Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

End the NAFTA!

24 Years Of Growing Misery For The Workers And Looting Of Mexico
It has been 24 years of NAFTA with the United States and Canada, and for the living conditions of workers and the general population, contrary to what had been promised by the official goldfinches and evil genie Salinas de Gortari, the misery has increased. They promised that Mexico would move from the Third World to the First and there would be employment and opportunities for all, modernity, roadways, the rescue of marginalized areas… Even many members of the middle class believed that we would be part of a single zone, integrated with the United States and Canada.
By GSO [Socialis Workers’ Group] – Mexico.
 
But the harsh reality that we experience shows the true objectives of NAFTA:

  • To provide very cheap Mexican labor (cheaper than that provided by Chinese workers, which at the time of signing the treaty, in 1993, was the cheapest in the world);
  • To increase food dependence of to the United States, destroying peasant producers – which ties our hands and make us surrender to their interests, as the treaty demands;
  • To increase energy dependency, handing over oil and electricity;
  • Increase scientific dependence. Our country is practically forbidden of carrying out research capable of developing state-of-the-art technology;
  • To privatize education and health, for the profit of educational corporations, health insurers, and pharmaceutical industry;
  • To prioritize the North American market for the shipment of raw materials – for example, strategic metals;
  • To force our country to deliver more than 25 percent of the national territory for the installation of open pit mines to extract gold, silver, and precious metals, regardless of the trail of ecological desolation left behind.

Today, Trump demands of the NAFTA “renegotiation” to increase the benefits for large financial corporations in his country. Trump came to the presidency vociferating that the NAFTA did not serve the U.S., and he tried to blackmail stating that he would close U.S. companies in Mexico. But he knows that the U.S. companies are not going to abandon an “exploitation paradise” like our country, for the simple reason that, in the U.S. an auto-industry worker earns an average of $54 dollars an hour while, in Mexico, there are few who earn that sum for the entire work day.
And Trump demands even more: for example, for us to deliver our water resources to U.S. companies –so they would have our water and food in their hands,– and delivery of the oil extracted and to be extracted from the deposits. Not to forget the telecommunications. He wants a wall to expel Mexicans, but open doors to plunder us!
Neither our country nor the working people are benefited by the current or a “renegotiated “ NAFTA. Moreover, the Mexican people do not agree with any treaty with the United States, because it implies the idea of super-exploitation of labor, plundering of our natural resources, and recolonization of the country. And it does not favor U.S. workers either: NAFTA has served to amass colossal fortunes, like that of Carlos Slim, Alberto Bailléres, and the handful of billionaire oligarchs who are “the 1%” that accumulates more than one-third of the entire wealth of Mexico! This is the NAFTA: extreme looting, inequality, and misery!
Those who negotiate in the name of Mexico are the rich capitalist and the cast of pimps of the gringo bosses, who call themselves “rulers” of Mexico. And the result is more enslavement for decades to come. Let’s not allow it! Let us demand that López Obrador and those who run for governorships in 2018 in the name of “Hope” do not stay in silence and accomplice passivity. Let’s demand them to reject the NAFTA and call on the working people to mobilize to annul it. Or are they planning on telling us that it is “our heavy inheritance” and there is nothing to do about it?
We also turn to Federations and independent Unions that represent workers in the countryside and cities, to demand that they call for concrete actions to reject this new attack on the workers and the exploited people of Mexico.
We support and call to follow the example of day laborers of San Quintín and other union groups of the U.S. and Mexico, that mobilized on August 16 in different cities on both sides of the border to reject NAFTA.
***
Translated by Corriente Obrera.

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