[Marxism] NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

clip -
 
At the stroke of midnight this past January 1st,  a hundred or so farmers and 
day laborers from both sides of the border converged  on the hump of the 
Cordoba Las Americas bridge that connects up El Paso and  Ciudad Juarez, to 
mark 
the demise of Mexican agriculture. In accordance with the  timetables set by 
the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Mexico, the  U.S. and Canada 
14 years ago, as of January 1st 2008, all tariffs on corn,  beans, powdered 
milk, sugar and 200 agricultural products were reduced to zero,  setting in 
motion a doomsday scenario that farmers organizations here say will  inevitably 
lead to crisis in the Mexican "campo" or countryside, mass  abandonment of 
unsustainable plots, increased hunger, and even armed rebellion  by the 
nation's 
beleaguered small farmers. 
 
"If they build steel walls to keep our people from  entering the United 
States, we will make walls of people to keep their products  out of Mexico," a 
grizzled leader of the militant farmers' front El Barzon  Popular growled into 
his 
bullhorn as the protestors spread out in the frigid  dark to block the lanes 
of the bridge over the river the U.S. calls the Rio  Grande and Mexico the Rio 
Bravo. But traffic was slow and few trailers were  lined up to ferry the 
thousands of tons of U.S. agricultural products that pass  over the Cordoba Las 
Americas into Mexico every day. 
full article - 
_http://counterpunch.org/ross01152008.html_ 
(http://counterpunch.org/ross01152008.html)  



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