 |
|
|
 Business News | June 2006 
Anti-NAFTA Sentiment Rising in Mexico
 Frontera NorteSur
Concerned about the looming elimination of tariffs on different agricultural products, Mexican farm and labor organizations are renewing calls for a renegotiation of sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In Tamaulipas state, leaders of the Federation of Rural Landowners, and the Tamaulipas Regional Ranchers Union, support the growing demands to reopen the agricultural clauses of the NAFTA for revision.
Eduardo Espronceda Galindo, the president of the landowner's group, contended that increased trade liberalization would trigger a larger "exodus to the big cities." Espronceda's warnings come less than two years before all tariffs on corn, bean and powdered milk products are set to expire.
Anticipating economic blows from the 2008 tariff teardown, several Mexican national organizations have prepared a preliminary document that urges the next Mexican president to demand either the partial suspension or cancellation of NAFTA's agricultural provisions. Sometimes identified with the PRI and PRD political parties, the organizations backing the appeal include the Mexican Electrical Workers Union, Caritas, the General Union of Workers and Farmers (Ugcom), and the big National Farmers Confederation. The groups maintain that NAFTA has "represented the total collapse of the agricultural and industrial productive economy," resulting in massive unemployment and the disappearance of thousands of small businesses.
"Another reason to cancel NAFTA," continues the document cited in La Jornada newspaper, "is that an illegitimate government signed it in 1993, a government that was the product of electoral fraud and the illegal imposition of a regime that didn't respect Mexican interests."
Statistics cited by the emerging anti-NAFTA coalition report that corn production in Mexico actually increased from 18.2 million tons in 1994 to 21.6 million tons in 2004, but that the modest jump in production wasn't enough to cover the national demand for 27.2 million tons in 2004. Consequently, corn imports rose from 2.2 million tons in 1994 to 5.5 million tons in 2004. NAFTA's boosters argued that trade liberalization would benefit consumers, but according to a study by Mexico's Workers University, the price of tortillas – a Mexican staple – shot up almost seven times from December 1994 to February 2006, while the average minimum wage only increased from 15.2 pesos per day in 1994 to 48.6 pesos (less than US$5.00) per day in 2006.
Renewed anti-NAFTA sentiment in the Mexican countryside could result in the third wave of protests against the trade agreement. Led by the Democratic Farmers Front of Chihuahua and other organizations, many Mexican rural producers staged unsuccessful protests during the early 1990s against the signing of the NAFTA. Later, during 2002-2003, many groups retook the anti-NAFTA banner under the umbrella of the massive The Countryside Can't Take It Anymore movement. The later protests subsided after some of the participating organizations reached agreements with the Fox administration for new rural support programs, and because of internal disagreements over the direction of the movement.
The Fox administration, meanwhile, remains steadfast in its posture of not reopening the NAFTA during its last months in office. In remarks last week, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba said revising the NAFTA would open a Pandora's box with the United States and Canada of "20 other (agricultural) issues" that unnamed US and Canadian officials threaten to put back on the table if the corn, bean and powdered milk sections of the trade agreement are revisited by Mexico.
Contending there is really no foreign competition over white corn, Garcia de Alba disputed declarations that yellow corn imports threaten national food self-sufficiency. Regarding beans, Garcia de Alba blamed drought for production downfalls in some regions. The Mexican economy minister said it is important to concentrate on developing the rural economy, but that growing corn, wheat and sorghum wasn't appropriate in all geographic and climatic zones.
Sources: La Jornada, June 20 and 22, 2006. Articles by Gabriel Leon Zaragoza and Miriam Posada Garcia. enlineadirecta.info, June 20, 2006. Article by Jesus Hernandez Garcia.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us