Free trade in poverty,
racial violence, repression and AIDS
The changes in the Mexican Constitution
in preparation for NAFTA were officially hailed as a progressive
step toward national economic growth and prosperity. But
many social analysts correctly predicted that these measures
would have devastating human and environmental costs.
Indeed, thousands of small farms are being bought up by
big land holders or confiscated for debt. The concentration
of farmland into fewer hands, together with the flood
of tariff-free US farm products into Mexico as result
of NAFTA, have caused the mass exodus of more than 2 million
landless peasants to the mushrooming city slums, where
they have swelled the ranks of unemployed persons competing
for jobs. Mexico's courtship with foreign speculative
investment contributed to the crash of the peso at the
end of 1994. In the first six months of 1995, the unemployment
rate more than doubled; more than 1.4 million Mexican
workers lost their jobs.
Independent unions estimate unemployment and under-employment
to be around 50 percent.
The inflation rate reached 39.91 percent in July, 1994,
while the sales of basic food stuffs decreased by 25%,
a harbinger of widespread malnutrition.
With such a huge surplus of hungry people
ready to work under any conditions, wage levels have dropped
and the already minimal bargaining power of organized
labor has been further weakened. The combination of falling
wages and rising unemployment inevitably takes a high
toll on people's health, especially that of children.
Along the US/Mexico border, many poor Mexican
workers toil in the maquiladoras (manufacturing
plants), which now number over 2,700. These sweat shops
employ over 605,000 workers who have fled to the colonias
(unincorporated areas) on both sides of the border in
search of a better life. Including worker's families,
more than 1.5 million men, women and children live in
these slums in which "there is a pressing need for basic
sanitation [and which] have no potable drinking water,
sewer systems, garbage collection or adequate medical
facilities. In many colonias, garbage is left
in open dumps or scattered in urban streets, attracting
and proliferating vermin and contributing to surface and
groundwater pollution."
As landlessness, poverty, disease and unemployment
in Mexico increase as a result of NAFTA and structural
adjustment, more and more braceros illegally
cross the US border in search of work. With increased
job competition and unemployment in the United States,
more people will resort to prostitution, drug peddling,
and drug use. At the same time, fewer illegal immigrants
will get the health care they need, since new legislation
is threatening to reduce the opportunities for undocumented
workers to receive public health services. If, as predicted,
the US army is recruited to assist the Border Patrol,
expulsion rates back to Mexico will increase along with
the numbers of illegal workers. Thousands who have acquired
sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and/or drug habits
will carry their new afflictions home with them. The incidence
of AIDS in Mexico is beginning to skyrocket as it has
in Africa. For the poor of Mexico, however, concern about
combating AIDS is at present eclipsed by the more immediate
need to combat landlessness, joblessness, and hunger.
In the United States, NAFTA's effects are precipitating
an upsurge of racism and human rights violations. As more
US industries move factories south of the border to take
advantage of low Mexican wages and weak enforcement of
workers rights and safety, thousands of US workers have
lost their jobs. According to an article by journalist
Patrick Buchanan, "In the first eight months of [1994],
224 US factories--a factory every single day--laid off
workers or shifted production overseas as result of NAFTA.
NAFTA has put American workers into competition with 80
million Mexicans labor there is only 15% of the cost of
US labor." Correspondingly, in the
US the real wages of workers has continued to fall.
Because US workers are poorly informed about the root
causes of their loss of jobs and falling wages, they tend
to put the blame for their economic hardships on the influx
of Latinos. This appears to be sparking racial violence.
Within eight months of the passing of NAFTA, the Southern
Poverty Law Center reported that, "Hostility towards immigrants
and efforts by white supremacists to exploit fears about
immigration are at their highest levels in 70 years, causing
a rash of violent bias crimes against anyone who is perceived
as 'foreign.'" This anti-immigrant paranoia is so severe
that in November of 1994 the voters of California--a state
which has a large immigrant population--passed the so-called
"Save Our State" initiative (Proposition 187). This draconian
initiative, if implemented (its constitutionality is being
questioned in the courts), would prohibit undocumented
children from utilizing public education and health services
(except in cases of emergency). This is in blatant violation
of the International Declaration of Children's Rights.
