Trade and Regional Integration
- Fri Jan 24 2003
Source:
Choike
The Mexican Network for Action Against Free Trade presented its book "The social and environmental impacts of NAFTA: Grassroots responses to economic integration" at the World Social Forum.
The Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade (Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio - RMALC) organized the panel "Lessons from the North American free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): Resistance Movements against Economic Integration", the afternoon of Friday 24th. At the panel Alejandro Villamar, María Atilano and Alberto Arroyo, all members of the Network, took the opportunity to present the book: "The social and environmental impacts of NAFTA: Grassroots responses to economic integration".
In January 2001 NAFTA, the free trade agreement between Mexico, the Untied States and Canada, had been in place for seven years. As RMALC states in the book's introduction, NAFTA has become, for some, a model of economic integration that aims to spread to the rest of the continent (via the Free Trade Area of the Americas, FTAA, for example). Others see it as an example of a form of subordinated integration, under which a few win while the vast majority lose. The experience of workers, peasant farmers, small businesses, labour organizations, women and community organizations in Mexico have shown that when the playing field is not level, it is always the weak who lose.
Experiences of resistance
The RMALC book tells of the social and environmental impacts that NAFTA has had on important sectors of the Mexican population, through seven case studies that exemplify a wide range of grassroots responses and ways of struggling against unjust economic integration. Both the book, and the presentation at the World Social Forum, covers experiences as diverse as that of the jailing of the ecological peasant farmers from the State of Guerrero, or the creation of alternative international and national markets opened up by coffee producers from Oaxaca and by maize producers who have teamed up in businesses to commercialize their products.
The book also includes the testimonies of women maquila workers and reflects the huge strength of the communitarian and collective culture of the migrant Zacatecans who live and work in the United States.
One of the most dramatic situations that Mexican farmers have been experiencing since NAFTA came into being, in January 1994, has been in the coffee industry. The liberalization of coffee prices resulted in the influx of imported coffee of poorer quality, while the Mexican coffee producers saw that their beans were fetching a price below the basic cost of the crop.
Atilano highlighted the role that women have played in defending coffee production, while Villamar recounted the interesting experience of a group of producers who have devoted themselves to producing an organic coffee, which has fetched a much higher price on the international market.
The countryside can stand no more
However, the most affected sector in Mexico today is, without any doubt, the maize farmers, since imported maize is subsidized by the government, whereas national production is not. The government claims that it subsidizes imported maize -which is Mexico's main agricultural product- to benefit the consumer. RMALC argues that this is not true, given that, firstly, the price of maize has not gone down, and secondly, that what has declined is the quality of maize. In this way, local producers have reached a point at which it is no longer profitable for them to sow maize, although they continue to do so, in order to feed themselves, since they have no other work.
Atilano claims that the maize issue is not simply a trade question, but one linked to their very existence. "We are women and men of maize," she says, "maize defines our being."
With the slogan "the countryside can stand no more", an agrarian mobilization was launched recently the length and breadth of Mexico, which has at least forced the government to agree to talks. Agricultural producers are demanding that the Mexican government put an emergency measure in place that would put a stop to the crisis affecting the sector. That measure includes, first and foremost, the suspension of NAFTA for the agricultural sector.
See the RMALC book "The social and environmental impacts of NAFTA: Grassroots responses to economic integration".
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