Elva Nora Cruz is the sister of a fired member of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME). 44,000 workers were fired and the state-owned electrical company was dissolved as part of the wave of privatization and economic reforms in the wake of NAFTA. She sits with Triqui women protesting violence in Oaxaca under a tent in Mexico City’s central square, the zocalo (David Bacon, Stanford University Green Library)
For Mexican workers, farmers, and the poor, the pandemic and the new treaty replacing NAFTA are a devastating one-two punch.
In the debate over the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, the new trade treaty replacing NAFTA that went into effect on July 1, many promises were made about the effectiveness of its labor protections. Supposedly, they will protect the labor rights of Mexican workers, which will free them to push for better wages and conditions.
These promises are reminiscent of those made when the original NAFTA was debated over a quarter of a century ago. At the time, its corporate backers insisted it would lead to prosperity for workers and farmers, who would no longer be obligated to leave home to find work in the United States.
Whether the old treaty created better conditions-for workers in the maquiladora factories on the border, for Mexican migrants toiling in U.S. fields, or for farmers in the communities from which the migrants come-is more than an economic issue. In the era of the pandemic, the record of the old treaty must be examined to determine as well its responsibility for life and death. Did the changes it provoked make Mexicans more vulnerable to the virus? And because it continues the same economic regime, the new agreement cannot avoid raising the same questions.
The Impact on Mexico
NAFTA had a devastating impact on Mexican workers, farmers, and the poor, and its labor and environmental side agreements did nothing to protect them. The problem lies in the agreement’s purpose-to facilitate the penetration of U.S. capital in Mexico. By taking down barriers to investment and the activity of U.S. corporations, it instituted cataclysmic political and economic changes. The current trade agreement shares NAFTA’s purpose and will have the same impact.
The 1990 report by the U.S. Congress’ Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development recommended that the United States negotiate a free trade agreement with Mexico in order to deter migration. But even this report warned, «It takes many years-even generations-for sustained growth to achieve the desired effect,» and in the meantime would create years of «transitional costs in human suffering.»
Mexico’s «years of sustained growth» turned out to be a tiny 1.2-2 percent, whose benefits were reaped by a billionaire class that multiplied while real income for workers and farmers fell. The consequences were clearest in the displacement that suffering caused. It set millions of Mexicans into motion as migrants, which now exposes them to the virus.
Three million farmers were displaced by corn dumping, to allow U.S. corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland to take over Mexico’s corn market. Mexico lost its CONASUPO stores serving farmers and the poor, and Wal-Mart became the country’s largest employer. Waves of privatization, mandated to provide opportunities for banks and investors, cost the jobs of hundreds of thousands as Mexico threw open its economy. As investment increased, the income of Mexicans declined.
WILL THE NEW NAFTA MAKE THE PANDEMIC WORSE FOR MEXICANS?
By David Bacon,
Foreign Policy in Focus, July 6, 2020
https://fpif.org/will-the-new-nafta-make-the-pandemic-worse-for-mexicans/
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/07/will-new-nafta-make-pandemic-worse-for.html