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From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP)
Newsgroups: clari.world.americas.mexico,clari.world.americas,clari.world.americas.meso
Subject: Clinton, Zedillo summit at plush former plantation
Organization: Copyright 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Message-ID: <Qmexico-us-plantationURs3__9FE@clari.net>
Lines: 37
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 15:33:37 PST
ACategory: international
Slugword: Mexico-US-plantation
Threadword: mexico
Priority: urgent
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Xref: news.cs.columbia.edu clari.world.americas.mexico:11747 clari.world.americas:10324 clari.world.americas.meso:11690

  	  				 
   MERIDA, Mexico, Feb 14 (AFP) - Presidents Bill Clinton and  
Ernesto Zedillo will hold their summit Sunday at a plush plantation 
dating from Mexico's aristocratic era. 
   The historic building where the US and Mexican Presidents will  
meet now belongs to Roberto Hernandez, the largest shareholder of 
Banamex, the nation's leading bank. 
   But at the turn of the century the palatial plantation buildings  
of the Yucatan peninsula were home to a self-described "divine 
caste" of wealthy landowners who ran a thriving henequen fiber 
export industry. 
   The plantation lords were at the peak of their power during the  
aristocratic regime of Porfirio Diaz, who ruled Mexico with an iron 
fist from 1884 to 1910. 
   Abuses during the Diaz regime directly led to the 1910-1918  
Mexican Revolution, a violent affair that deeply marked contemporary 
Mexican history. 
   Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the world's  
longest ruling party, claims to be the heir of the Revolution and 
insists it continues to implement its reformist goals. 
   But the vast plantation headquarters have long been among the  
most conspicuous symbols of the old regime. 
   At the height of the henequen boom thousands of indian serfs  
toiled in the plantations in extreme, often brutal conditions. Among 
them, at one time, were Tarahumara indians from the northern Mexican 
state of Chiahuahua, sent to the plantations as punishment for 
rising against Diaz. 
   In 1908 a leading US muckraking journalist, posing as an  
investor, wrote a searing expose of life on a henequen plantation 
that generated much sympathy for anti-Diaz activists. 
   The flow of illegal drugs and undocumented migrants north across  
the US-Mexico border are likely to top the agenda between the two 
presidents. 
   Henequen fiber was used for rope, twine and rugs, and has since  
largely been replaced by synthetic materials. 
  	   	

