Building boom in Mexican town was born in Minnesota

“A pickup truck with Minnesota plates bounced down the dirt road on the edge of town, raising clouds of reddish dust. It caught the eye of a grazing Brahman bull and disappeared behind a clutch of mango trees bordering a new subdivision, where tangles of steel reinforcing bars sprouted from the roofs of unfinished concrete block houses.

Many of the new houses were paid for with money sent by a secret workforce in Minnesota. By Mayor Leopoldo Rodriguez’s estimate, almost a third of the town’s workers have crossed the border _ many of them illegally _ and headed north to work in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area over the past 10 years.

The money they wire back arrives daily by police escort in armored trucks. Altogether, it comes to between $4 million and $7 million a month, according to money-transfer agencies in the Twin Cities region. The cash has forged an economic link between Axochiapan and Minneapolis-St. Paul that is part of a global trend. It is changing Axochiapan, one household at a time.”

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