[PEN-L:32764] nafta redux

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Published on Wednesday, December 4, 2002 by the Inter Press Service
NAFTA Equals Death, Say Peasant Farmers

by Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY - More than 2,000 peasant farmers from throughout Mexico
staged a protest Tuesday in the capital to demand a freeze on the
agricultural provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), which they blame for most of their economic and social woes.

But their demands do not appear to have much chance of winning the desired
response from the government.

''I have nothing. I am here out of desperation because I am poorer than I
have ever been,'' said Francisco Martínez, an elderly farmer who took part
in Tuesday's march in Mexico City, carrying a sign that read ''NAFTA
Equals Death''.

Under the slogan ''the countryside can endure no more'', farmers from 24
of Mexico's 32 states marched in Mexico City to the Congress building to
present their demands and later staged protests outside the U.S. and
French embassies.

UNORCA, the national union of some 30 regional peasant groups, organized
the demonstrations with the aim of preventing the agricultural trade
liberalization measures -- agreed under NAFTA, which comprises Canada,
Mexico and the United States -- from taking effect in January.

The new phase of liberalization entails the complete elimination of
tariffs on 21 farm products, including potatoes, wheat, apples, onions,
coffee, chicken and veal.

The NAFTA mechanism, which UNORCA describes as ''toxic to the Mexican
countryside,'' establishes three steps towards liberalizing the farm and
livestock sector. The first occurred in 1994 when the three-nation treaty
entered into force, the second is slated for January, and the third in
2008.

In 1993, when NAFTA was still being negotiated, the government of Carlos
Salinas, then president of Mexico (1988-1994), agreed to the process of a
gradual elimination of agricultural tariffs with the support of the
country's leading farm organizations.

Now, nearly a decade later, they are all complaining.

Recognizing the difficulties that Mexican farmers face with the deepening
of trade liberalization, President Vicente Fox announced in November that
the government would provide support for rural producers to the tune of 10
billion dollars in 2003, or 7.7 percent more aid than this year.

Fox stated last month that he is very concerned about how the trade
liberalization process is unfolding, ''in light of the U.S. subsidies to
its agricultural production.''

He said he would take up the matter with the George W. Bush
administration, but there has not been any indication of action so far.

The Mexican president's aim would be to press the United States to
eliminate its farm subsidies, which total 19 billion dollars a year,
nearly double what Mexico has budgeted for its farmers in 2003.

But Washington announced that it will not alter its farm subsidy policies
and that the situation of the Mexican farmers does not justify annulment
of the agricultural chapter of NAFTA.

Mexico would not ask for a suspension of the trade agreement's farm
provisions anyway, say Fox administration sources, because doing so would
mean revoking the country's recognition of the treaty itself.

Since NAFTA took effect, Mexico's overall exports shot up from 60.9
billion dollars in 1994 to 158.4 billion dollars in 2001. In that same
period, imports jumped from 79.3 billion dollars to 168.4 billion dollars
annually.

More than 85 percent of Mexican trade is currently concentrated in
exchange with the United States.

But for Mexico's rural areas, where 75 percent of the population living in
extreme poverty is concentrated, the three- country treaty has meant the
loss of more than 10 million hectares of cultivated land.

And the decline of the rural sector has pushed 15 million peasants -- and
mostly young people -- to move to the cities, either in Mexico or in the
United States, according to a study by the Autonomous National University
of Mexico (UNAM).

Over the last 10 years, the participation of the farming sector in
Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen from 7.3 percent to less
than 5.0 percent.

The protests Tuesday echoed similar demonstrations in November, including
the blockade of a main federal highway by farmers in the state of Morelos,
neighboring the Mexico City federal district, and protests by peasants
from the southern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero outside government offices
in the capital.

The common denominator of all of these events is the rural producers'
rejection of NAFTA.

''The farmers are walking towards death because they are up against the
'disloyal' trade competition from the United States and the Mexican
government's desertion of the countryside,'' says Alberto Gómez, UNORCA
executive coordinator.

Without exception, Mexico's farmer organizations believe the new phase of
NAFTA-stipulated farm trade liberalization will generate more poverty and
prompt more people to leave rural areas.

They also reckon that the financial support Fox has promised will not be
nearly enough.

Mariano Ruiz, an analyst with the Mexico City-based Grupo de Economistas y
Asociados, says the worst blow for the Mexican farmers will come in 2008
when the agricultural tariffs on products like maize and beans are lifted.

An estimated 2.8 million Mexican farm families make their livelihood from
these commodities.

''The countryside is a time-bomb that could explode very soon,'' commented
Rosario Robles, chairwoman of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party
(PRD), the country's third political force.

The elderly farmer Martínez, who joined his colleagues for the Mexico City
march Tuesday, does not believe in anything that the Fox government is
offering.

''I have heard many things in the two years since he took office. The one
thing for certain is that I am getting poorer and poorer,'' he said.