Union members, Latinos protest Fox

by Lucy Grinnell

More than 100 local residents protested Mexican president Vincente Fox on his first trip to the Twin Cities. The protesters, including members of workers’ rights groups, Latin American organizations and unions, said that Fox’s policies were increasing poverty and human-rights abuses.

The residents were protesting Fox’s support of treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), which they said have allowed U.S. corporations to move factories to Mexico and pay extremely low wages under abusive conditions and ignore pollution laws. Protesters said they welcomed greater ties between Mexico and the U.S., but that the pro-Big Business stance of Fox and recent American presidents was driving people in both countries into poverty.

“In the United States we were promised 170,000 new jobs, yet since the initiation of NAFTA in 1994, we have lost over 3 million manufacturing jobs,” the coalition of area residents wrote in a letter to Fox and the local Spanish-language newspaper. “NAFTA also has resulted in the dislocation of over 38,000 US small farmers and over 2 million Mexican farmers.”

The crowds chanted “Fox, Pawlenty: don’t forget the people” and “Fair Trade, Not Free Trade” outside the governor’s mansion and the Minneapolis Convention Center while Fox was visiting state leaders inside, and held banners that said, “Remember Chiapas? Comply with the San Andres Accords,” and “Undocumented students have the right to higher education.”

The demonstrators also opposed Mexico’s human-rights violations, such as the illegal arrest and torture of 111 protesters at the Guadalajara economic summit in May, according to Amnesty International. They accused Fox of indifference to atrocities taking place in southern Mexico, like the more than 370 women murdered and 400 disappeared recently in Ciudad Juarez, and the killing of farmers in Chiapas by the Mexican military.

“Some of us are small farmers, who have stopped working in farming because the price of coffee and corn fell so low causing Mexico to become an importer rather than exporter of corn.,” the letter to Fox said. “This situation put us in competition with others migrating to larger Mexican cities for employment, forcing us eventually to come to the U.S. … Mr. President, we want trade agreements that benefit both Mexican workers and US workers.”

The rallies included members of Centro de Derechos Laborales (Workers Rights Center) at the Resource Center of the Americas, Cloudforest Initiatives, Solidaridad Para Mujeres, and The Immigrant Workers Freeedom Ride, as well as several unions.