TRANSLATED FROM:
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/471267.html

Scores of peasants formed today a "human wall" in a bridge in the border of Mexico with the United States to protest against the total opening of the agricultural commerce, established in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The agreement signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada, which began on January 1, 1994, decrees that starting today the commerce of corn, bean, cane sugar and powdered milk should be free from tariffs, among the members of NAFTA.

The protest began in the first minute of this Tuesday in the bridge Cordoba-Americas that joins the Mexican city of Juárez (Chihuahua) and El Paso (Texas), said VĂ*ctor Quintana, advisor of the organization Rural Democratic Front (FDC).

Two of the four lanes between United States and Mexico were blocked by some 200 peasants, said Quintana, who is also a leftist representative in the Congress of the state of Chihuahua.

For some six months the FDC initiated the campaign "Without corn there is not country, without bean neither" to denounce that with the entrance of the agrarian chapter of NAFTA the Mexican peasants are going to go to bankruptcy, because in 14 years there hasn't been the necessary changes to face this challenge.

Quintana said in the demonstration, carried out on the Mexican side, that they had no problems with the authorities of both countries.

Upon initiating the protest, that will last 36 hours, the activists read a titled document "Plan of the Chamizal" in which he made "a calling to the nation to begin a new phase of fight for preserve the eating sovereignty and the social conquests of the Mexicans and to defend the natural resources", said Quintana.

The social organizations that are opposed to the agricultural chapter of NAFTA assure that the producers and Mexican consumers "will face serious risks" due to the fact that Mexico "does not have a strategic reserve of grains and basic food".

To this, they add that two large businesses, an American and a Mexican, "control the importing and exporting" of these products.

They ask that NAFTA be renegotiated and be submited to the rules of the World organization of Commerce (OMC) to erase from the treaty the basic and strategic products.