Some eye-patches gone unnoticed..

The Democratic primary in the USA always constitutes one of the few opportunities to stir a debate within the population about problems of vital importance that otherwise go silently in the books. And so with that in mind, I give you a non-American-centered view of the rhetorics on NAFTA.

The primaries in Ohio and Michigan brought NAFTA to the forefront of the campaign. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama essentially gave statements (even if it could just be more of the usual "demagoguery as politics") that proclaimed the necessity to "sit down with Canada and Mexico" and renegotiate the treaty in favor of the USA, or else !

Well, there´s a newsflash for you: if you think the original negotiations regarding NAFTA consisted of Mexico´s or Canada´s governments imposing their terms to the USA government, you really haven´t payed attention to how the world really works. The USA government basically penned the whole deal, mindlessly listened to what the other parties had to say, made a few minor concessions, and voilà, North America was on its way to prosperity!

The obscenely rich (and mildly rich) people in the USA just got wealthier, you mean. Because as with the enormous majority of "free trade" deals negotiated by governments around the world, only the elites were allowed an input.

There´s another newsflash for you: speaking of Mexico, threatening with leaving the agreement doesn´t make people shake with fear. The elites, of course, are another matter. Their whole parasitic existence depends on the USA government beneplacite. But common, non-sycophantic people? Many, many, maaany would actually celebrate with cries of joy if the whole NAFTA deal ceased existing.

Let´s talk about Mexico, by the way. Talking about renegotiating the NAFTA deal by putting an emphasis on less complacence towards Mexico would be absurd if it wasn´t so damn tragic.
NAFTA made it a hundred times easier for American investments to land a gig in Mexico, profit a hundredfold, and return home with no long-term benefits whatsoever for Mexican people. If we´re talking about the industry, Mexico´s control on innovation just all but disappeared following NAFTA, many industries just began exporting cheap products towards the USA on a never-before seen level while Mexico continued to import almost every high-technological level products, and so on and so forth.
The workers´s conditions went south abysmally, the agriculture is just dead, buried and decomposed, and we could literally go on for hours about the ruin that is the Mexican economy since NAFTA.

The Mexican population has gained nothing, nothing, neither prosperity nor security nor education, because of the NAFTA trade. The only ones who took advantage were the businessmen and politicians, who became billionaires with their hands in their pockets and their mouths constantly yapping, surprise surprise.

The truth of the matter is that in Mexico, the unfathomably corrupt, incompetent authorities agree to everything the USA government wants and get rich in the process, while the people just lose and lose and lose. Hope, perspectives in their homeland, money, independence, you name it, NAFTA made common Mexicans worse off in every aspect.

And it´s not only a matter of earning 5 dollars a day in many jobs, or having to leave your beloved country (if you have ever met an expatriated Mexican, you know they only swear by all things Mexican) behind and risk your life to get in the USA. Supreme irony, isn´t it? Every single measure that makes Mexican people poorer drives more and more of them into the USA, something which everybody and their army of snails realize. NAFTA is at the head of this list of measures if you´re not busy sticking your head into the sand.

No, what´s more, the bold and perfect embodiment of neoliberalism and capitalism at its most ambitious best, the project that would bring Mexico out of poverty and in the glorious arms of a post-history 21st century, the one and only (we wish) NAFTA, its masters and its cronies have caused bloodshed and serial rape by policemen and ethnic cleansing.

At least. An explanation? Let´s start here. The emissary of the Carlyle Group in Mexico, a Luis Téllez, was named by US-backed Calderón as Secretary of Communications and Transports. Why not Energy, you´ll ask, since oil clearly is the biggest thing on the USA government´s mind since, well, forever. Simple, it so happens that Communications and Transports is the key place where you can implement the next Great idea, the next catastrophe, the Plan Puebla-Panama. And be barely noticed while doing so, since it´s not considered a mediatic secretary, always a big plus for the Carlyle group.

For instance, ever since former vende-patria in-chief Fox failed to get his Texcoco airport, the matter has been a thorn in the government´s side. So much so that on May 3d and 4th of 2006, at 6.15 AM, 5000 policemen entered the small town of San Salvador Atenco, the bastion of resistence against the airport for more than 4 years, and proceeded to drag sleeping people out of their beds, kill a 14 tears old boy and a 20 years old student, kick a man almost to death, torture more than 200 people, and rape more than 40 women for the 5 hours it took to drive people to jail.

And since this, you´ll ask...

Since Téllez was intronized as Communication tsar, the government has made quiet advances towards building the airport. Instead of trying to openly kick the Atenquenses out of their ancestral land, the government is now buying it. 8 dollars a square meter, which appears to be a lot to poor Mexicans, that the Mexican government would then sell for more than 3 000 dollars a square meter when beginning the construction of the airport. Justice, you say?

This is but one example of how the deals that make USA companies richer and the USA economy stronger bleed another country´s inhabitants. Look no further than Atenco; look no further than Montes Azules in Chiapas, where tzeltales and tzotziles indigenous people are being expulsed from their lands in the name of eco-tourism. Look no further than this place in northern Sonora where kids, kids no older than 12 are literally enslaved to pick tomatoes later exported to the USA by the G-mark company (scroll down till Wednesday 25th).

So Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, next time you open your mouth to talk about renegotiating NAFTA, keep the delusional US-centrist view of reality out of it. You want all Americans to benefit? That´s good. America isn´t only the USA, you know. Realize that Mexico and Canada are in fact sovereign nations, and that every single human being from Alaska to the Río Suchiate (and stretching it further, the Cape Horn) has the right to pursuit of happiness and utter dignity, not just being a USA lackey. Thank you.