Cuba USA
by Vincec Navarrosource Opinion
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA - between the United States, Canada and Mexico) that is being used as a model for the current free trade treaties such as those negotiated between the U.S. and the European Union. The article demonstrates the enormous inequality that the agreement created.
Last year marks the 20th of the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico known as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) one of the largest trade agreements that the federal government of the United States has approved in the last thirty years. It has been a model on which all others are built that include the The Pacific Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP and now it will sign one between the US and the European Union. It become necessary to analyzed what has happened in those countries - the US, Canada and Mexico – that were allegedly benefited by the treaty.
The official rhetoric when it was approved was that the treaty would benefit the populations of these countries, including Mexico. The figures seem to give that idea. The Mexican economy grew creating a large wealth. However if the benefits of this growth are analyzed the results do not appear positive. In truth, they were negative.
The profits of capital (the super rich) grew enormously becoming the wealthiest among the super rich of the world. In reality, the richest person in the world, Mr. Carlos Slim, acquired his wealth during those years that the treaty was in force. His wealth went from 6 000 million dollars in 1994 (when the treaty became enforced) to 73 000 million dollars in 2014, 20 years later. This occurred with the new 24 super rich of Mexico and became the most super rich people in the world. It also generated, in truth, a middle class with high profits, clearly related and dependent on businesses and consumption generated by the super rich. This created the image of a successful NAFTA.
But on the other side of the coin, it hides the official campaign that demonstrated that extreme poverty in Mexico rose rapidly going from 16% to 28% just in the first five years. 5 million farmers had to abandon their lands contributing to the rise of urban unemployment, deteriorating the work market to levels never before seen. Today poverty has reached 52% of the population. This situation that few question since the figures are staggering has been the result of the Americanization of the Mexican economy. There are figures that prove this. There has been a colonization of Mexico by US capital. But (and it is an important but) it is a mistake to see it only as colonization since large sectors of the Mexican bourgeois, such as Mr. Carlos Slim, have benefited by this treaty that weakens work in the world through a deregulation of the work market and weakness of social protection and policies to protect people such as the workers, as consumers and residents – larger objectives of NAFTA – that has benefited the ruling class of the three signatory countries of the agreement. Thus, their enrichment is at the cost of the welfare of the majority of the people that obtain their work incomes generating even greater inequalities.
The increase of poverty is accompanied by a rise of violence and repression.
The other face of NAFTA has been the enormous rise of repression under the guise of the “war against drug trafficking”. The events above mentioned are well known. But what is not known enough is that at the same time these agreements of free trade have led to a series of military agreements presenting them as part of the war against drugs, rooted in the culture of deregulation, including security and protection of the people that in the case of Mexico has had extremely negative consequences for the Mexican state, transforming it into a State corrupted by drug trafficking and enormously repressive with complications between the drug trafficking that the apparatus of security of the State of unimaginable and unprecedented dimensions.
And if this is not enough, another consequence of the poverty in the countryside that has been massive: migrations from Mexico to the United States have displaced to the US a large part of the rural population affected by the treaty. There is no doubt that components of this reality – will occur also in the development and imposition of the EU-US Free trade Treaty.
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Cuba USA
North American Free Trade agreement use as model in Europe
by Vincec Navarrosource Opinion
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA - between the United States, Canada and Mexico) that is being used as a model for the current free trade treaties such as those negotiated between the U.S. and the European Union. The article demonstrates the enormous inequality that the agreement created.
The official rhetoric when it was approved was that the treaty would benefit the populations of these countries, including Mexico. The figures seem to give that idea. The Mexican economy grew creating a large wealth. However if the benefits of this growth are analyzed the results do not appear positive. In truth, they were negative.
The profits of capital (the super rich) grew enormously becoming the wealthiest among the super rich of the world. In reality, the richest person in the world, Mr. Carlos Slim, acquired his wealth during those years that the treaty was in force. His wealth went from 6 000 million dollars in 1994 (when the treaty became enforced) to 73 000 million dollars in 2014, 20 years later. This occurred with the new 24 super rich of Mexico and became the most super rich people in the world. It also generated, in truth, a middle class with high profits, clearly related and dependent on businesses and consumption generated by the super rich. This created the image of a successful NAFTA.
But on the other side of the coin, it hides the official campaign that demonstrated that extreme poverty in Mexico rose rapidly going from 16% to 28% just in the first five years. 5 million farmers had to abandon their lands contributing to the rise of urban unemployment, deteriorating the work market to levels never before seen. Today poverty has reached 52% of the population. This situation that few question since the figures are staggering has been the result of the Americanization of the Mexican economy. There are figures that prove this. There has been a colonization of Mexico by US capital. But (and it is an important but) it is a mistake to see it only as colonization since large sectors of the Mexican bourgeois, such as Mr. Carlos Slim, have benefited by this treaty that weakens work in the world through a deregulation of the work market and weakness of social protection and policies to protect people such as the workers, as consumers and residents – larger objectives of NAFTA – that has benefited the ruling class of the three signatory countries of the agreement. Thus, their enrichment is at the cost of the welfare of the majority of the people that obtain their work incomes generating even greater inequalities.
The increase of poverty is accompanied by a rise of violence and repression.
The other face of NAFTA has been the enormous rise of repression under the guise of the “war against drug trafficking”. The events above mentioned are well known. But what is not known enough is that at the same time these agreements of free trade have led to a series of military agreements presenting them as part of the war against drugs, rooted in the culture of deregulation, including security and protection of the people that in the case of Mexico has had extremely negative consequences for the Mexican state, transforming it into a State corrupted by drug trafficking and enormously repressive with complications between the drug trafficking that the apparatus of security of the State of unimaginable and unprecedented dimensions.
And if this is not enough, another consequence of the poverty in the countryside that has been massive: migrations from Mexico to the United States have displaced to the US a large part of the rural population affected by the treaty. There is no doubt that components of this reality – will occur also in the development and imposition of the EU-US Free trade Treaty.
- The Mexican Military's Buying Binge To The Us
by John Lindsay-Poland source NACLA Mexico has purchased at least $1.15 billion in military equipment from the United States over the past year. Mexico has been on a buying spree for U.S. military equipment, especially helicopters and armored vehicles,...
- Mercosur: Paving The Way For Latin American Integration
source telesur The Common Market of the South (Mercosur), a sub-regional bloc whose main purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, people and currency, was created on the basis of a historic conflict in the region. ...
- State Violence In Mexico And United States: Product Of Neoliberalism And Militarization
by David Brookssource La Jornanda Scholars, artists and activists held a forum at New York University to analyze the links between Mexico and the United States in the context of the violent events in Guerrero and demonstrations of protest against...
- What Kind Of Walls Are On The Way? Westbank, Mexico........
By Iroel SánchezSource La Pupila Insomne During a visit to Mexico a little after the Berlin Wall fell, a journalist asked Fidel what he thought about those events taking place 25 years ago. “I am against all walls, including this one here the United...
- Chaos: Catharsis Of The System In Mexico
By Juan Danell Sánchez Source: Alainet In history, as in politics, there are no coincidences. Facts on record are the product of well-defined projects and plans and can be designed so that they occur in the short, medium or long term. It all depends...