The struggling Central American country of 5 million people is luring companies with costs lower than in many of its neighbors, which have longer track records in the clothing industry.

Apparel assembly workers in Nicaragua earn roughly 40 to 50 cents an hour, including fringe benefits. That compares with 70 to 80 cents an hour in Honduras and more than $1 an hour in Costa Rica, said Norman E. Gelber, president of Miami-based Customs and Trade Services Inc., which specializes in apparel.

Moreover, the government of Nicaragua has become more aggressive since 2002 in promoting the country's offerings, including its ample, low-cost energy and generous business incentives.

Foreign direct investment in Nicaragua for all industries -- including apparel -- reached $241 million last year, trailing only Costa Rica in the five-nation Central American common market, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Among Nicaragua's newest apparel investors: Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc., which posted record $26 million profits on $168 million in sales last quarter.

Gildan has announced plans to invest $60 million in Nicaraguan facilities to make fleece fabric and sew that cloth into sportswear.

The investments come as clothing makers scramble to slash costs to better compete come 2005, when the World Trade Organization is set to end a decades-old system of quotas on most apparel trade.

Quotas had limited export sales from behemoths China and India, nations with strong textile industries and some of the world's lowest wages.

Many companies selling to the United States opted to sew U.S. fabric in the lower-cost Caribbean Basin, taking advantage of special programs Washington offered partly to help U.S. textile makers.

But as quotas are being phased out, Asia is regaining its edge, with tens of thousands of apparel jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean at risk.

To compete, some companies are developing textile factories in the Caribbean Basin to supply their longstanding sewing operations there.

They're confident an integrated textile-garment complex can offer quicker delivery to U.S. and Western European buyers than more distant Asia, giving them an edge for time-sensitive items.

Gildan also is investing in a textile factory in Dominican Republic to supply garment operations on Hispaniola, which also includes Haiti.

South Florida is watching closely, because textiles and clothing represent the largest segment of the area's massive trade with the Caribbean Basin, a key business partner.

South Florida's apparel-related trade tops $6 billion a year, with Dominican Republic and Honduras its top partners.
 

Mexicans rally to support mayor
Tens of thousands of Mexicans marched Sunday to support Mexico City mayor who faces legal challenges that could knock him out of the 2006 presidential elections.

Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leading contender in the 2006 race, would be banned from running if he were found guilty of defying a court order to stop road works on a stretch of land expropriated by the city in 2000.

He has also launched some ambitious roadwork programs and has won support in the capital city by implementing welfare programs and building public works to reduce long-time traffic congestion. But critics said his free-spending style has caused the city's debt to balloon.

During the rally, protesters brought in by hundreds of buses from nearby states mingled with local supporters of the mayor.

Lopez Obrador also joined the march. He said, "We have to recover the best of Mexican history, that's where Mexico's character is."
 

Chavez vows to toughen measures on unused lands
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged Sunday to enforce an agriculture law that allows the government to tax and expropriate idle land and give it to poor peasants.

"In this new stage of the revolution, I demand strict application of the constitution and the land law... We are going after idle land and are going to put it to work," Chavez said on his weekly Sunday television program.

Chavez, who won a recall referendum on Aug. 15, ordered his military commanders to investigate large rural estates and report idle land not in productive use.

Chavez said enforcing the 2001 law more strictly was part of "deepening the revolution" his government has been pursuing in the last two years.

The Land Law, one of a bunch of laws introduced in 2001, imposes strict rules on what ranchers and farmers can produce on land, and sanctions idle land with taxes or by expropriation.

The law also permits the state to grant state-owned land to the homeless who will farm with the help of cheap state credits. But private land owners claim mistakes have been made in classifying land as state-owned or private, and critics warned of a new form of dictatorship in the country.

"The time has come for creating a democracy in the distribution of land in Venezuela," said Chavez. "We have to lend a hand to the worker and not to the person who keeps (the land) idle," Chavez added.

Chavez, who survived a coup in 2002 and months of street protests and strikes, said that he will try to negotiate with landowners to persuade them to voluntarily sell their land to the government.

"We aren't enemies of the landowners, nor do we want to burn them or to invade their property," Chavez said. "I call on all those who own lots of idle land, let's talk."

According to a 1998 census, 60 percent of Venezuela's farmland, or nearly 179,200 square kilometers, was owned by less than 1 percent of the population. The survey said 90 percent of farmland given to peasants in a 1960 reform program reverted to large landholders.

The opposition, which still contests the results of the recall, says that Chavez is increasingly authoritarian and is dividing the country along class lines.

Chavez's supporters say he is the first president in years to care for Venezuela's poor majority.