Thread: Mexican Legislators Fear Unrest over NAFTA

Mexican Legislators Fear Unrest over NAFTA

Dec 25, 2007

MEXICO.— Hector Padilla, president of the agriculture committee of the Mexican House of Representatives, said that when the agricultural chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect January 1 it will lead to social unrest.

Padilla said the scheduled removal of tariffs on the import of food products from the United States and Canada on January 1, 2008 will provoke a major crisis in the Mexican countryside.

The impact will be enormous and disastrous for Mexico’s economy because the policy will destroy the institutional tools that gave strength to agriculture, said Padilla.

The legislator explained that a worsening of the crisis in the farm sector would include a drop in production and supply, seriously impacting the rest of society.

Padilla stressed that the elimination of tariffs on imported corn, beans, milk and sugar along with flooding the Mexican market with those products from the North, will cause a great crisis in prices and further increase the exodus of Mexicans towards the US.

The survival of 90 percent of the rural producers of Mexico who produce these crops is at stake, he said.

Another legislator, Victor Quintana, from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) also spoke out against NAFTA and its negative affect on the rural Mexican economy.

Quintana announced that on January 1 a protest to denounce the damage caused to Mexican farmers by the NAFTA treaty will take place on the Cordoba Bridge that unites Mexico and the US at the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border. (PL)

http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_ ... 122407.htm

This has been in the Mexican news for the last 8 months. Many protests have taken place over this. But the fact of the matter is that Mexican farmers haven't modernized their methods. They still use animals to harvest their vegetables. They rarely get help from the federal government with low interest loans or subsidies. Therefore, this was bound to happen.

Mexican immgrants should start supporting Mexican farms from here. It is possible for them to buy Mexican securities to use as collateral on farm modernization loans. The cost of inter-state transportation is much more than it is here. That makes it more difficult for villages to sell corn or beans to the central industrial markets competitively but it protects them from the competitors on the outside. It would be good for the villages there to engage in decentralized meat production. Use the corn and beans locally as poultry feed.

They can also do what we are doing in some parts of the country: supporting local produce. I was in Brush, CO on Monday and the local supermarket had signs up about how they are selling locally produced vegetables. Farmer's markets are also surging in popularity here.

Mexican farmers to form human wall on border with U.S. to protest free trade accord


2007-12-30 11:23:47

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Mexican farmers and social groups will form a human wall on the country's border with the United States on Jan. 1 to protest against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Latin American news agency reported Saturday.

"The human wall will be built on the Cordoba-Americas International Bridge in Ciudad Juarez, state of Chihuahua, to criticize the NAFTA policies on agricultural products," said the Farmers' Democratic Front.

"We will continue to organize protests against the NAFTA, which strives to lift tariffs for U.S. and Canadian exports of corn, beans, sugar and powder milk," it said.

"The NAFTA can be renegotiated if Mexico follows the rules of the World Trade Organization and leaves basic household items out of the trade treaties," it added.

"We have to show political will and popular commitment" to win the battle, said the group.



Editor: Sun Yunlong

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007- ... 340372.htm