Mexico 'new realities': though problems like violence and poverty remain, Mexico's economy is booming and the country's prospects are looking up.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

Last year, a group of men came looking for 22-year-old Andres Cobos Marin with promises of financial security, a leg up over his peers, and the life of his dreams.

But these were not the kind of recruiters, looking for hired guns and drug couriers, who have made Mexico infamous. Instead, they were hunting for talented young engineers for Mexico's growing aerospace industry.

"The companies are looking for us; we don't have to go looking for them," says Cobos, who started work last January at a Spanish company in Queretaro.

Americans often think of Mexico as a land of violent drug wars, terrible poverty, and the primary source of immigrants who have flooded illegally into the United States over the past two decades. That's all true, but another side of Mexico has begun to emerge.

In this other Mexico, high-skill jobs are becoming more plentiful, industrial plants are churning out sophisticated products, and more and more families are adopting the trappings of middleclass life, with flat-screen TVs, new cars, and nice homes.

The progress hasn't gone unnoticed across the border. "It's time to recognize new realities, including the impressive progress in today's Mexico," President Obama said on a visit to Mexico City in May.

Mexico & the U.S.

A country of 116 million people, Mexico shares a 2,000-mile-long border with the U.S.--a border that for decades has seen a huge number of Mexicans crossing illegally in search of better opportunities. About 6 million of the almost 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are from Mexico--more than from any other country.

Immigration is just one of the many ways the U.S. and Mexico have become intertwined (see timeline, p. 12). Mexico is the third-largest trading partner of the U.S. (after Canada and China). Since the start in 1994 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)--which opened up trade between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada--Mexico's exports have soared, with 80 percent going to the U.S.

"We have a very large Mexican connection in the United States," says Diana Negroponte, a Mexico expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "There are 11 million Mexicans living in the United States and 35 million U.S. citizens with Mexican ancestry. We are very integrated culturally."

While the U.S. has struggled to recover from the Great Recession that began in 2007, the economy south of the border has been a source of good news. Auto manufacturing, for instance, is surging in Mexico, with companies like Nissan, Honda, and Volkswagen opening new plants. In 2012, Mexico became one of the largest exporters of information technology services in the world, along with countries like India, the Philippines, and China.

Vacations, Computers & Cellphones

Brazil is often thought of as Latin America's economic marvel, but Mexico's economy outpaced Brazil's last year and is expected to do so again this year. All of this growth is beginning to transform life for many Mexicans. About 40 percent are now middle class, Negroponte says: They own cars, take vacations, and have home computers, and about 80 percent of teens have cellphones.

"We have cities, we have technology, we have Apple products, computers," says Juan Pablo...