The Human Face of "Free Trade"

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, Canada and the United States has been in effect since 1994. Our government is presently involved in negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would include all the nations of this hemisphere except Cuba. The Rev. William Jones and I spent the last two weeks of January in Mexico as a part of a Witness for Peace delegation to talk with persons and organizations to get a first-hand picture of the effects of NAFTA to help us understand the probable results of FTAA.

During the negotiations for NAFTA, Mexico was pressured by the United States to amend its Constitution to open up traditional Mexican territory for sale to foreign investors and bring an end to the land reform policies that had benefited the peasantry for a half-century. This was called "the straw that broke the camel's back" by the leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army which took up arms against the government in the southeastern state of Chiapas on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA became effective.

Land in Chiapas has become increasingly important because of potential oil resources under the ground and because of exotic plants in the rain forest which are of great interest to multinational pharmaceutical industries. Many attempts have been made to drive peasants and Native Americans off of their land, the most horrible being on December 22, 1997, in the village of Acteal, when 45 Tzotzil indigenous people, 36 of whom were women and children, were massacred. We stayed overnight in that village where we met with leaders of a group known as "Las Abejas" who agreed with the issues raised by the Zapatistas but were committed to non-violence.

Agriculture has been greatly affected, especially in rural Oaxaca where we met with leaders of the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez. NAFTA provided for a phasing-out of all trade barriers between the three countries, and this is having a devastating effect on the small farmers of Mexico. Corn imported from the United States, subsidized by our government, undersells Mexican corn and has driven many farmers from their land.

These indigenous people also had great concern about the genetically-modified corn being imported from the U.S. The corn produced in rural Mexico has thousands of years of history without producing health problems. 35% of the corn imported into Mexico is genetically modified with a form of anthrax to kill pests on plants, and these people are concerned that no one knows the long-term health effects of this on humans. Moreover, they are certain that native-grown corn is being genetically contaminated by the imported corn and are trying to raise funds to do research on this.

We also met with workers in one of the few maquiladoras in the state of Puebla. Maquiladoras are factories which import cloth or components for manufacturing, make clothing or otherwise assemble parts through labor-intensive work, and then export the products generally back to the country of origin, with no tariffs involved. These women had staged a work stoppage the previous week in an effort to get the factory to recognize their independent union, and the management was making every effort to break the union. They told us that line workers were earning 39 pesos for a ten-hour day, about $3.90 in US dollars, or a little over $1,000 a year. They have no benefits--no medical, no social security, and they work with hazardous dyes.

Most of the maquiladoras are just south of the U.S. border where wages are somewhat higher than the above, but still below what is needed to support a family. Many farmers and others whose livelihood has been destroyed by NAFTA have gone north to the border maquiladoras or across the border into the U.S. in order to find income. However, between January 2001 and June 2002, 600 maquilas out of an active roster of 3,200 closed eliminating 250,000 jobs, 15% of the maquiladora workforce.

It seems obvious to me that there is no way that the economics of the free market will raise wages in third world countries. In the free market, prices are set on the basis of supply and demand. In countries with an overabundant supply of unemployed labor, market forces will drive wages down rather than up. In meetings at the U. S. Embassy and with the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City we were given the statistics of how Mexico's economy has improved since 1994, with no attention to the fact that the average wage has decreased and unemployment has increased during that time.

The winners and losers are clear: those with the influence (political power and money) at the time of negotiation and ratification have benefited greatly. Those without (labor, small farmers and the environment) have suffered greatly. Consequently, there are no official FTAA working groups on crucial areas such as the environment, labor, immigration, human rights or gender. But there is no reason why these should not be addressed in a trade agreement.

Since mid-October, 2002, Mexican citizens have received the opportunity to voice their opinion about FTAA. Mexican social organizations are presently wrapping up a five month long non-binding plebiscite, called the "People's Consultation," in response to the lack of civil society participation in FTAA negotiations. The goal of the referendum is to educate citizens and gauge opinion about the proposed continental free trade agreement.

The "People's Consultation" in Mexico is just part of a hemispheric grassroots effort to include civil society's voice in the FTAA debate. Mexican organizers are expecting between 1- 3 million votes. Citizens in all of the Americas, including the U.S., are organizing similar informal referendums. For instance, in September 2002, ten million Brazilians voted against the signing of the FTAA in a widely circulated plebiscite.

All "Americans," everyone in the western hemisphere, deserve democratic process in this high-stakes negotiation. A failure by governments to supply their citizenry with equal and open channels of participation in international trade agreements like the FTAA is a failure of democracy.

Posted: March 25, 2003