Trapiche, Mexico – People in this poor village in Oaxaca state had a daring idea four years ago: They would pool their money, get a government loan and grow chrysanthemums to sell in a nearby market.

Until recently, however, their idea seemed doomed to failure.

Plant disease and lack of business experience bedeviled the cooperative of 22 men and women. They managed to pay off the loan they used to build their greenhouse, but they haven't made a peso of profit.

So this year, they turned for help to their children, most of whom live in San Diego County, where they migrated to find jobs that El Trapiche couldn't provide.

The immigrants put up $5,000, which was matched by grants from the San Diego-based International Community Foundation and the Mexican government.

The money – $15,000 in all – will be disbursed by early June, allowing the cooperative to pay workers, build more greenhouse capacity, and hire advisers from a local nonprofit group to help with flower cultivation and business management.

"We hope that this (business) will continue to grow," said Aurelio Hernández, a maintenance man in Carlsbad and leader of the immigrants who invested in the greenhouse. "We'd like to see if this can help build another greenhouse, and with that, give jobs to more people, so that fewer people have to emigrate."

Pooling resources
Whether they're successful is a crucial issue these days.
The United Nations summit in Monterrey in March, attended by 60 world leaders, took up the question of how to finance development in isolated areas, such as El Trapiche.

In Mexico, one popular idea is to set up job-creating businesses with money sent home by immigrants working in the United States.

Mexican banks rarely lend to any but the wealthiest clients. Immigrants, however, are an untapped source of potential financing. Last year, they sent home $9 billion, surpassing Mexico's earnings from tourism and second only to oil as a generator of dollars, according to government estimates.

Most of that, it's assumed, went to family expenses or house construction. When immigrants pool their money, it's usually for donations to charity projects: paving roads, plaza renovations, school construction.

But President Vicente Fox has made mining those remittances for job-creating investment a key part of his economic development strategy. Increasingly immigrants, too, speak of investing their money to create permanent jobs, not just charity projects.

Daunting obstacles
The case of El Trapiche shows that the idea, while good on paper, faces daunting obstacles. So far, for example, five nonprofit organizations have been involved in the El Trapiche greenhouse and it hasn't made money.
Some of the obstacles El Trapiche faces are caused by immigration itself.

"What migration does is take out of the village the most productive, educated young males," said Raul Hinojosa, a UCLA economist advising the greenhouse cooperative.

Left behind are old people, mothers and their young children, the handicapped – people without time, ability or energy to run a business. They often can't type or run a fax machine. Pest management, marketing or devising a workable business plan are beyond their capability.

Such is the case with El Trapiche, a village of a couple hundred families about 20 miles south of the city of Oaxaca, the state capital.

El Trapiche is a quiet village, made so by its lack of people and economic activity. Though most folks here farm to eke out a subsistence, El Trapiche's main product is cheap laborers for the United States. About 200 folks from El Trapiche live in San Diego County and Oregon. The village is home mostly to the old and infirm who never finished elementary school.

This is why the project had trouble early on, said Elsa Payo, who first organized the greenhouse cooperative when she was "agente," similar to a village mayor.

"The government sent two girls (as technical advisers), but they were novices," Payo said. "They didn't know much about disease or what kinds of pesticides we ought to use. We lost a lot of flowers. We didn't harvest what we should have."

The money provided by the International Community Foundation will be going primarily to hire technical advisers, said Richard Kiy, president of the International Community Foundation.

"The idea is to turn this project around, make it sustainable and ultimately be able to position other communities to do the same thing," he said.

Desire 'not enough'
El Trapiche's struggle to get good advice is a common problem for small villages that try cooperative business, Hinojosa said. "The problem is not necessarily the actual financing. It's really much more this on-going technical assistance," he said. "The one thing they have is an incredible amount of ganas – desire, motivation. It turns out that's not enough."

Another obstacle to the development of immigrant-financed businesses is envy, say those who've tried. In Mexico, small towns are often rife with envy and back-biting that impede cooperation and occasionally destroy businesses.

El Trapiche is an extreme case. Until 1974, villagers were peons on a hacienda. That year, urged on by Marxist college students, the village rose up and took the hacienda from its owners, who had not wanted to sell the land.

Since then, the pastoral village has been torn by conflicts over land and the distribution of produce grown on it. El Trapiche is now divided into two factions who rarely communicate, though they live just yards from each other.

The only telephone is on the rival faction's side of town, so when people call asking for members of the greenhouse cooperative they're told they've moved to the United States. A year after the group built their greenhouse, someone ripped sections of it with a knife. Those involved in El Trapiche's greenhouse and similar projects say it's not yet clear that immigrant dollars will produce financial fruit.

New ideas, ingenuity
For such projects to work, they say relatives who send money home from the United States must also contribute new ideas, ingenuity and a willingness to try new or more practical approaches to their villages. Mexico's federal and state governments also need to help out, by reducing red tape for business licenses and permits and by controlling corrupt bureaucrats.
Moreover, universities and nongovernmental organizations need to participate with technical advice. This will assure immigrant groups that their money will really be put to good use, Hinojosa said.

"Before you get the money from the U.S., there has to be a good understanding that the immigrants have of what's going on down here," he said. "We're talking about becoming a partner in investment. It's a productive project and we're not, say, throwing a party to raise money to paint the church once."