Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the United States, is already the biggest private employer in Mexico, with 100,164 workers on its payroll as of last week. Last year, when it gained its No. 1 status in employment, it created about 8,000 new positions -- nearly half the permanent new jobs in this country.

Wal-Mart's power is changing Mexico in the same way it changed the economic landscape of the United States, and with the same formula: cut prices relentlessly, pump up productivity, pay low wages, ban unions, give suppliers the tightest possible profit margins and sell everything under the sun for less than the guy next door.

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Its sales represent about 2 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product -- almost the same as in the United States. Analysts say it now controls something approaching 30 percent of all supermarket food sales in Mexico, and about 6 percent of all retail sales -- also about the same as in the United States.