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Frustration is high because free trade has not yet fixed the accumulated damage from past economic mismanagement. So while the NAFTA generation boasts burgeoning numbers of entrepreneurs, engineers and financiers, the unemployment rate among young adults is twice as high as that of older people--a situation that sends more and more youth over the U.S. border each year in search of work. And a higher proportion (more than 40%) of people under 30 live in poverty than of any other Mexican generation. In an alcove beside one of Mexico City's busiest subway stops, a growing community of homeless and jobless young men live on old mattresses and sofas. "So many guys our age, and there's no work," says Luis, 18.
During this generation's short life-span, Mexico has become more open to outside influences than ever before--thanks in large part to NAFTA. That has given young people in particular access to different standards and values by which to measure the old order. And the young resent the inequities they see. Today's free-market rulers, like Zedillo and former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, sport Ivy League Ph.D.s. But Guadalajara lawyer Cristina Organista, 25, saw her dream of graduate study in the U.S. canceled by the peso crisis. "My family's aspirations went from sending me abroad to simply saving our house," she says.
Organista's experience helps explain why the NAFTA generation is much more poised to break with entrenched economic and cultural traditions. Young people want realism instead of nationalist ideology in their movies and music, and surveys show they prize honesty, competence and practicality over old-fashioned lockstep thinking and knee-jerk anti-Americanism. With AIDS the third leading killer of Mexicans under age 35, they are demanding a more candid discussion in the traditionally prim media of issues like sexuality. The demands have helped spawn a renaissance in Mexican television, cinema and journalism.
Fernanda Gallego, 24, who is head of Youth Development, one of the many nonpartisan civic groups sprouting up on every university campus these days, exemplifies the new, no-nonsense mind-set. "Every time I hear public officials shout about defending our national sovereignty, I shake my head," she says, "because I know that their corruption and mistakes have compromised my country's sovereignty as much as any gringo has."
Among the most visible role models for the NAFTA generation is movie actress Salma Hayek. Most Americans know her as a rising Hollywood siren (Desperado, Fools Rush In). What they don't know is that behind her almond-eyed beauty lies an outspoken Mexican rebel. Six years ago, as a soap-opera star at Televisa, the broadcast giant that has strong ties to the P.R.I., she stunned her bosses and fans by bolting to Los Angeles. Today Hayek, 28, still delights in snubbing her country's Establishment in ways few celebrities have dared--whether by endorsing new competition against Mexico's telephone monopoly or slamming the P.R.I. "I'm proud to be Mexican, but we've been lied to a bit too often," she told TIME. "This system can sell people, especially women, a lot of dreams they never get."