VILLA DE REYES, Mexico (AP) — Word spread quickly through cellphone messages and shouts between co-workers that Ford Motor Co. had canceled its new $1.6 billion car plant at its sprawling 700-acre high desert site in north-central Mexico.

Security guard Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez walking past machinery at the Ford construction site on Wednesday, a day after the company canceled plant construction in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

VILLA DE REYES, Mexico — Word spread quickly through cellphone messages and shouts between coworkers that Ford Motor Co. had canceled its new $1.6 billion car plant at its sprawling 700-acre high desert site in north-central Mexico.

"When I saw it on the phone, (I thought), 'Well, no, it can't be,'" said Higinio Salazar, a security guard who spent the past five months logging traffic into and out of the site and hoped to have steady work for months to come. "It was on orders of Mr. Trump," he said bitterly.

That was not the case, Ford insists, but the perception here in Mexico's burgeoning auto-assembly region was largely that President-elect Donald Trump, who had promised for months to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US while at the same time disparaging Mexicans, had made good before even settling into the White House.

Trump took a shot at Toyota on Thursday over its move to make Corollas in this region, though the Japanese company defended its plan.

Ford's announcement sent shockwaves across Mexico, which has become tightly meshed with the US economy since the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement, sending 80% of its $532 billion in exports across the border in 2015.

The US government says $100 billion of that was in vehicles and parts, making Mexico the biggest exporter of automotive products to the US. Mexico's auto plants now account for 20% of all light vehicles built in North America, industry figures say.

A man walking past the construction site on Wednesday after Ford canceled plans to build a $1.6 billion auto-manufacturing plant in Villa de Reyes, outside San Luis Potosí. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

State officials in San Luis Potosi did not find out much earlier than Salazar that plans had been scrapped for the long-awaited plant, which promised 2,800 direct jobs and more than 10,000 indirect ones through Ford's supply chain. State Economic Development Secretary Gustavo Puente Orozco said Ford told state officials about an hour before CEO Mark Fields made the announcement Tuesday.

Puente said Ford made very clear it was a "definitive cancellation," citing supply and demand rather than politics.

"They told us that it was a market issue — the issue that the Ford Focus that was the vehicle they thought to build, this light vehicle they planned to build in San Luis Potosi, they say the demand had dropped," Puente said.

Low gas prices have Americans turning again to larger vehicles, and Focus sales have fallen victim to that trend. Fields said Ford would produce the Focus at an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, and use some of the savings to invest $700 million in an existing Michigan plant to make hybrid, electric, and autonomous vehicles.

The San Luis Potosi plant was well past the theoretical stage, and there were high hopes the state would see further economic growth from the opening of its third auto plant — General Motors Corp. has been producing the small Aveo and Trax vehicles up the road since 2008, and a BMW plant nearby is scheduled to begin production in early 2019.

The steel bones of Ford's plant had begun to rise and signs designated the future spots for each part of the operation, from "stamping" to "final warehouse."

A few pieces of heavy equipment remain as workers shut down operations a day after Ford announced the cancellation of plans to build a $1.6 billion auto-manufacturing plant on the site, in Villa de Reyes, outside San Luis Potosí, Mexico, January 4, 2017. Ford's cancellation, which costs the region thousands of projected jobs, has sounded alarms throughout the country and sent Mexico's currency tumbling by nearly 1%. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

On Wednesday, Fernando Rosales Ortuno, who deals in hydraulic hoses for Parker Hannifin Corp., was pacing the site's perimeter with cellphone pressed to his ear trying to arrange for a trailer to get hauled away. It's essentially a portable store that had been set up to service the big machines preparing the site.

He had hoped that once Ford was up and running the plant might become a long-term client.

"It hit us like a bucket of cold water," Rosales said. "Everyone here was hoping for a lot of growth in the state and this region, too."

Four clustered states in central Mexico — San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Aguascalientes, and Guanajuato — have seven auto-assembly plants that are operating or will be within the next two years. Around them are nearly 800 auto-parts suppliers, Puente said.

In San Luis Potosi alone, 50,000 to 60,000 jobs depend on the auto industry. An average worker in Mexico costs automakers $8 an hour, including wages and benefits, compared with the $60 an hour that Ford said it was spending on an auto worker in the US at the end of 2015.

In Villa de Reyes' town square, residents said the younger generation would be hurt most by the cancellation.

Gonzalez, left, and other guards watch over the remaining heavy machinery at the Ford construction site. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Retiree Ignacio Segura Rocha said fewer people from town were migrating to the US now because the crossing had gotten harder than when he went in 1977 and 1978. He said the auto industry offered good alternatives for kids growing up on the region's isolated ranches.

"They were already dreaming of going there (to Ford), and at the last minute there's nothing," he said.

Construction worker J. Refugio Waldo Contreras feels Trump is putting Mexicans in an impossible situation.

"This Trump, he doesn't want people there, so where is he going to send them?" Contreras asked. "And he doesn't want work to open here? So then he's going to close the doors."

Trump also sent tweets this week threatening to impose heavy tariffs on General Motors and Toyota cars produced in Mexico for the US market. GM said it exported only a small number of Cruze hatchbacks it makes in Mexico. Toyota stood by its plan to produce Corollas in Guanajuato while stressing that its production and employment in the US would not be affected.

There were some notes of optimism among Mexicans. As security guard Juan Gonzalez watched contractors haul away giant earth movers on flatbed trailers, he said he didn't expect the site to stay vacant for long.

"If it's not the United States, it could be Japan, China," he said. "This is going to continue."

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with factory workers during a visit to the Carrier factory on December 1 in Indianapolis. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Jorge Alvarez, who spent five months at the site working on perimeter roads, said his company had already told him his next project would be at the airport, so work would continue for him at least.

Another option could be that Mexico turns inward and focuses more on developing its internal market, said Roy Campos, the president of the Mexico City-based Mitofsky consulting group. According to industry figures, 82% of vehicles manufactured in Mexico are exported.

"Sooner or later, because of the nearness and the border, the personal relationships, the human relationships, the Mexico-United States relationship is going to return to what it was or even better than before," Campos said. "So meanwhile, develop the other markets that could be very beneficial to Mexico."

Billboards welcoming Ford had been sprinkled around San Luis Potosi in recent months. But only a day after the company's announcement, the welcome sign across the highway from the plant was already down.

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Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report.