Big dreams in Mexicali: Alicia Alvarez is a straight-A student who dreams of college. But like Mexico itself, her path to success is strewn with roadblocks.

• Author: Weiner, Tim
• Position: INTERNATIONAL - Biography

Alicia Alvarez lives two miles from the American border--and light-years from the American dream. Growing up in the city of Mexicali has made her a realist at 15. She has no taste for romances and soap operas. What she has is intelligence and ambition. She sees a good education as her only route to a better life. It looks to her as likely as a trip to Mars.

"It seems impossible," Alicia says. She has started high school and proved herself one of the brightest girls in her city, a straight-A student with an exceptional aptitude for math. "My family has no money for college. I probably will never get to a university, though I would love to.... My education has been hard. My teachers are trained in teaching, not in math and science. It's a struggle for them to teach me what I need to be taught."

Like Mexico itself, Alicia finds herself poised with one foot in the door of opportunity and one stuck in the poverty and powerlessness of the past.

BIGGER PIE, MORE SLICES

Alicia's father works part-time selling used cars. He has good weeks and bad weeks. Her mother keeps house. They have provided their children with the basics of life: food, clothes, shelter. Their deep-thinking daughter is a bit of a mystery to them.

Alicia's uncle and godfather, Abel Alvarez, 56, knows her aspirations. When he was her age, he crossed the border to work the fields in California. He now earns a good living, a self-made man who builds malls in El Centro, Calif., just 15 minutes north of Mexicali. (See map, p. 17.)

He has watched Micia grow up with a mixture of pride and worry. "It's not a lot easier growing up in Mexicali now than it was 40 years ago," he says. "The pie's a little bigger, but a lot more people want a slice."

Mexico's economy has been flat for almost five years. Poverty is ever-present. The middle class is small, and has been shrinking for a generation. Sneaking into the United States is often the only way out.

Alicia has seen what is north of the border, having traveled with her uncle and cousins on short trips. But she says the idea of entering the U.S. illegally to live and work holds no attraction for her. There is no legal path for her, and she does not want to be an outlaw.

Still, Alicia sometimes feels the walls of her cinder-block house closing in on her. The heat rises above 100 degrees in Mexicali for almost half the year. When the little house gets too hot, too close, she finds refuge in books, or when there is a little money to spare, alone...