| Last Thurs., Feb. 21, a crowd of chanting Seattle University students gathered outside the Shaffer Auditorium of their campus library, protesting the visit of the Trade Commission of Mexico’s Sergio Rios. As the Northwest’s Mexican trade commissioner, Rios’ involvement in the North American Free Trade Agreement sparked the protest.
NAFTA, enacted in 1994 and consisting of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, remains the world’s largest trading bloc. It lifted pre-existing tariffs on dozens of industries, among them the textile, automotive, and agricultural sectors. The agreement, though lauded throughout corporate North America, has faced fierce criticism in all three countries for its corrosive
effect on, among other things, blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and farming in Mexico.
Mr. Rios, who advises American and Canadian investors on Mexican trade projects,
faced a protest outside and a hostile audience inside.
“I’m here to protest [Rios’] visit because his job is to tell corporations how to use NAFTA for their own interests,”said Aldo Resendiz, who helped organize the protest. Resendiz’s family emigrated to the U.S. five years ago from the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí because, according to Resendiz,
they were no longer able to survive as farmers. NAFTA’s implementation lifted tariffs on heavily subsidized American agriculture, effectively sinking smaller, independent
Mexican farms and uprooting millions who worked the land, including Resendiz’s family.
But the testimony of Resendiz and countless others did not seem to faze Rios, who insisted on NAFTA’s benefits with an apologetic smile. NAFTA, he argued, has led to $125 million in investment from the U.S. alone. Mexico, which now boasts burgeoning
aeronautical, tourism, and electronics industries, is second only to China in overall foreign investment worldwide.
“There are going to be sectors and industries that say, ‘This has not been good,’” said Rios of some of NAFTA’s “losers.” In time, he went on, Mexico will develop the infrastructure to have a quality of life comparable to the US and Canada.
The faces of those assembled — some of them obscured by bandanas in the fashion
of Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos — told a different story.
“Sixteen million Mexicans have been forced to move to the United States due to this agreement,” called an impassioned Juan José Bocanegra, a labor educator and field organizer from Evergreen State College.
“We need to encourage communication
with workers in other countries, strengthen relationships and understanding,
and… eliminate racism,” said Bocanegra.
“I think people miss the connection between NAFTA, neoliberalism, and immigration,” added Resendiz, noting that other Mexican farmers wind up working low-paying jobs in maquiladoras, factories that import materials tariff- and duty-free.
As his hour wound down, Rios laughed nervously in response to one of many pointed questions: “I am not a policy-maker.” |
