NAFTA, the final phase

BY STAN GOTLIEB

In August, the Mexican, Canadian and U.S. heads of state met to further implement the process begun on Jan. 1, 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA: TLC in its Spanish acronym) came into being. While much of what was discussed this year was "secret," much is known, and none of it bodes well for the people of Mexico.

Bush, Calderón and Martin are all from the right of the political spectrum, and follow the neoliberal model of "free trade." They all love NAFTA (which by the way was signed by Bill Clinton), an arrangement that has wreaked havoc on the Mexican people while expanding the Mexican economy. Like all such super-national economic agreements, NAFTA smoothed the way to more concentration of wealth in fewer hands; and a dramatic widening of the gap between rich and poor (as it did in the other two "partners").

In the first years of NAFTA, over 100,000 producers and vendors of goods and services for the domestic market went belly up as capital turned to export. The Maquiladoras (plants that use imported parts and materials to assemble goods for export) sprouted along the northern border and in a few other areas of the country. Mostly run as third-world sweatshops, with little pretense of being environmentally "clean," they are the source of a great deal of social and ecological damage. Institutional corruption and the rules imposed by NAFTA that, by treaty, trump any local regulations, have aggravated the problems and retarded solutions.

The passing years have seen a steady increase in the intrusion of transnational corporations and franchises into the Mexican market: WalMart and McDonald's, of course, and Office Depot, Pizza Hut and more, but much more importantly, U.S.-based transnational agri-businesses like our very own Cargill, among others.

Imported U.S. corn and bean imports exceed domestic crops. Tens of thousands of small farmers have fled their land to work as laborers or street vendors in the cities or as agricultural laborers on the large farms of Mexico and in other countries. There was a long legal struggle over whether Mexico can tax U.S. processed syrup used in Mexican soft drinks (more Coca Cola is drunk per capita in Mexico than in any other country), in order to protect the domestic sugar cane industry-a fight that was doomed from the outset, since such a tax is clearly illegal under NAFTA rules.

(Incidentally, the rules were written mostly by lawyers. Thus it should not be a surprise that one of the very first rules to be put into effect was one that eliminated procedural barriers to U.S. lawyers wanting to set up legal practices in Mexico.)

NAFTA summits have been occurring periodically for ten years, as mandated in the rules. This year's confab is notable for two things, one widely announced, and the other done without fanfare.

Bush and Calderón announced a mutual security arrangement. More Mexican police will be trained in elite U.S. counter-insurgency (read: state terrorism and torture) schools. The CIA and the FBI will take a more active role in overseeing the "war on drugs" and the "war on crime" in Mexico. There will be joint military maneuvers. Databases on "subversives" will be shared. Lots of U.S. weaponry will be exported to Mexico, some "granted" and some purchased. Designed after the more-or-less failed "Plan Columbia," it will probably be just as costly, brutal and futile; but the "intelligence industry" and the weapons manufacturers will do very well indeed.

The less well-known move came from agri-business, particularly Monsanto, Dupont and other patent-holders of "transgenic" processes. Passed within days of Calderón's return, it is known on the street as the Seed Law (Ley de Semillas). It will provide the final nail in the coffin of domestic Mexican agriculture.

Some years ago, Mexico, which had previously banned all genetically modified corn seed, granted a few licenses to U.S. corporations to conduct "studies" on transgenic corn growth. Pretending that the wind does not exist, the agencies in charge of keeping the Mexican corn strains (some the product of thousands of years of self-selection) more or less pure permitted the "experimental" plots, some of which were in the heart of the indigenous corn belts. The result, according to many observers, has been the often involuntary replacement of indigenous strains with transgenic strains.

Transgenic strains, which require copious applications of Round-up, and other patented poisons, in order to withstand the local pests (against which they have no natural, evolved protection), are expensive. The "pure" transgenic strains bought directly from U.S. suppliers cannot be re-seeded, so seed must be bought every year: another big expense.

The new law extends the "Monsanto Law," passed last year (which made it illegal for farmers to use "patented" seeds without paying for them), by making it illegal to possess corn that has been contaminated without paying a fee to the multinational corporation that was responsible for the contamination. Milo Minderbinder, the wheeler-dealer from Catch 22, would love it
In late August, the day after the Seed Law passed, a thousand corn farmers descended on the offices of the agency (SAGARPA in its Spanish acronym) originally responsible for the failed attempt at controlling the spread of transgenic corn. That failure was rewarded by making SAGARPA responsible for enforcing the Seed Law.

Calderón seems, according to many of his critics, to have an almost insatiable appetite for privatization, concentration of wealth, political repression and expanded opportunities for transnational capital, at the expense of the Mexican people. During the next five years of his term, they say, he can be expected to squeeze even harder.

Here in Oaxaca and the rest of southeastern Mexico, times could get even worse for the majority of the population. There might even be some uprisings. If there are, the new equipment and the newly-trained-at-a-U.S.-counter-insurgency-school troops will come in mighty handy for keeping the rabble in line.