Even so, the logging business is booming for Boise Cascade's Mexican operation, which intends to cut 20 million board feet a year for five years, all of which will be exported to the United States. Costa Grande rents a former state-owned sawmill at Papanoa and is negotiating for a second mill in nearby Tecpan. But its pride and joy is a spanking new planer mill that can be packed up and shipped out when the forest is gone. Before we came along, they owed the banks so much money for machinery they'd bought on credit that they were on the verge of going under. The boom times extend to Boise Cascade's U.S. crew here as well.
Kidnapping is a major industry here, with more than a hundred incidents in the last three years.
Boise Cascade's boom is setting a new pace of deforestation on the Costa Grande. In order to compete with the gringos, the huge El Balcon ejido mill has pushed production from 3,000 to 40,000 cubic meters in the past three years. But while El Balcon is responsible to its ejido owners and is rooted in the area, Boise Cascade is free of local attachments, and can rip and run. Permission is granted to these foreign corporations without environmental-impact studies. Meanwhile, Boise Cascade is already planning for the post-Guerrero future, looking at sites in Oaxaca, Malaysia, Chile, and Siberia.