Mexico City -- As members of Congress shied away last week from rescuing Mexico (forcing President Clinton to construct a $47 billion package on his own), they might have considered the future of Christian Ivan Ceron.
We met Christian, 10, on a recent Saturday outside the Atayde Bros. circus in downtown Mexico City. His mother was selling "magic wands" on the street for five devalued pesos (now worth less than $1). We had an extra ticket and invited Christian to come along.
Christian lives in the working-class neighborhood where the Mexican circus performs, and his mother spends long hours on the sidewalk outside the Arena Mexico hawking the plastic, star-ended sticks filled with bubbly fluid. But he had never ventured inside.
While Christian enjoyed his first circus -- especially the elephants, the trapeze artists and an American clown who did hilarious slapstick on a trampoline -- we learned a little bit about the quiet, black-haired boy in the red sweater.
He is a fifth-grader at a neighborhood public school. He writes his name and address haltingly but neatly. His family lives crowded into a small apartment. He is one of eight children.
"We would have been 13, but five died," Christian said simply.
Christian's oldest brother, in his early 20s, is the only sibling to leave home. He has sought his fortune in Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border.
Like most Mexicans, Christian is intrigued by the United States. He wanted to know about my 12-year-old son's life in "El Norte." When an American circus act appeared -- a blond-haired, buffalo-riding family decked out in red, white and blue -- he shot me knowing glances.
Christian politely refused our offer of treats, appalled by the prices. He said the "only cheap thing" was the pork rinds, at one peso a bag.
Much went unsaid in our encounter with Christian.
would take his mother an entire weekend of work to make the $10 that we so easily paid for his ringside seat.
We have the good fortune to have been born into a working democracy. He has the misfortune to be coming of age as Mexico's authoritarian, corrupt political system totters. It can't offer the single virtue that has marked its past 65 years: stability.
In the wake of December's devaluation of the peso, the Mexican economic miracle of recent years has looked more like a mirage. Much of the growth was built on a shaky foundation of short-term, speculative capital -- "hot money" from Wall Street that has fled Mexico as quickly as it came.
Now President Clinton, acting on his own at considerable political risk, has put together a hefty package of U.S. currency stabilization funds and international loans.
The package would seem to indemnify those who deserve help least: the Mexican government/ruling party (the two are still inseparable) and Wall Street speculators.
The government knowingly imported dollars and printed pesos (setting the stage for inevitable devaluation) to grease the skids for candidate Ernesto Zedillo to be elected president last year. The foreign capitalists invested their billions in Mexico fully aware that high risk accompanies high rates of return.
But the rescue package would also, albeit indirectly, help Mexicans like Christian and his family.
Most of Mexico's 90 million people are, like Christian, young and poor. Mexico's minimum wage, in newly devalued pesos, is now about $3 a day. If "la crisis" doesn't ease soon, Mexico will probably be plunged into a deep recession this year.
So far the peso devaluation has most noticeably hurt Mexicans several rungs up the economic ladder from Christian's family. They are the middle class swept up in the rising expectations of recent years. They took on mortgage and credit-card debt to purchase houses, drive American cars, shop at Wal-Mart and vacation at Disney World.
In inflation-conscious Mexico, the credit was extended at variable interest rates (pegged to Mexican treasury bills). Since the peso was devalued Dec. 20, those rates have tripled. That has plunged millions of Mexican consumers much deeper into debt and imperiled the solvency of banks that made loans that many Mexicans can't repay.
Mexico has left itself no way out of the crisis except to borromore dollars with which to create jobs. And by entering into the North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States encouraged Mexico -- once protectionist, xenophobic and sometimes hostile to "los gringos" -- to be its economic partner.
If the package doesn't translate into jobs, the more enterprising Mexicans, like Christian's brother, will head to the border -- and to "El Norte" beyond -- to find them.
And nothing short of deploying troops along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border -- not even a "beefed-up" Border Patrol or draconian measures like California's Proposition 187 -- is likely to deter hundreds of thousands of desperate people driven north by economic self-interest.
While a sequined performer climbed to the top of Arena Mexico for the circus' finale, we reflected on how prosperous and productive Mexico might be had its millions of "Christians" had the opportunity most Americans enjoy.
The performer perched on a little platform high above us. As the house lights dimmed, a drum rolled and the spotlight sharpened, he let himself go, falling straight forward and then plunging head-first toward the arena floor -- before landing with a harmless thud on a strategically placed hunk of foam.
The show was over, and it was time to go. Flowing out of the Arena Mexico with the crowd, we escorted Christian back to his mom's patch of Mexico City sidewalk.
She gave us a quick wave of thanks. Trying to sell five-peso "magic wands" to departing circusgoers, she was too busy to talk.
James Bock is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and its former bureau chief in Mexico City.