Tariffs have been slashed, banks and pensions privatised, and maquiladora zones set up.
He has brought inventive flair, not just deft fingerwork, to the process of making things (see article).Mr Muñoz's drone-producing plant is a maquiladora, a factory that enjoys special tax breaks.
In 1983 a freeze took out much of the Valley's citrus crop.In the mid-1980s, fuelled by trade and the growth of the maquiladora programme (in which components are shipped to Mexico, assembled and shipped back), things began to pick up in Hidalgo County.
It also shows shared enterprise: The mating (call it assembly, or maquiladora) occurs in Mexico; the finished product delights everyone further north.Villagers of San Mateo Almomoloa say the rescue plan would be fairer, too.
According to Bob Cook, the president of the Regional Economic Development Corporation, more than 50,000 El Pasoans are employed because of the Mexican maquiladora industry commuting to management or support jobs in the maquilas every day, where goods are processed for export to America.
So he is investing in a new factory in Mexico, a maquiladora on the doorstep of his biggest market, the United States.
They have allowed some of the country's biggest industrial firms to foster more pliant company unions, such as Ford's, and many maquiladora (free zone) factories along Mexico's northern border get away with unions that are registered (thus excluding any others) but otherwise non-existent.
In the face of recession many manufacturers chose to cut their output, and Mexico's maquiladora industry, a large part of which is devoted to making car parts, faltered as a result.
Few of the new jobs are of the low-wage type associated with Mexican maquiladora manufacturing.
Mr Cook estimates that 50,000 jobs in El Paso are owed to the Mexican maquiladora industry.Two of those jobs belong to Teresa Cantrell and Toby Spoon of the TECMA Group, a shelter company that smoothes the way for businesses looking to open a maquiladora in Mexico.
