The governor-elect of Puebla, Mexico, made a campaign promise to do all he could to strengthen ties with Pueblans living in New York. But he never pledged to leave a piece of himself here.

On December 19, while traveling by plane from San Diego to New York, the governor, Mario Marin, felt severe stomach pain – pain so bad, he said, that it made him understand the pain women experience in childbirth. When the plane landed, he was whisked to Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem, where surgeons removed his appendix in the middle of the night.

The 50-year-old lawyer won a landslide victory last month as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The win was part of a comeback for the PRI, the country’s ruling party for 71 years until Vicente Fox of the National Action Party won the presidency in 2000.

The 2.5 million Pueblans living in America are indispensable constituents to the governor of Puebla, even if they cannot vote from abroad, he said yesterday at a press conference at the hospital. Mr. Marin said there were 1.2 million living in the tri-state area.

The Pueblans in New York City have been the driving force behind the city’s Mexican explosion – they are the city’s fastest-growing immigrant group.

The Pueblan community here is made up largely of undocumented young men who take bottom-rung work such as scrubbing dishes, toiling in factories, and working at construction jobs. For the 5.5 million remaining in the state of Puebla, according to Mr. Marin, the exodus of young men to America has left behind an unbalanced society of mostly women, children, and the elderly.

The pattern is so imbedded, Mr. Marin said, speaking in Spanish, that when he asks 2- and 3-year-old boys what they want to be when they grow up, they respond, “I want to be an immigrant. I want to go to the United States.”

Mr. Marin said he would create offices in both countries to help solve problems created by this immense migration. One in Manhattan would help Pueblans navigate the city, assist with connecting family members, and provide a low-cost and secure option for remittances – Pueblans living in America send home $2 billion a year, he said. The remittance program he plans to create would also encourage them to invest some of that money strategically in Puebla.

In Puebla, he plans to set up an office to provide assistance to families left behind, and to educate young people about the risks of immigrating illegally to America.

Mr. Marin, whose father came to America numerous times during World War II as a bracero, under a guest-visa program implemented to assist with wartime labor shortages, said he was encouraged by President Bush’s plan to issue visas for temporary workers.

“There is security and better labor protection,” Mr. Marin said, discounting other criticism that temporary worker programs have received for importing workers without the benefits of immigration. “It worked for my father.”

In January Mr. Marin will be showing his support, traveling to Washington to attend an inaugural ball. More trips to New York are also planned, starting in May with Cinco de Mayo celebrations. There will be an added poignancy to that trip, he said, because when he has visited New York before it was because of the Pueblan community here, but now he will return because the city saved its life.

Yesterday, he returned to the hospital to give thanks. His health was restored. While he canceled a planned visit to Chicago’s Pueblan community, he said he was enjoying the extra days in New York.

The president of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, Benjamin Chu, echoed the sentiments of various hospital officials expressing their pleasure to be of assistance. But Dr. Chu said: “Next time you come to New York, you don’t have to leave another body part.”