenge Jose Luis Armendáriz, the only current candidate for the President position.  

Mr. Miranda currently holds the position of Director of Human Resources for the Tecma Group of companies, a provider of sheltered services for manufacturers that wish to establish operations in Mexico.  

Mr. Miranda graduated from the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua where he majored in Business Administration.  He has more than 20 years of experience in human resources administration in manufacturing facilities of Japanese, U.S. and Korean operations.

Mr. Miranda has lead numerous innovative recruitment projects in the field of human resources, as well as human development and training programs.  He has participated in labor relationships in the legal and strategic planning areas with the purpose of creating compensation plans for the employees and has experience in environmental care in the industrial sector.

Mr. Miranda has been a member of the Council for Technical Administration of the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and was a part of the board of directors of the Juarez Country Club. 

Mr. Miranda has served with the Association of Maquilas as a member of the Board of Directors in 1989, and as Vice President during the 2009 term.

Mr. Miranda was employed as a Human Resources Manager at Eagle Ottawa and MS International, and has been a member of the Environmental and Labor Committees of the Association of Maquilas where he was recognized for his work on the Social Security (IMSS) commission.

AMAC is a non-profit association  that was established back in 1974, which represents the Maquiladora industry to the Mexican Federal Government.  AMAC lobbies the Government in such matters of Tax, Customs and Infrastructure.  Also AMAC takes an important roll in local community involvement.