05/12/97 MEXICALI-CALEXICO: POSTER CHILD FOR NAFTA

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MEXICALI-CALEXICO: POSTER CHILD FOR NAFTA

Arturo Morales, a 38-year-old Mexicali native who manages the California Industrial Park, bends in a slight bow, Asia-style, as he solemnly holds out his business card with both hands. ''I've been to Asia so often and received so many Asian investors here, it has become second nature to me,'' he laughs.
As border industries become more multinational, they are spawning a generation of Mexican managers with a worldwide outlook, ready to take over from the expatriates who have run many of the maquiladoras up to now. Morales is an example. ''We're learning to be global players,'' he says.
Mexicali, stretching across the barren Laguna Salada desert in northwestern Mexico, doesn't look like a city with a global perspective. A hodgepodge of one-story, cinder-block houses lines its main streets, and beyond, bare-bones squatters' settlements spring up among the cactus. But the city is booming, with major multinationals such as Asian giants Acer Inc. and Sony leading the way.
LEXUS IN THE GARAGE. Along Industrial Avenue, where construction cranes dot the desert skyline, cement trucks joust with semitrailers packed with export goods. With a fast-growing population of more than 700,000, the city is home to a dozen industrial parks with 135 manufacturing plants aimed at exports.
Down the road at Sony's year-old plant, 900 workers assemble TV sets and computer monitors, some operating sophisticated, high-speed machines that piece together tiny circuit boards.
Running the show is Sony de Mexicali President Rey Huerta, 42, another of the growing Mexican cadre of border plant managers. They are comfortable in several languages and cultures and are primed to replace the Americans and Japanese who once ran the factories.
Born in a village on Mexico's Pacific Coast, Huerta moved with his family as a child to San Diego and attended schools there. Although he is a legal U.S. resident, he retains his Mexican citizenship. Huerta says his employees, including 100 engineers, are encouraged by how far he has come even though he has only a high school education. After 23 years with Sony, he earns a comfortable dollar salary and lives in a spacious house in the bedroom community of Calexico, Calif., with a Lexus in the garage. ''I tell our workers they have to forge their success in Mexico,'' Huerta says, ''but to compete internationally, they have to focus not only on what works in Mexico but what works best all around the world.''

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