NAFTA's Road to Ruin by North American Congress on Latin America

The Relentless March of Transgenic Soy in Argentina

rg .o cla na

John Pilger Looks to Latin America

on the AMERICAS REPORT nacla Vol. 41, No. 5

September/October 2008

$6/$6.95 Can

NAFTAs ROAD TO RUIN

The Decline of the Mexican Social Compact, Part II plus: Who Killed VĂctor Jara? U.S. Military Deployment in South America

Real World Latin America A Contemporary Economics and Social Policy Reader edited by the Dollars & Sense Collective and NACLA Latin America is undergoing profound economic and social transformations. Real World Latin America brings together the best recent reporting on the region from Dollars & Sense and NACLA Report on the Americas.

C o ntents • Latin America, the Global Economy, and Neoliberal Policy • Armed Forces, Violence, and Human Rights • The Politics of Left and Right • Alternative Economies • Social Movements • Migration • Natural Resources, Land, and Environment • The U.S. Role in Latin America

Thirty-eight well-researched and clearly written articles examine the hidden costs of development, struggles for human rights, international trade deals, the impacts of migration, growing environmental challenges, and the role of the United States in the region. Chapters on social movements and alternative forms of production document grassroots struggles in Argentine factory shop floors, Venezuelan cooperatives, Oaxacan schoolrooms, and elsewhere.

To purchase or learn more, visit nacla.org/rwla Professors: To request an examination copy, visit dollarsandsense.org/examcopies or call 617-447-2177. Published by Dollars & Sense July 2008 | $29.95

nacla REPORT Contents vol. 41, no. 5 September/October 2008

3 taking note The Winner in Argentina? Transgenic Soy by Christy Thornton

4 open forum Who Killed Víctor Jara? by Paul Cantor

6 essay A New Doctrine of Insecurity? U.S. Military Deployment in South America by Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

42 reviews Cold War Terror in the Americas: A History Lesson by Pablo Morales A Tale of Two Colonies: Tutelage and Accommodation by Luis H. Francia New & Noteworthy

49 MALA Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story by Dan Beeton

on the

AMERICAS

NAFTA’s Road to Ruin: The Decline of the Mexican Social Compact, Part II 11

Introduction

Elections in Mexico: What’s the Use?

by Silvia Gómez Tagle

Despite Mexico’s much vaunted “transition to democracy,” true citizen participation remains weak and problematic. Much of this can be traced to the effects of neoliberal policy, as Mexican politics has effectively been sequestered by a minority unaccountable to popular demands.

Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future

by Laura Carlsen

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), launched in 2005 by the NAFTA countries, aims to securitize the “shared economic space” of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This has profound implications for Mexico, whose shaky democracy could regress to presidential authoritarianism, with explicit U.S. support.

Displaced People: NAFTA’s Most Important Product

by David Bacon

The immigration debate often proceeds as if free trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States. A coalition for reform should fight for the right of people to choose when and how to migrate, and the right not to migrate at all, given viable alternatives.

28 Desolation: Mexican Agriculture and Campesinos in the 21st Century

by Sergio Zermeño

Free trade has devastated the Mexican countryside, as cheap, highly subsidized U.S. grains have flooded the market, underselling domestic producers. The campesinos either migrate or remain, surviving on subsistence consumption and the unprofitable sale of their surpluses.

Here Comes Oil Privatization!

by El Fisgón

Oil has sustained the Mexican economy since 1938, when the state oil company, Pemex, was founded following a national expropriation from foreign companies. Now the Calderón government is bent on reprivatizing it in the name of efficiency—and profits on the commission of its sale.

37 Mexico’s “New Labor Culture”: An Interview With Union Leader Benedicto Martínez

by Fred Rosen

Benedicto Martínez, a leader of Mexico’s Authentic Workers Front (FAT), talks to NACLA about the bleak prospects faced by workers in an age of global labor markets and an anti-labor state.

On the cover: Migrant workers after a day of harvesting tomatoes on a farm in the northwest Mexican state of Sinaloa. Photograph by Heriberto Rodríguez / Latinphoto.org.

NACLA Report on the Americas (ISSN 104839) is published bimonthly by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). Views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of NACLA.

Director and Publisher Christy Thornton Editor Pablo Morales Senior Analyst Fred Rosen Outreach and Circulation Coordinator Joao Da Silva Web Editor Teo BallvĂŠ Editorial Committee Kate Doyle, Sujatha Fernandes, Jean Franco, Marcial Godoy-Anativia, Greg Grandin, Jack Hammond, Deborah Poole, George Priestly, Seemin Qayum, Hobart Spalding, Lisa Vives, Greg Wilpert Board of Directors Chair: Eric Hershberg Judith Friedlander, Marcial Godoy-Anativia, Fred Goff, Pierre LaRamĂŠe, Mike Locker, Deidre McFadyen, Stuart Rockefeller, Robert M. Siegel, Max Uhlenbeck, Steven Volk

38 Greene Street, 4th floor New York, NY 10013 Tel: (646) 613-1440 Fax: (646) 613-1443 E-mail: nacweb@nacla.org nacla.org

The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) is an independent nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to research the political economy of the Americas and U.S. policy toward the region.

Subscription Information Domestic: Individuals $36/year, $61/two years, $86/three years

Institutions $60/year, $100/two years, $142/three years

Foreign (including UK): Individuals Institutions $46/year, $85/two years, $70/year, $122/two years, $116/three years $175/three years Canadian Subscribers: Order from Social Justice Committee 1857 ouest de Maisonneuve Montreal Que. H3H 1J9 Tel: 514 933-6797 Individuals Can$46/year, Can$85/two years, Can$116/three years Institutions Can$70/year, Can$122/two years, Can$175/three years Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mail offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to NACLA Report on the Americas, P.O. Box 77, Hopewell, PA 16650-0077

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

taking note

The Winner in Argentina? Transgenic Soy By Christy Thornton

s i prepared for a recent trip to argentina, tries in the region. Soy prices are so high that many small friends and colleagues regaled me with tales of the farmers have simply sold or leased their land to large agribest beef I would ever eat, and shook their heads businesses and financial speculators, increasing the prevawith pity when I responded that, as a vegetarian, the only lence of the “growing pools” that dominate Argentina. Insteaks I’d be eating would be made of tofu. But as deed, the financial and agribusiness firms are I set out to find Buenos Aires’s vegetarian under- Financialization increasingly one and the same: Some of the largest belly, Argentina was coming to a near standstill in and large-scale agricultural interests in Argentina, like Los Grobo a confrontation that centered on the soybean. and El Tejar, own no land at all—they lease all of For months, Argentina’s central government monoculture it from small- and medium-size farmers. and agricultural sector battled over an increase have created a This has meant that as the price of land suitin export taxes announced by President Cristina able for soy production has risen dramatically Kirchner in March, which would have, among new “Argentine in the last few years, so has the cost of living in other things, changed the export tax rate on soy model.” the countryside. And genetically modified soy from a fixed rate to a sliding rate pegged to comis among the least labor-intensive crops, leading modity prices—an increase from about 33% to 44%. The pro- some to call soy farming “agriculture without farmers.” posal was meant to encourage farmers to diversify their crops One obvious result has been large-scale displacement of and move away from monoculture production of soy, and the campesinos at the new “soy frontier” in provinces like increased tax revenues were to be redistributed, Kirchner said, Chaco, Salta, and Santiago del Estero. in poverty alleviation programs and food subsidies. But another, perhaps even more serious, consequence is In response, rural organizations comprising both large looming. As both the food and financial crises show no signs and small farmers established roadblocks to prevent the of abating, the paradox of this meat-loving country’s devotransportation of goods to the cities, creating food short- tion to soy production becomes clear: In a country that is the ages throughout the country. The central government then third-largest producer of soybeans in the world, no one eats introduced compensations for small farmers, including tax the stuff. Indeed, the transgenic variety of soy that takes up rebates, but the rural associations refused to sell goods for more than half of Argentina’s agricultural land isn’t suitable export until the proposal was sent to Argentina’s Congress in for human consumption; most of it is bound for livestock June. In a stunning defeat for the Kirchner administration, feedlots in Europe and Asia. As the political essayist Raúl Vice President Julio Cobos cast the deciding vote in the Sen- Zibechi recently commented, “The region is being placed in ate against the measure in July, leading the government to its position in an international division of labor, as provider drop the proposal altogether. of agricultural commodities as feed for factory fed animals in So why, in country famous for its beef, was there such a the northern hemisphere.” With the degradation of soil and heated struggle over the soybean? The story begins at the groundwater, the loss of forested land, and the displacement height of the neoliberal 1990s, when then president Car- of campesinos together with increasing inflation and financial los Menem authorized, for the first time, the production of instability, this new Argentine model may prove disastrous. transgenic soy in Argentina. Today, soy is Argentina’s top During the crisis, many on the left argued that the inexport and is the most widely planted crop in the coun- crease in export taxes would have done little to reverse this try—taking up more than half of Argentina’s agricultural situation, and that the revenues generated would have only land, according to most estimates. Cattle ranching, that most transferred wealth from one sector of capital to another. But Argentine of enterprises, has lost more than 12 million acres while Argentines now celebrate the end of the battle between to soybeans in the last five years alone. Enormous monocul- the campo and the government, it is the soy industry that has ture soy plantations—between 95% and 99% planted with emerged as the clear winner in the fight. It is now uncertain genetically modified variations bought from Monsanto and what the Kirchner administration, reeling from this defeat, other multinationals—now dominate the countryside. will now be able to do to stop the march of transgenic soy What many now consider an “Argentine model” of soy across the country. production has emerged, combining financialization and large-scale monoculture, and it is spreading to other coun- Christy Thornton is NACLA’s director and publisher. 3

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

open forum

Who Killed Víctor Jara? By Paul Cantor

Paul Cantor teaches economics at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. He worked in Chile as a journalist from 1971 to March 1973, returning shortly after the September 11 coup as a witness to its aftermath.

n may 15, chilean judge juan eduardo Fuentes found former colonel Mario Manríquez guilty of the murder 35 years ago of Víctor Jara, the legendary Chilean folksinger, songwriter, actor, director, poet, political activist, and teacher. Following the other 9/11—the bloody 1973 coup d’état, led by Augusto Pinochet and supported by the United States, against the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende—Manríquez was put in charge of the makeshift prison at the Estadio Chile, where Jara and thousands of others were held, many of them tortured and murdered. Manríquez is awaiting sentencing while the judge is attempting to determine who else was directly responsible for torturing and killing Jara. Here is what we know about the circumstances surrounding the death, the discovery of the body, and the struggle to identify the murderers: Jara was detained on September 12, 1973, at the State Technical University (UTE), where he worked. Along with hundreds of students and colleagues, he was forced to jog with his hands behind his neck to the stadium, six blocks away. Witnesses report he was beaten at the time of his arrest and en route to the stadium, where an army officer recognized him. “Bring that son of a bitch over here to me!” he ordered a soldier, according to Boris Navia, a law professor at the UTE who was arrested with Jara. The officer’s helmet was pulled down to his eyes. Over one shoulder hung a machine gun. On his chest was a hand grenade. On his belt, a pistol. His face was painted. He wore dark glasses. And he stood with his black boots spread wide. “Don’t treat him like a young lady, damn it!” The soldier, following orders, struck Jara in the back with the butt of his rifle, sending him sprawling face forward to the ground. “Fuck your mother!” the officer started to rant as he began kicking the well-known and popular songwriter who now lay at his feet. “You’re Víctor Jara, asshole! You’re the Marxist singer. Your songs are pure shit! I’m going to

teach you how to sing Chilean songs that aren’t Communist, you son of a bitch!” Jara’s hair and face were soon covered with blood and one of his eyes swollen shut. Then Colonel Manríquez showed up. With him, under guard, was Danilo Bartulin, one of Allende’s doctors. Jara was made to join Bartulin, and the two of them were led to an underground walkway. There, according to Bartulin, they were beaten “from seven in the evening until three in the morning.” Then their tormentors were called away to help deal with the arrival of a new group of prisoners. It was at that point that they managed to join their companions in the stadium’s tiers of seats. There they remained until Saturday, September 15. That day, around noon, word reached Jara that a number of prisoners were to be released. He responded by scrounging two sheets of paper and a pen from Navia and starting to write. After a time two soldiers appeared and signaled for him to follow them. Jara passed the two pieces of paper back to Navia as he rose to go. On them was a poem. The poem, untitled but popularly known as “El Estadio,” later made its way to the outside world and became famous. The soldiers took Jara to a broadcast booth, where he was again badly beaten. Later, recalls Carlos Orellana, another of Jara’s colleagues arrested at the UTE, Jara had managed to tell him that one of the prisoners was acting as a spy for the soldiers. In other words, Orellana has said, even after Jara had been tortured and had good reason to believe that he wouldn’t make it out of the stadium alive, his concern was for the welfare of others. After his brief encounter with Jara, Orellana and other prisoners were transferred to the Estadio Nacional, another sports stadium in Santiago that had been converted into a concentration camp. On their way out of the Estadio Chile they saw Jara’s body. It was riddled with bullet holes and piled together with other bodies in the foyer of the stadium.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

open forum

oan jara, víctor’s widow, first

brought charges against those who tortured and murdered her husband in 1978. However, for three reasons—a decree issued by the military that year provided amnesty to its members for actions carried out in the aftermath of the coup, fear of how the military would react to prosecutions, and the resistance of many Chileans to opening old wounds—nothing came of her action or others like it. But in August 1999, when Nelson Caucoto, the lawyer for the Víctor Jara Foundation, which Joan founded (www. fundacionvictorjara.cl), once again filed a lawsuit against her husband’s killers, the climate had changed dramatically. This effort led to Manríquez being charged in 2004 with Jara’s murder, and his conviction in May. But after that conviction—in which Manríquez is identified as having had “command responsibility,” but not as having pulled the trigger or directly beaten Jara—the judge declared the case closed, provoking a public outcry. In May, the Jara Foundation delivered a petition signed by more than 12,000 to the Chilean Supreme Court, demanding that the case be reopened. That, together with the fact that many more former stadium prisoners have come forward offering to testify, led to the judge agreeing on June 3 to continue the investigation into Jara’s torture and murder. Already, a key suspect has been identified: Edwin Dimter, who some believe was an especially brutal guard whom prisoners referred to as “the Prince.” How important is it to bring these people to justice, 35 years after Jara was murdered? Imagine walking down the street and seeing someone who tortured and killed a loved one sipping tea in a café while knowing that pickpockets and prostitutes are serving time in jail. Chile will only

become a healthy democracy again when everyone in the country is confident that wearing or having once worn a military uniform won’t give them legal impunity. That is one argument. Others think it is more important to move up the chain of command than down. “Who killed Víctor Jara?” The superficial answer, according to this point of view, is that most likely it was a soldier from a poor or working-class background. The more substantive answer is, the people at the top of the chain of command, a chain that in this case leads all the way from Chile to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Jara’s murder is emblematic of the lengths the United States is willing to go to overthrow even peaceful, democratic governments it considers threats to its interests. The military junta in Chile was not out just to kill a man. Rather, acting as an agent of the Nixon White House and the most reactionary force within Chile, it was out to kill the idea that democratic socialism was a possibility. But as the songwriter Holly Near points out in her song titled “It Could Have Been Me,” it failed:

A farmer of food and a righter of wrong. It could have been me, but instead it was you And it may be me, dear sisters and brothers Before we are through But if you can sing for freedom Freedom, freedom, freedom If you can sing for freedom, I can too. That is exactly the sentiment echoed at political rallies and other events when someone yells, “Víctor Jara!” and others respond, “Presente!” Yes, Víctor, you are here in our hearts as we search for your killers and struggle for human rights everywhere in the world.

The junta broke the fingers on Víctor Jara’s hands They said to the gentle poet, “Play your guitar now if you can.” Víctor started singing but they brought his body down You can kill that man but not his song When it’s sung the whole world round. It could have been me, but instead it was you So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two. I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs 5

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

essay

A New Doctrine of Insecurity? U.S. Military Deployment in South America By Juan Gabriel Tokatlian

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is professor of international relations at the Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires. This article was originally published as “El militarismo estadounidense en América del Sur: La configuración de un problema,” in the June issue of Le Monde diplomatique’s Southern Cone edition (www.eldiplo.org). Reproduced with permission. Translation by NACLA.

announced

redeployment

this

summer of the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet, a World War II–era flotilla, to patrol the Caribbean and Latin American coastline represents a major new projection of North American military power in the region. This development, on the cusp of a new U.S. administration, prompts us to ask: Will Washington continue its imperial temptation in Latin America? Will Latin America be a focus of renewed attention after the November presidential election? Will there be changes in U.S. international military deployment in the region? Over the decades, Washington has noticeably varied its international strategy, its broader global doctrine, and the diplomatic instruments that sustain it (see chart, opposite page). During the Cold War, U.S. grand strategy had different components: The strategy of containment predominated; underpinned by a network of strong and decisive alliances, it attempted to limit the expansion of the Soviet Union and, to the extent possible, roll back the consolidation of its sphere of influence. Containment was backed up by the doctrine of deterrence; Washington made it known that the effects of retaliation would be devastating if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack. In the Americas, U.S. grand strategy was complemented by a subordinate logic: Washington did not give the armed forces of the region a fundamental role in combating the Soviet Union. Instead, it put forth the so-called National Security Doctrine to combat the “internal enemy”: local Communism. After September 11, 2001, and especially after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States transformed its foreign and defense policy, pursuing a new strategy oriented toward maintaining U.S. primacy. Washington would not tolerate any international competitor, be it a current

friend (the European Union) or incipient opponent (China). According to the new doctrine of preventive war, Washington reserved for itself the right to use its military might against any country, whether or not that country intended to attack immediately and whether or not the United States could verify that the attack was indeed planned: Imminence and evidence did not seem to matter. The solid alliances of the past were reformulated and replaced by ad hoc coalitions (e.g., the Coalition of the Willing); Washington alone would determine the mission, and only later would the appropriate coalition be formed to carry it out. Even though the subordinate hemispheric logic that accompanies this redefinition of grand strategy—what we could call a “doctine of national insecurity”—is still not wholly consented to or implemented, there are evident signs that Washington may nonetheless establish such a logic in the region. Worryingly, many facts point in this direction.

n latin america, though with different levels of acceptance in each country, Washington has successfully implanted the omnipresent idea of “new threats” and the proliferation of all kinds of dangers, including global terrorism, transnational organized crime, and international drug trafficking, all of which operate in “empty spaces” where the state has vanished or is markedly disappearing. The Pentagon has insisted, and continues to insist, that these threats demand that the division between internal security and external defense be done away with, and thus the work of police, security forces, and the armed forces must overlap. They must exchange information, erasing the borders between police and military activities. This year’s “Plan Mexico” (known officially as the Merida Initiative), which reproduces the same punitive

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

essay

U.S. Grand Strategy During the Cold War and After 9/11 Cold War Strategy Doctrine Instruments Hemispheric Logic

Containment Deterrence Alliances (NATO, Rio Pact, ANZUS, among others) National Security Doctrine

drug-war logic of Plan Colombia, and the new participation of the Brazilian military in combating the drug trade in the favelas suggest that the strict separation of defense and security is progressively diminishing. Latin America has in turn accepted, though not unanimously, the thesis of the new coalitions of the willing. The Pentagon garnered direct military support from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, as well as explicit initial political support from Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, in the coalition that attacked Iraq in 2003. It also successfully recruited 12 countries in the region to commit to the military-police mission in Haiti beginning in 2004. There is no doubt a big difference between the war waged by Washington and its allies in Iraq and the deployment of forces in Haiti, endorsed by the United Nations. However, quite apart from the humanitarian sentiment behind Latin American involvement in the Haitian contingent, many countries in the region assign a growing value to their armed forces in processes of pacification, stabilization, and reconstruction beyond their borders. The kinds of intra-military linkages that are being made in the hemisphere, the internal training that foreign military missions require, and the impact in the medium term on civic-military relations and domestic democratic evolution are questions worth some careful examination. In this context, the Colombian

military’s March 1 attack on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadoran territory is of great significance. First, it presents the risk of the “war on terror” being Latin Americanized—even though the only place where this modality of terrorism has not yet manifested itself is Latin America. Second, the Colombian operation justifies the violation of international law to combat alleged terrorists, and the deployment of preventive force could be established as a standard practice. This, in turn, may give rise to the distortion of legitimate defense and to the further militarization of responses to the region’s long list of socio-political problems. For this reason, the Organization of American States’ March 17 resolution on the Colombian operation is of great importance. It reaffirms, among other things, the validity of the principle of territorial sovereignty; rejects the Colombian incursion into Ecuadoran territory without Quito’s “knowledge or consent”; registers the apologies offered by Colombia and its decision not to repeat such an action “under any circumstance”; reiterates the region’s commitment to confronting the threats from “irregular groups and criminal organizations”; and provides for mediation to reestablish “good relations between the two countries.” The ratification of principles of coexistence and respect among nations, like Colombia’s willingness to abide by the regional consensus, is an encouraging

Post 9/11 Primacy Preventive war Flexible or ad hoc coalitions (Coalition of the Willing) National Insecurity Doctrine sign that an inappropriate mode of action can be prevented from becoming a valid, standard, and permanent strategy. The U.S. interpretation of the Colombian attack as legitimate “selfdefense,” on the other hand, seems to justify any and all methods in the fight against U.S.-defined terrorists. Yet the OAS resolution leaves the doctrine of confronting “new threats” at an impasse. Indeed, there are two interpretations of the resolution. In the optimistic version, Latin America has successfully confronted the United States and rejected interventionism; in the pessimistic version, Washington was nonetheless able to break inter-American unanimity. An alternative view, which attempts to discern the nuances of the resolution, leads one to conclude that the “war on terror” in the region is beginning to acquire some uncertain contours that are as dangerous as any to be found within the international system. The U.S. military’s view of Latin America therefore merits a detailed evaluation.

e can divide u.s. engage-

ment with the region into three areas: First, there are trade relations that operate within commercial treaties, both multilateral and bilateral (NAFTA, CAFTA-DR, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Panama). Second, there is a military dimension that emanates, basically, from the Pentagon, is articulated by the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), 7

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

essay

and occupies an ever more central place in Washington’s regional strategy. Third, there are political exchanges that have been weakened and are lacking a positive agenda, now concentrating only on “problem cases” like Venezuela and Colombia. Southcom’s “Command Strategy 2016: Partnership for the Americas” (available at www.southcom.mil), released in 2007, reveals the most ambitious strategic plan by a U.S. agency regarding the region that has been conceived in years. Conspicuous in their absence from the report are policy instruments like the InterAmerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance and the Inter-American Defense Board, as well as multilateral institutions like the OAS and the UN. The hemispheric relations maintained by other parts of the U.S. government bureaucracy, like the Departments of State, Justice, and the Treasury, have also disappeared in the document: They seem irrelevant or unnecessary. Southcom thus announces its role in protecting the region for the next 10 years as if it were a continental proconsul. The text begins by reviewing the principal challenges facing the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. It turns that none of the major threats to the United States (totalitarian states armed with weapons of mass destruction or forms of transnational terrorism with a global reach) appear in the region. The document only indicates that ungoverned spaces in the region could “potentially” be used to harm vital U.S. interests; nowhere in the text is the existence in the region of radical Islamic groups bent on attacking U.S. targets confirmed. Meanwhile, poverty, inequality, corruption, and criminality are all identified as significant menaces. But the mission of the Southern Command is excessive. In the docu8

ment, Southcom establishes itself political development processes.” as the leading organization among The Southern Command’s new existing agencies to guarantee “se- strategy comes in the context of a curity, stability, and prosperity in growing role for the Defense Departthe Americas.” To the usual military ment in Latin America. Between 1997 activities are added the establish- and 2007, total U.S. military and poment and support of regional and lice assistance to the region was about global coalitions—that $7.3 billion. In 2005–07, is, the above-mentioned Between four countries in the recoalitions of the willing. gion were among the top 2001 and These coalitions are meant 15 recipients of U.S. milito be available for peace 2005, 85,820 tary assistance: Colombia, operations both in the re- Latin American fifth; Bolivia, eighth; Peru, gion and elsewhere. They 10th; and Mexico, 12th. In are also meant to help in soldiers were the last five years, annual the identification of “third trained in the arms sales to the region party nation alternatives to have been an average $1.1 United States, accept migrants,” and to billion. Between 2001 and establish programs to deal compared 2005, 85,820 Latin Ameriwith the problem of large- with the can soldiers were trained scale migration. in the United States. (ComWith the goal of increas- 61,000 soldiers pare this with the 61,000 ing stability, Southcom in- and police soldiers and police trained tends to actively link with by the infamous School of various state agencies, trained by the Americas from 1946 to NGOs, and public and the infamous 2000.) private institutions; proSouthcom’s near decadeSchool of the pose negotiating “security long strategy (ending in agreements throughout Americas from 2016) will continue to the hemisphere”; designate 1946 to 2000. demand more material renew countries as new “masources and greater autonjor non-NATO allies” (only Argentina omy for the U.S. military. This is an has this status now); and stimulate extensive and comprehensive underjoint efforts among government and taking, whose execution, it appears, is non-state actors in humanitarian independent of the political-military tasks. In order to “enable prosper- future of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well ity,” the document emphasizes the as the next U.S. presidential election. importance of developing programs The underlying assumption is that no of training in the area of “internal government led by a dovish Democrat security” in Latin American nations; or a hawkish Republican will change of increasing the number of so-called the course of military diplomacy tocooperative security locations (in re- ward the region in the next decade. ality, small military bases like the ones at Manta in Ecuador, Reina Beatrix in t is against this backdrop of Aruba, Hato Rey in Curaçao, and CoWashington’s projection of power malpa in El Salvador); supporting the into Latin America that the U.S. proposal for a joint Central American electoral process is taking place. In battalion; and improving the defini- this sense, there will probably be more tion of the Defense Department’s role continuity than change. Since Septemin the region’s “socio-economic and ber 11, civil society has been so sensi-

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

essay

Antonio Herrera P. / Latinphoto.org

A Salvadoran battalion that had been deployed to Iraq as part of the U.S.-sponsored Coalition of the Willing. Such ad hoc coalitions are a key of feature of the new U.S. military strategy.

tized that any president will have to be “tough” on terror. Politicians have been restricted by that trauma, the military has become addicted to the new “war on terror,” and both are hypnotized by the notion of global U.S. primacy. In sum, the country is locked inside the logic of 9/11—both captive and captivated. With fear in the air, an economic recession, and the threat of a larger financial crisis, it is difficult to suppose there will be a substantive and definite change of course for the United States in terms of foreign relations. No candidate or political force appears disposed to propose a new role for the military in U.S. foreign strategy. The hypermilitarization of foreign policy is more and more telling. All the quantitative and qualitative indicators—budget, doctrine, deployment, reach, corporate weight, institutional pressures, civicmilitary balance—point in this direction. Democrats and Republicans, neoconservatives and liberals, all have an excessive faith in the use of force in world politics and appear not to respect international law and

global regimes. The dilemma is not whether the United States is on its way to becoming a new or stronger empire; it is whether the “Prussian” route to primacy has really been embraced by its leadership. The economic deterioration and its spread beyond the United States will no doubt occupy the next president’s agenda. The executive will have to put the country’s house in order before trying to deal with the “houses” of others. The principal source of the United States’s eventual imperial decline is to be found in its domestic scene, and is much more socioeconomic than political-military. That is why there is a tactical consensus on certain strategic issues: curb China, co-opt India, deter Russia, control Europe, quarantine Pakistan, contain Iran, sustain Saudi Arabia, defend Israel, isolate Venezuela, assist Colombia, among others. On these questions we see, in general terms, a relative convergence between the two main candidates: They speak little about those matters, and when they make their differences known,

those differences are more about style and form rather than substance or content. Finally, significant changes in defense and foreign policy do not depend on individuals. Predicting a major transformation based on a candidate’s profile is imprudent, even more so when Washington shows no signs of abandoning its bid to secure and maintain military, economic, and political predominance. Democrats and Republicans show at most carefully differentiated modes of a calibrated primacy. Obama and McCain do have distinct personalities and respond to different party imperatives. This, however, does not imply that there will be a turning point in U.S. global grand strategy. A number of forces, factors, and phenomena, both internal and external, seem to impose fundamental continuity with minor tactical changes. Faced with this panorama, Latin America shows its fragmentation. In the most noted case in South America, Andean conflicts have flared up, at9

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

essay

tracting more and more attention from Washington. Paradoxically, this is occurring at a rare conjuncture: There have been few other times that presented such concurrent conditions to reduce Latin America’s subordination to the United States and widen its autonomy in world affairs. The opportunity is ripe; whether it is taken advantage of or not depends essentially on the countries of South America. The inattention paid by the United States to the region after 9/11 and its loss of credibility after the Iraq invasion, combined with its bad economic management in the last few years, offer the region rare leeway. The so-called left turn in South America is the natural consequence of a democratizing movement that, with the crisis of dictatorships during the 1980s, counted on active support from the United States. The current reassessment of the state in South America is a consequence of the costs produced by policies established 10

under the so-called Washington Consensus through the 1990s. Its exhaustion is visible throughout the region. This fact, together with the executive’s inability to put its own country’s economy in order has meant that neither the White House nor Wall Street have been able to seriously question or deter the testing of heterodox economic measures in the hemisphere. Washington’s obsession with the Middle East and Central Asia and its loss of international and hemispheric prestige has allowed for a proliferation of initiatives conceived without U.S. participation. In this context, three issues that revolve around Brazil will be the key to whether South America wastes this opportunity, attempts a simple dependent re-accommodation, or devises a more emancipatory response. First, the important discovery of oil along the Brazilian coast will change the regional energy equation and oblige Brazil to design a more consistent grand strategy

of its own if it wants to become an important emerging power. Second, the February agreements between Brazil and Argentina on nuclear power and defense are of great importance. Uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes, designing a nuclear power reactor, and commitments for the joint production of arms constitute the core of the agreement. Finally, Brazil’s call for the founding of a South American Defense Board shows, on the one hand, the obsolescence of Washington’s InterAmerican Defense Board and, on the other hand, the South American desire to prevent and reduce conflicts in the region by its own design. Taken together, these regional trends indicate a growing realism toward the United States: It is neither an inexorable enemy nor an indispensable ally. But its geopolitical projection and military deployment in South America constitute a growing problem.

Patricio Realpe / Latinphoto.org

OAS secretary José Miguel Insulza inspects the site of a Colombian military attack on FARC guerrillas in Ecuadoran territory. A subsequent OAS resolution reaffirmed the importance of territorial sovereignty.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Introduction NAFTA’s Road to Ruin: The Decline of the Mexican Social Compact, Part II

his is the second of two reports on the decline

of Mexico’s “social compact”—that is, the understanding among citizens and the state that they are bound by ties of mutual support and by networks of social solidarity. Part I examined the threat to the social compact posed by the persistence of impunity— the practice of Mexican politicians, elites, and other social actors to place themselves above or outside the law. Part II focuses on neoliberalism, embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as a socio-political program that has cut back on social protections, removed barriers to the flows of transnational capital, and, most importantly, denied the possibility of a social compact in a world of individuals, all “freely” pursuing their own self-interest. Neoliberalism reflects a utopian belief in a single world economy in which the most important actors are sovereign private investors, unregulated by any sovereign states. Its advocates in Mexico hope that it will draw more foreign investment to the country by privatizing as much of the energy sector as possible (see cartoonist El Fisgón’s contribution to this Report), breaking up the private near-monopoly of the telecommunications sector, and making labor markets more “flexible,” i.e., breaking what’s left of independent union power and doing away with as many labor protections as possible. For a majority of Mexicans, many who have left the country in order to support their families and communities back home, the policy of free trade has been nothing short of ruinous. Increasingly, Mexican entrepreneurs and workers alike find themselves enmeshed in a web of global relationships that seem to be beyond their control. In market relationships, as we know, some economic actors are “more equal” than others, and in the NAFTA relationship, as Sergio Zermeño reminds us, “the very low subsidized prices of U.S. agricultural output were meant only to influence the fall in prices for staple goods produced [in Mexico] by small- and medium-size farmers, and essentially drive

those farmers out of business.” And this is what has happened. And what’s the upshot of all this? Silvia Gómez Tagle tells us that the globalization of de facto power has led to a decline of “political citizenship” and the rise of a political culture “characterized by widespread apathy and disappointment.” This, she argues, is because citizens “know that their governments are generally in a less favorable position to make decisions regarding their resources.” “People live defensively,” comments labor leader Benedicto Martínez in an interview with NACLA, “trying to figure out how to earn enough to live on, how to complement their wages.” Echoing Gómez Tagle’s call for a more active civil society, he argues that the situation can only be challenged from the grass roots, and that the grass roots must be transnational. “I think that’s the only alternative we really have,” he tells us. “We have a situation now where these big companies blackmail workers in various countries. They say to workers in the United States, for example, if you don’t accept the conditions we are offering you, we will simply move to another country. That’s what we have here as well.” Ominously, in order to effectively defend the regime of investors’ rights, the Mexican state has become increasingly militarized, and the military itself has been strengthened. Laura Carlsen reports on the Security and Prosperity Partnership, negotiated by the presidents of the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 2005. The official description of the SPP states that it is “based on the principle that our prosperity is dependent on our security.” Its unofficial description might be “NAFTA on steroids.” Mexicans and other Latin Americans, Carlsen says, have learned that adopting the U.S.-promoted neoliberal economic model—with its economic displacement and social cutbacks—comes with a necessary degree of force. And so we get the whole package: Military policy enforces as free trade policies exclude and divide. 11

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

Elections in Mexico: What’s the Use?

A 2006 encampment of “the legitimate government” of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Denunciations of electoral fraud and demands for a total recount of the presidential vote became widespread following the disputed 2006 election.

M Silvia Gómez Tagle is professor-researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies of the Colegio de México in Mexico City. She is the editor of Revista Nueva Antropología.

exico’s much vaunted “transition to democracy” is conventionally thought to have taken place in the period bounded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’s successful but stolen presidential bid in 1988 and Vicente Fox’s election to the presidency in 2000. Cárdenas had broken away from the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to run an independent, pro-democracy campaign that sparked the founding of a leftof-center opposition party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the following year. Fox, in contrast, capitalized on a nonpartisan “useful vote for democracy” to bring the conservative National Action Party (PAN) to power for the first time, reversing more than seven decades of the PRI’s single-party rule. While there is a great deal of truth in the dating of this “transition,” there is a great deal of oversimplification as well. “Democracy” is a political system whose most fundamental char-

acteristic is the existence of mechanisms that guarantee its constant renovation and renewal— not only of the individuals who happen to be in power, but also of the rules of the democracy itself.1 A democratic polity thus allows for the broadening of representation and the resources to guarantee citizens’ rights, always as a process and not as a definitive achievement.2 Both of these processes—constant renovation and a broadening of citizens’ rights—remain weak and problematic in Mexico. The presidency and the country’s long-ruling “official” party, the PRI, were the pillars of an authoritarian political power consolidated during the second half of the past century. The power of the president came from his control of the official party and of the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. The PRI, for its part, was able to win elections, both at the federal and local levels, because of the president’s ability to coordinate all three

Frank Nowikowski

By Silvia Gómez Tagle

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

branches of the federal government—executive, legislative, and judicial. This gave him “meta-constitutional” powers, which allowed him great influence in designating local functionaries, from municipal presidents to state governors. But perhaps the greatest power of the president came from his ability to name his own successor, guaranteeing the continuity of the regime and at the same time its “ordered renewal.”3 This authoritarian, though inclusive, arrangement thrived for more than 70 years in the form of a stable political system that was the envy of many Latin American countries. Nevertheless, authoritarianism disguised as political democracy permitted an extension of corruption, not only because high-ranking PRI politicians enjoyed remarkable levels of personal impunity, but also because the party found it literally necessary to “corrupt” the democratic institutions embedded in Mexico’s constitution to make sure that these could not function as spaces for the expression and defense of the citizenry. Thus, the struggle for Mexican democratization has never involved the restoration of democratic institutions, which truthfully never functioned as such, but has instead involved attempts to transform the many democratic institutions that have been malfunctioning since they were founded in the long wake of the Mexican Revolution. It has been a struggle to democratize the legacy of the Revolution. It gives meaning to the name of the center-left party that arose in 1989, following Cárdenas’s campaign for the presidency: Party of the Democratic Revolution. Now that there is a genuine, though uneven, process of democratization under way in Mexico, as in Latin America as a whole, we can see that eradicating corruption, or at least reducing it significantly, has been an indispensable objective in this process.4 But democracy is not simply a set of political institutions. More than 20 years ago, the political philosopher Norberto Bobbio warned of the risks incurred by a democracy in the absence of an active, critical, and well-organized citizenry that continually pressures its country’s rulers and the leaders of its political parties. He argued that the citizenry loses interest in political debate when “politics is sequestered by just a few citizens, the richest and the powerful, in order to satisfy their interests and perpetuate their mandate.”5 In such cases, even when they exist in a formal sense, democratic institutions are meaningless. This is what we are up against today. The political culture of the 21st century, in Mexico and the world over, has been characterized by widespread apathy and

cynicism, especially among the younger generation. And the apathy and cynicism are even greater in countries where social differences and povNow that there erty have increased over the past is a genuine, decade, because the citizens of though uneven, those countries believe that their governments are generally not in process of a position to make decisions redemocratization garding their resources. All Latin American countries, for examunder way in ple, regardless of their degree of democratic consolidation, have Mexico, we had to endure the negative effects can see that produced by economic policies eradicating dictated from abroad by international financial institutions. These corruption has economic measures, known as been an the Washington Consensus, have led to the deterioration of wagindispensable es; growing unemployment; the objective. abandonment of agriculture; a decrease in welfare policies in the areas of health, education, and housing; and, in general, unequal income distribution.

ll this is taking place in the context of “globalization,” a process that has deepened the complexity of capitalist development and modified the fundamental concepts upon which the construction of traditional nation-states was grounded. Power, sovereignty, territory, and self-determination are all being redefined in this era of global capitalism. With the development of instantaneous communications—impossible to control within the “national space” under state administration, which has occurred thanks to satellite technology—globalization reflects the “expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up, and deepening impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction.”6 This has led to a decomposition of social and political identities and a real modification of the meaning of national borders. The breakdown of the state as a territory within which power is wielded is directly responsible for the discrediting of “politics” at the national level, because the population realizes that, in the final analysis, the institutional actors (political parties and rulers) are not making the real decisions. All this has given rise to new political actors, new political environments, and new opportunities. Since the dimensions of countries’ political arenas came to be modified, the concept of what is “national” 13

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

has taken on new meanings; political actors have lost certain resources and gained others. Traditional actors on the left, like unions, progressive parties, and the state itself, have lost resources and strength, while others, like the media and financial capital, have become more powerful. Moreover, within nation-states, globalization has spurred a process of decentralization, regionalization, and a reassessment of subnational political units. That is why the left needs a different strategy to successfully insert itself—and the demands of marginalized and nonprivileged sectors—into this new national space. Political democracy, we should remember, was a gradual conquest of the masses against authoritarian regimes. The electoral rules we know today burst into political life in the 19th and 20th centuries for the purpose of ensuring the realization of popular rights. Today, however, at the outset of the 21st century, we are becoming aware of the limitations of political democracy due to the diminishing confidence in political parties, the use of marketing as a method for winning voters’ sympathies, and because politicians—who were elected by the people—cannot make many of the decisions affecting voters’ needs and desires. Instead, many such decisions are undertaken in international financial centers. 14

Further, widely touted economic reforms have not lived up to the expectations they generated. In the 1990s, a promise for development was devised in the form of a neoliberal economic model (the above-mentioned Washington Consensus), from which the majority of the population is nowadays excluded. That model recommended budgetary discipline, financial and commercial liberalization, privatizations, and a deregulation framework that at best places the state in a position as a referee between different interest groups. Stronger links to the market have borne fruit at the macroeconomic level, but their effects have not reached many citizens. Neoliberal reforms did not lead to an appreciable reduction in poverty levels; in fact, they increased inequalities and sent large numbers of people into the informal economy due to a lack of formal-sector jobs. As a result of neoliberal policies, the state has been significantly weakened, having lost its ability to influence, control, regulate, or benefit from transnational processes, or to withstand hegemonic tendencies in economic or political plans being prepared in the centers of financial power. In Mexico today, the state has shown evidence of grave deficiencies vis-à-vis the interests of local and international private powers. The state’s weakness has in

Frida Hartz

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas campaigns for president in 1988. His successful but stolen bid represented an attempt to democratize the legacy of the Mexican Revolution.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

turn led to the emergence of new de facto powers and a proliferation of interest groups (especially related to business) acting as powerful lobbies that distort forms of genuine democratic representation. The mass media belonging to business groups with highly diversified economic interests act as “superpowers” limiting the sovereignty of public institutions. Further, the state has literally lost “pieces of its territory,” which have been occupied by groups conducting economic activities that are not only informal, but illegal. In Mexico— and in many other countries—drug-trafficking groups control significant amounts of resources as well as entire regions, where they wield a level of power similar to that of the state. The proliferation of drug trafficking creates a double-sided problem: On the one hand, the narcos attempt to infiltrate part of state apparatuses and control territories; on the other, their activity attracts the attention of Washington, generating new forms of external pressure. To achieve a true consolidation of democracy, the state must be able to change and perfect itself on the basis of citizens’ participation. It must do this in the context of a tension between the market economy and a democratic political system.7 We encounter great contrasts in the opinions and historical experiences of different Latin American countries regarding the likelihood that a democratic regime may establish an efficient market economy and, at the same time, create a more equitable and just economic system. Indeed, the experiences of many nations show that the relationship between democracy and the free market is hardly as linear and harmonious as some authors in the late 20th century came to believe. Nevertheless, democracy currently offers better possibilities for developing citizenship in the myriad dimensions with which it has been conceived than other known types of political systems.

s tudy conducted on democracy, development, and welfare in 140 countries revealed that the correlation between development and democracy is strong, though not definitive. Once a country achieves a level of development associated with per capita incomes of $2,500 to $3,000—as with Mexico, Portugal, Algeria, or Costa Rica—democracy makes a difference, not so much because a democratic setting guarantees a higher degree of development but because of the type of development achieved. In democratic countries, income distribution is more equitable and wages are higher. Dictatorships, in contrast, grow on the basis of greater capital investment and lower

wages: Since they can repress the workers, they can pay labor poorly and use it rather inefficiently. Even though there may not be major differences between a dictatorship and a democracy in their general level of development, democracy does make a difference in the specific characteristics assumed by the development process, like employment, social policies, and productive investment.8 In Mexico, elections functioned for many years to lend legitimacy to an authoritarian regime in which only one party had realistic chances The mass media of winning. Gradual democratization resulted from a series of small belonging victories achieved by citizens and to business opposition parties, each of which strengthened their chances of furgroups with ther gains. Changes in the instituhighly tions have been achieved by way of pressures exerted by social mobilidiversified zation from below. A mobilization economic in which the right as well as the interests act as left participated consisted largely “superpowers” of civil resistance, like the blocking of means of communication, or the limiting the taking of municipal governments. In 2006, the denunciations of elecsovereignty of toral fraud and the demonstrations public in favor of “the legitimate government” of Andrés Manuel López institutions. Obrador can be seen as forms of civil resistance in the face of electoral results that did not enjoy full legitimacy. This process first occurred at local levels, then at state levels, and finally at the federal level in 2000. In this period there was a great consensus among a broad spectrum of political forces (including the democratic right and left) in the sense of demanding electoral rules that permitted different parties access to power, without a specific concern for the content of the political project of each party. The demand for political democracy in itself permitted a joining together of political actors of the left and right around questions of democratic procedure without considering too closely the differences between the two broad forces on questions of political economy, religious or secular morality, or ethnic diversity. In 1997, 2000, and 2003 the elections enjoyed reasonable credibility, and many concluded that the political problem had been resolved. But in 2006 the fight for the presidency acquired a much clearer ideological coloration, and it is 15

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

2006 was not between the right-of-center PAN and the left-of center PRD, but between two coalitions whose positions went beyond the positions taken by the two principal parties. The left that voted for López Obrador and his Coalition for the Good of All wanted a much more fundamental social transformation than that represented by the PRD itself. Therefore, the alternation in power might have represented a completely different political direction of political economy and social policy, close to what has occurred in several other Latin American countries. With this in mind, we can affirm that while the Mexican transition to democracy began on the terrain of electoral institutions, its consolidation is taking place on the terrain of political culture and of the values of democracy (individual liberties, social rights, pluralism, equality before the law), because in 2006 the post-electoral protest was a way of demanding that the political rights of citizens be recognized. Probably, for those who view the transition as “a pact of elites,” the support given to the winner of the 2006 election, the PAN’s Felipe Calderón, by the leaders and governors of the PRI constituted a signal A deeper democracy requires that a governing party be accountable to an “active, critical, and well-organized citizenry.” of “consolidation” because Here, homeless victims of Mexico’s 1985 earthquake demand housing two years after the catastrophe. it guaranteed the continuation of the system.9 er and those that had fought for power by democratic The institutions and pacts among the elites are immeans. One of the fundamental axes of these changes portant, but a deeper democracy requires that a govhas been the recognition that “the legitimate form of erning party be accountable to an “active, critical and access to power is the electoral way,” and that all po- well-organized citizenry,” and that the political regime litical competitors would respect the institutions of the be willing and able to incorporate the changes that relaw. Nonetheless, the elections of 2006 put this belief spond to a society that isn’t static. In Mexico, the regime must prove itself capable of attending to the demands to the test. In the long and complex electoral process of 2006, of a population with tremendous inequalities. Elections the limits and possibilities of that process came into must be seen as instruments that cannot only change the relief as we saw an intense confrontation that went beyond image of a party, but that can also change the content competition between members of different political of its policies and the project of the nation. Only under parties, as had occurred in 2000. The confrontation of those conditions will it matter who wins. 16

Frida Hartz

probably for this reason that the business community, the Catholic hierarchy, and the president himself— institutions and leaders that in 2000 had remained relatively neutral and hadn’t intervened—played an active role in the electoral campaign. A universal complaint prior to the electoral reforms of 1996 had been against the intervention of the president in support of the candidates he favored, and the widespread use of public resources in the campaign. This returned in 2006. Democratization has brought about a precarious equilibrium between the political forces that had pow-

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future George W. Bush and Mexican president Felipe Calderón attend a news conference in Mérida, Mexico, in March 2007. The following October, the governments of both countries announced a joint security program approved by the U.S. Congress in June.

By Laura Carlsen

Gustavo Graf / Archivo Latino

n march 2005, the leaders of the three NAFTA countries, U.S. president George W. Bush, Mexican president Vicente Fox, and Canadian prime minister Paul Martin met in Waco, Texas, and launched a regional defense-based initiative called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The initiative, heralded as the next step in regional integration within the “NAFTA Plus” agenda, is described on its Web site (www.spp.gov) as “a White House–led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders—Canada and Mexico—to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation.” The official description of the SPP adds that it is “based on the principle that our prosperity is dependent on our security.”1 In April 2007, on the eve of the North American Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, described the SPP’s purpose with remarkable candor: The SPP, he declared, “understands North America as a shared economic space,” one that “we need to protect,” not only on the border but “more

broadly throughout North America” through improved “security cooperation.” He added: “To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA.”2 Mexicans and other Latin Americans have learned that adopting the U.S.-promoted neoliberal economic model—with its economic displacement and social cutbacks—comes with a necessary degree of force, but this was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model. Of course, Shannon didn’t list political opposition as one of the threats to be countered; he simply argued that the new “economic space” needed to be protected against “the threat of terrorism and against a threat of natural disasters and environmental and ecological disasters.” But the counter-terrorism/drug-war model elaborated in the SPP and embodied later in Plan Mexico (known officially as the Merida Initiative) encourages a crackdown on grassroots dissent to assure that no force, domestic or foreign,

Laura Carlsen is director of the Mexico City–based Americas Program of the Center for International Policy (www.americas policy.org).

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

effectively questions the future of the system. placed the state as the entity responsible for improving social By extending NAFTA into regional security, Washington welfare. Structural adjustment conditions by international decided—and the Mexican government conceded—that finance institutions and the rules of NAFTA and the World top-down economic integration necessitates shared secu- Trade Organization (WTO) reduced the state’s capacity to rity goals and actions. Given the huge imbalance of eco- broker clientelist relationships with organized sectors of socinomic and political power between Mexico and ety, since it had fewer resources for special subsidy the United States, that meant that Mexico had to Under the drug- and support programs. Social benefits emanating adopt the foreign policy objectives and the destafrom a paternal state began to disappear with the war model, bilizing, militaristic counter-terrorism agenda of growing dominance of the international market. the U.S. government. The Mexican government there has been The division of the economy into those who has received this new mandate with ambivalence, a countrywide participated in this market and those who did not seeking, in the words of one official from the added structural exclusion to the age-old probForeign Ministry, to move the focus away from increase of lem of poverty. Changes in laws preceding and following NAFTA, and the practical impact of the security and toward development, while at the attacks on trade and investment agreement, eroded the abilsame time welcoming the military and police aid women by ity of the poor to fight back by eliminating their offered in the Merida Initiative.3 This “securitization” of the trilateral relation- security forces. social and territorial bases. Campesinos migrated off their land as much of it was privatized and as ship under NAFTA has profound implications for Mexican civil society. By furthering the Calderón strat- producer prices fell with the inflow of cheap agricultural imegy of confrontation, it blocks avenues for development of ports. Workers were shunted into the atomized and insecure civil society institutions, criminalizes opposition, justifies informal economy as small- and medium-size national busirepression, and curtails civil liberties. At this critical junc- nesses closed their doors. In international relations, NAFTA ushered in political and ture, Mexico’s shaky transition to democracy could regress to presidential authoritarianism, with explicit U.S. govern- economic dependency to a degree not seen since Spanish colonialism, with more than 85% percent of exports and the ment support. majority of imports oriented to the U.S. market. This form of dependent, neoliberal integration between a superpower hen nafta went into effect on january 1, 1994, then-president Carlos Salinas de Gor- and a developing country was bound to cause some contari hailed it as Mexico’s entry into the first flicts and also inevitably dominate the political realm. The world. Although many trade barriers had already been Mexican government, especially under the administrations eliminated, the agreement—a treaty under Mexican of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), responded law—established Mexico’s full commitment to economic to this dependency by protecting “Americanized” interests, integration as defined by the Washington Consensus. sacrificing Mexico’s historic doctrine of neutrality, and dropNAFTA locked in the fundamentals of neoliberalism: an ping issues that caused friction with the Bush government, open market; an export-oriented economy; privileges for most notably support for Cuba and the regularization of mitransnational corporations; withdrawal of the state from gration to the United States—though it is worth noting that social programs to promote development; international not even Fox could stomach the invasion of Iraq. The NAFTA model exerted significant political pressure labor competition and downward pressure on wages and conditions; and the commoditization of natural resources. on Mexico in the international sphere to toe a U.S. line. But The agreement, hammered out behind closed doors and more devastating was what it did in the national sphere. The imposed on an uninformed society, led to the dismantling of agreement presented constituted a grave threat to traditional many of the basic institutional relationships that had united concepts of national sovereignty and reweaving an already Mexicans in the past. Even though a new generation of rul- frayed social fabric. NAFTA dictated a sink-or-swim strategy ers from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ushered of pushing Mexico into the world economy that led to the in the neoliberal model, notably presidents Carlos Salinas disintegration of many social-sector organizations. The few and Ernesto Zedillo, the neoliberal model attacked the PRI’s that refused to swim, or even get in the water, were forced to corporatist base. The corporatist social compact—adminis- the fringes of political and economic life. Rules against government intervention made it very diftered by the PRI through its system of political patronage via national organizations of farmers, workers and the popular ficult for the government to negotiate solutions to popular urban sector—began to crumble as the abstract market re- demands as it had in the past. Neoliberal policy makers’ 18

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Frida Hartz

Zapatista supporters block the advance of the Mexican army into Amador Hernández, an eco-reserve, in Chiapas in 1999. Confrontations between Zapatista communities and security forces are again on the rise, particularly in areas, like ecotourism sites, that are of interest to developers.

“market fixes all” ideology precluded attempts to help economic actors successfully negotiate the transition to a more competitive framework or to compensate the “losers” in the new economic wars. Migration was transformed from a temporary or cyclical escape valve to the motor of many local economies; families, along with entire communities and regional organizations fractured. When the Zapatista Army for National Liberation rose up on January 1, 1994, the rebels protested the social exclusion and marginalization of indigenous peoples and the poor, an exclusion that would later be exacerbated by the agreement. Social movements since then have drawn the lines of battle. There have been mobilizations against privatization, calls for national programs to recognize and support the contributions of “non-competitive” sectors, defense of indigenous rights and decision-making over ancestral territory, and demands for inclusive democracy. Although these movements for the most part lack a permanent and solid organizational structure and tend to coalesce on specific issues at specific moments, taken together they constitute a fundamental challenge to the NAFTA model and an alternative course for the nation. No wonder, then, that NAFTA promoters saw the need to shield the agreement from potential attacks. As evidenced in Assistant Secretary Shannon’s remark about “armoring NAFTA,” the three North American governments

have found it necessary to invent a mechanism to protect their “shared economic space”: the SPP. Although some SPP working groups have addressed natural disasters and health issues like bird flu, the “partnership” emphasis is on protecting property rather than people. Inexplicably, neither “security” nor “prosperity” is seen to include problems of malnutrition, infant mortality, or other human security issues critical to Mexico. Aside from real doubts about their effectiveness, these programs also raise serious questions of national sovereignty and national priorities. There are simply few reasons to believe that U.S. security is synonymous with a strategic security plan for Mexico. In general, no one would deny that fighting international terrorism and organized crime requires mechanisms of global cooperation, intelligence sharing, and coordinated actions. But these mechanisms must be developed in the context of each country’s national security agenda and defined by the confluence of particular priorities. The SPP was born post-9/11 and reflects the priorities of the Bush counter-terrorism agenda. For Mexico, these priorities are expensive and politically threatening. Mexico has historically been reticent to allow U.S. agents to operate in its territory due to a history in which the United States itself has posed the greatest threat to its national security. Given the lack of threats from international terrorism in the 19

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

of international relations. The country has a policy of neutrality in international affairs that preempts its governments from becoming embroiled in conflicts that do not directly affect the nation. When the Mexican Congress dutifully presented a revised counter-terrorism law in Congress this year, an opposition congressman argued against the imposition of the vaguely defined category of “international terrorism,” saying, “We don’t want to be immersed in a cycle where the enemies of other nations are automatically put forth as our own enemies.”4

An elite army unit parades in Mexico City. The U.S. government will allocate about $1.4 billion over a three-year period to the Mexican military, police, and judicial systems for training and equipment.

country, the war on terrorism is not a security priority. But economic dependency and the military superiority of the United States have forced NAFTA’s junior partners to adopt Washington’s priorities. Measures designed to “push out the U.S. security perimeter” under the SPP have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt repressive measures toward Central and South Americans presumably in transit to the United States, going against a history of relatively free transit and increasing tensions with its southern neighbors. Another problem is the way the false conflation of undocumented immigration with homeland security in the United States has led to measures that have little or nothing to do with regional national security and have led to the deaths of thousands of Mexican migrants. Nonetheless, the Mexican government has implicitly accepted this conflation by accepting “border security measures” aimed at migrants in both the SPP and Plan Mexico. In many ways, by taking on the U.S. security agenda Mexico puts itself at greater risk and violates historical precepts 20

Julio Etchart

he latest step forward in “integrating” regional security is Plan Mexico. This U.S. initiative, passed by Congress on June 26 and signed into law by Bush, allocates $400 million to Mexico for 2008–09. The original plan foresees about $1.4 billion over a three-year period to the Mexican military, police, and judicial systems for training and equipment. A close review of the detailed proposal presented by the administration reveals that the basis for the new “Regional Security Cooperation Initiative” comprises three Bush policies that have utterly failed to meet their objectives in other settings.5 These are (1) militarized border security that indiscriminately targets immigrants, drug traffickers, and terrorists; (2) unilateral, pre-emptive counter-terrorism measures; and (3) waging the “drug war.” In Mexico, the first two objectives, which are widely viewed as counter to Mexican interests, have been downplayed and the initiative is billed exclusively as a counter-narcotics plan. The irony is the United States’ long history of failure in fighting its own drug war. It continues to be the largest market for illicit drugs in the world, and its burgeoning demand supports Mexico’s ever more powerful drug cartels. While touted as a giant step forward in bilateral cooperation, the final bill contains no U.S. obligations or benchmarks to prevent illegal drug use, increase rehabilitation of addicts, stop the flow of contraband arms to Mexico, or prosecute money laundering. The model of counter-narcotics work focused on the supply side through interdiction and enforcement measures was applied in Colombia beginning in 2000. Nearly seven years and $6 billion after Plan Colombia began, the result is no appreciable decline in production of illegal drugs or in the flow to the U.S. market.6 Support for the use of the armed forces in the drug war within Mexican communities creates a situation in which counter-narcotics programs extend into counter-insurgency efforts. The expansion of NAFTA into the security arena, first through the SPP and now through its offspring, Plan Mexico, indicates that the Calderón administration has chosen a path

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

of authoritarianism and rule by force over one that might the security forces.9 There have also been numerous rapes of strengthen the country’s democratic institutions. Instead of women by army agents in other parts of the country, includlooking to overcome the polarization left in the wake of his ing the western state of Michoacán and the northern border questioned election, the president has set a course that relies state of Coahuila.10 The lack of prosecution for the rape and on the armed forces for bolstering his presidency. abuse of women protesters in police custody following the Three examples of the “collateral damage” to society conflict in San Salvador Atenco also demonstrates that Mexiunder the drug-war model embodied in Plan Mexico suf- can women and their rights are suffering heavy casualties fice to demonstrate the risks at stake. First, there have been due to a spreading war mentality in Mexico. increased attacks on autonomous Zapatista communities A third example involves the murders of grassroots leadin Chiapas, which have been documented by the Interna- ers in the state of Chihuahua. Shortly before the governtional Civil Commission on Human Rights. The ment’s anti-drug Operation Chihuahua began, commission reports a rise in military incursions, Mexico’s antiArmando Villareal, leader of the rural movement arrests of community leaders using fabricated terrorism laws for fair electricity rates and against the privatizaevidence, and physical abuse and torture of Zation of fertilizer production, was assassinated.11 have already patista militants. In an incident on June 4, more When the operation began, four farmers, memthan 200 soldiers and police tried to enter the been invoked bers of Villareal’s organization Agrodinámica Zapatista regional government seat La Garrucha Nacional, were apprehended by officers of Mexand then went into the villages of Hermenegildo against ico’s Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) and Galeana and San Alejandro supposedly in search members accused of “electricity theft” and later released of illegal drugs. The pretense was both predictable thanks to pressure from the organization. Just of social and preposterous: Zapatista communities have days later, Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a social activa strict policy banning drugs and alcohol, and movements, ist and adviser to families of women killed in the the armed forces did not produce any evidence since the border area, was violently detained and accused of having found such substances. In addition to of “attacking general communication pathways” military activity, there has been in recent months definition of on the basis of a bridge protest in October 2005. a buildup of paramilitary activity against the Za- “terrorism” Several other rural leaders have been picked up patista communities, related to attempts to take on the same charge and members of the social is sufficiently back land the Zapatistas had won in the period movement fear a general crackdown on social following the 1994 uprising. These attempts have vague to lend movement activists. been particularly intense in areas like ecotourism itself to a broad State representative and human rights activist sites, water sources, and zones believed to contain Víctor Quintana calls this wave of criminalization important biodiversity resources, all of which are range of “an attempt at threatening the leaders of three of interest to developers.7 An increase in militari- activities. movements that have been at the forefront on a zation of Mexican society will very likely lead to national level: the rural producers’ movement to an increase in the scope and activity of both the army and of get electricity at competitive prices and renegotiate NAFTA’s agricultural terms; the women’s movement against femicide; paramilitary groups. Second, there has been a countrywide increase of attacks and the movement of indebted people against the banks and on women by security forces. For decades, the relationship mortgage companies.”12 Like the attacks on women, the rebetween war and violence against women has been docu- pression in the context of an operation that has some 3,000 mented and understood as the result of power built through extra army and police members in the streets of northern force rather than social consensus. Rape and murder of wom- cities sends a signal that dissidence will be harshly treated en has been seen as both a symbol of conquest and the spoils as delinquency. that go to the victor. In the context of impunity in Mexico, Mexico’s U.S.-style anti-terrorism laws have already been where accusations of attacks on women by people with ties invoked against members of social movements, since the to power rarely make it inside a courtroom, the practice has definition of “terrorism” is sufficiently vague to lend itself been spreading since the war on drugs sent the army out to a broad range of activities.13 The war on drugs/counterinto the streets.8 A particularly outrageous case is the rape terrorism model embodied in Plan Mexico invariably exand murder of an elderly indigenous woman in the Sierra tends into repression of political opposition in countries Zongólica, proved by initial investigations and later covered where it has been applied, blurring the lines between the up by the Calderón government and higher-up members of war on drugs, the war against terrorism, and the war against 21

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

the political opposition. A 2004 report documents the impact of U.S. increased military aid in Latin American and concludes that “too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists, labor organizers, or opposition political-party leaders.”14 Moreover, curtailing civil liberties weakens, rather than strengthens, both institutions and the public’s faith in legal channels to resolve differences.

n june 23, a group of mexican intellectuals published a letter containing a laundry list of the country’s social woes.15 The list did not make for comfortable reading: “Drug-related violence with an exceedingly high cost in lives (not only those directly involved); the crisis of the national security apparatus; the destruction of the social fabric; the expansion of fear and panic in broad sectors of society; the unsustainable high cost of living, the disaster—universally recognized—in public and private education; the eagerness to reduce the electoral process to vote buying; an accentuated crisis in the judicial branch; officials’ support of ecological death (over-exploitation of water, destruction of forests, pollution) that ratifies the monstrosity of neoliberalism; impunity of the powers that be, who hold themselves up as the new ‘moral authority’; an intense campaign to privatize energy resources; officials whose continued presence in office constitutes a major challenge to legality (Juan Camilo Mouriño, Ulises Ruiz, Mario Marín); moral lynching campaigns against the opposition . . . ”16 The country’s weak democratic institutions have been shaken and discredited by their evasive or downright duplicitous responses to the electoral conflicts of 2006, to powerful politicians who openly defy the rule of law, and to the inequality of daily life generated under the neoliberal economic model. The justice system remains bound to the interests of a weak federal government that fears popular protest, and to state and local governments in many cases controlled by despots. Every day the newspapers report incidents and declarations that reflect a loss of faith in the system and the loss of credibility of the institutions charged with upholding and extending it. Mexico is thus at a critical juncture. It can either take up the challenge to strengthen democratic institutions, or it can fall back into rule by force and authoritarianism. So far, the federal government’s response has been to defend the neoliberal model that has played a major role in leading to the crisis and extend it into security issues in a closer alliance with the U.S. government and the Bush adminis22

tration’s counter-terrorism strategy. Particularly in a nation that is deeply divided both politically and economically, the defense of neoliberalism not only further divides society, but threatens the legitimacy of the state. In Chiapas, a state rich in coveted natural resources, the link between the breakdown of the social compact and the pressures of the neoliberal model are particularly stark. The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center reports: “As the neoliberal economic project advances, which puts the interest of business above those of the majority of the population and promotes economic projects that seek to appropriate natural resources social goods, and communal spaces for the private sector, the political costs to the State will increasingly undermine its legitimacy.”17 The report also mentions the traditional mechanisms for building social consensus that have broken down and the way in which they are being supplanted by force: “The tendency to criminalize and repress protest and civil acts derives from the slight-to-zero effectiveness of the mechanisms of control conventionally employed by the State, specifically those operated through ideological structures such as the media, schools, the church, culture and the exercise of politics. When these mechanisms ceased to be effective to control the widespread discontent that has been expressed in mass demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, the State has frequently and disproportionately employed the intervention of security forces (army and police) to exercise social control.” The imposition of the Bush national security-free trade paradigm has led to a further breakdown of institutional channels for pulling the divided nation together or deepening a transition to democracy. There is no clearer example of this disastrous policy than the recent Merida Initiative. The extension of NAFTA into SPP and Plan Mexico enforces a strategy of the current Mexican government to deal with organized crime as a violent crusade, and to handle opposition through force. The human rights violations related to this strategy stem from the mentality of confrontation, the lack of training of security forces in proper human rights, and the impunity of knowing they can get away with just about anything as long as the victim is outside the inner circles of power. In addition to bolstering a weak presidency and suppressing dissent, the regional security strategy outlined in these alliances pursues the goal of assuring access to natural resources and “armoring NAFTA”—locking in the neoliberal economic model that has contributed to a dangerous disintegration of the social compact in Mexico. It is a strategy meant to confront headon the widespread demands for a new social order based on equity and inclusion.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Displaced People: NAFTA’s Most Important Product

Salomon Sarita Sánchez and a crew of Mixtec immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, on a strawberry farm in Nipoma, California. Whereas California farmworkers 20 and 30 years ago came from Mexico’s mostly Spanish-speaking populations, migrants today increasingly come from indigenous communities.

By David Bacon

David Bacon

ince the passage of the north american

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the U.S. Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work. As Rufino Domínguez, former coordinator of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB), points out, U.S. trade and immigration policy are part of a single system, and the negotiation of NAFTA was an important step in developing this system. “There are no jobs” in Mexico, he says, “and NAFTA drove the price of corn so low that it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the United States to work because there’s no alternative.” Economic crises provoked by NAFTA and

other economic reforms are uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the country’s most remote areas. While California farmworkers 20 and 30 years ago came from parts of Mexico with larger Spanish-speaking populations, migrants today increasingly come from indigenous communities in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. Domínguez says there are about 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone. Meanwhile, a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has demonized those migrants, leading to measures to deny them jobs, rights, or any pretense of equality with people living in the communities around them. Solutions to these dilemmas—from adopting rational and humane immigration policies to reducing the fear and hostility toward migrants—must begin with an examination of the way U.S. policies have both produced migration and criminalized migrants.

David Bacon is a senior fellow at the Oakland Institute, which provided support for this analysis. He is a writer and photojournalist, and former labor organizer. His most recent book is Illegal People— How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008).

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

rade negotiations and immigration policy were As a result of a growing crisis in agricultural production, by formally joined together when Congress passed the 1980s Mexico had already become a corn importer, and the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) according to Sandoval, large farmers switched to other crops in 1986. While most attention has focused on its provi- when they couldn’t compete with U.S. grain dumping. But sions for amnesty and employer sanctions, few have noted NAFTA then prohibited price supports, without which hunan important provision of the law: the establishment of the dreds of thousands of small farmers found it impossible to sell Commission for the Study of International Migration and Co- corn or other farm products for what it cost to produce them. operative Economic Development, to study the causes of im- The National Popular Subsistence Company (Conasupo), migration to the United States. The commission was inactive through which the government bought corn at subsidized until 1988, but began holding hearings when the U.S. and prices, turned it into tortillas, and sold them in state-franCanadian governments signed a bilateral free trade agree- chised grocery stores at subsidized low prices, was abolished. ment. After Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari And when NAFTA pulled down customs barriers, large U.S. made it plain he favored a similar agreement with Mexico, corporations dumped even more agricultural products on the commission made a report to the first president George the Mexican market. Rural families went hungry when they Bush and to Congress in 1990. It found, unsurcouldn’t find buyers for what they’d grown. prisingly, that the main motivation for coming NAFTA was part of a Mexico couldn’t protect its own agriculture north was economic. from the fluctuations of the world market. A process that began To slow or halt this flow, it recommended global coffee glut in the 1990s plunged prices “promoting greater economic integration be- long before, in which below the cost of production. A less entrapped tween the migrant sending countries and the economic reforms government might have bought the crops of VeUnited States through free trade.” It concluded racruz farmers to keep them afloat, or provided restructured the that “the United States should expedite the desubsidies for other crops. But once free market velopment of a U.S.-Mexico free trade area and Mexican economy. strictures were in place, prohibiting government encourage its incorporation with Canada into a intervention to help them, those farmers paid North American free trade area,” while warning that “it takes the price. Veracruz campesinos joined the stream of workers many years—even generations—for sustained growth to headed north. achieve the desired effect.”1 Mexico’s urban poor fared no better. Although a flood of The negotiations that led to NAFTA started within months cheap U.S. grain was supposed to make consumer prices of the report. As Congress debated the treaty, Salinas toured the fall, they in fact rose. With the end of the Conasupo stores United States, telling audiences unhappy at high levels of im- and price controls, the price of tortillas more than doubled in migration that passing NAFTA would reduce it by increasing the years following NAFTA’s adoption. One company, Grupo employment in Mexico. Back home, Salinas and other treaty Maseca, monopolized tortilla production, while Wal-Mart beproponents made the same argument. NAFTA, they claimed, came Mexico’s largest retailer. would set Mexico on a course to become a first-world nation. Under Mexico’s former national content laws, foreign auto“We did become part of the first world,” says Juan Manuel makers like Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, and Volkswagen Sandoval, coordinator of the Permanent Seminar on Chicano were required to buy some of their components from Mexican and Border Studies at Mexico City’s National Institute of An- producers. NAFTA, however, prohibited laws requiring forthropology and History: “the backyard.” eign producers to use a certain percentage of local content in Contrary to NAFTA proponents’ predictions, the treaty be- assembled products. Without this restraint, the auto giants became an important source of pressure on Mexicans to migrate. gan to supply their assembly lines with parts from their own It forced yellow corn grown by Mexican farmers without sub- subsidiaries, often manufactured in other countries. Mexican sidies to compete in Mexico’s own market with corn from huge auto parts workers lost their jobs by the thousands. U.S. producers, subsidized by the U.S. farm bill. Agricultural NAFTA was part of a process that began long before, in exports to Mexico grew at a meteoric rate during the NAFTA which economic reforms restructured the Mexican economy. years, at a compound annual rate of 9.4%, according to the One major objective of those reforms was the privatization of U.S. Department of Agriculture. By 2007, annual U.S. agri- the large state sector, which employed millions of workers. By cultural exports to Mexico stood at $12.7 billion.2 In January the early 1990s the Mexican government had sold most of its and February 2008, huge demonstrations in Mexico sought mines to one company, Grupo México, owned by the wealthy to block the implementation of the agreement’s final chapter, Larrea family, along with a steel mill in Michoacán to the Villawhich lowered the tariff barriers on white corn and beans. real family, and its telephone company to the richest person in 24

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Mexico, Carlos Slim. Former Mexico City mayor Carlos Hank drove the city’s bus system deeply into debt, and then bought the lines in the 1990s at public auction. Rich Mexicans weren’t the only beneficiaries of privatization. U.S. companies were allowed to buy land and factories, eventually anywhere in Mexico, without Mexican partners. U.S.-based Union Pacific, in partnership with the Larreas, became the owner of the country’s main north-south rail line and immediately discontinued virtually all passenger service, as railroad corporations had done in the United States. As the Larreas and Union Pacific moved to boost profits and cut labor costs, Mexican rail employment dropped precipitously.3 The railroad union under leftist leaders Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa had been so powerful that its strikes had strongly challenged the government in the 1950s. The two spent years in prison for their temerity. Facing privatization, railroad workers mounted a wildcat strike to try to save their jobs, but they lost and their union became a shadow of its former self in Mexican politics. After NAFTA the privatization wave expanded. Mexico’s ports were sold off, and companies like Stevedoring Services of America, Hutchinson, and TMM now operate the country’s largest shipping terminals. As with the railroads, the impact on longshore wages and employment has been devastating. In 2006 spreading poverty, and the lack of a program to create jobs and raise living standards, ignited months of conflict in Oaxaca, in which strikes and demonstrations were met with repression by an unpopular government. Leoncio Vásquez, an activist with the FIOB in Fresno, California, says, “The lack of human rights itself is a factor contributing to migration from Oaxaca and Mexico, since it closes off our ability to call for any change.” In NAFTA’s first year, 1994, the Mexican economy collapsed when the peso was devalued without warning in December. To avert the sell-off of short-term bonds and a flood of capital to the north, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin engineered a $20 billion loan to Mexico, which was paid to bondholders, mostly U.S. banks. In return, Mexico had to pledge its oil revenue to pay off foreign debt, making the country’s primary source of income unavailable for social needs, and foreign capital took control of the Mexican banking system. As the Mexican economy, especially the border maquiladora industry, became increasingly tied to the U.S. market, Mexican workers lost jobs when the market for the output of those factories shrank during U.S. recessions. In 2000–01, many jobs were lost on the U.S.-Mexico border, and in the current recession, thousands more are being eliminated. There is no starker reminder of Mexico’s dependency on the U.S. economy.

ll of these policies produce displaced people

who can no longer make a living or survive as they’ve done before. The rosy predictions of NAFTA’s boosters that it would slow migration proved false. Between just 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost a million and a half jobs, mostly in the countryside. Since 1994, 6 million Mexicans have come to live in the United States. In just five years, from 2000 to 2005, the Mexican-born population living in the United States increased from 10 million to nearly 12 million.4 With few green cards or permanent residence visas available for Mexicans, most of these migrants were undocumented. People were migrating from Mexico to its northern neighbor long before NAFTA was negotiated. Juan Manuel Sandoval emphasizes that “Mexican labor has always been linked to the different stages of U.S. capitalist development since the 19th century—in times of prosperity, by the incorporation of large numbers of workers in agricultural, manufacturing, service, and other sectors, and in periods of economic crisis, by the deportation of Mexican laborers back to Mexico in huge numbers.” But from 1982 through the NAFTA era, successive economic reforms produced more migrants. Campesinos who lost their land found jobs as farmworkers in California. Laid-off railroad workers traveled north, as their forbears had during the early 1900s, when Mexican labor built much of the rail network through the U.S. southwest. The displacement of people had already grown so large by 1986 that the commission established by the IRCA was charged with recommending measures to halt or slow it. Its report urged that “migrant-sending countries should encourage technological modernization by strengthening and assuring intellectual property protection and by removing existing impediments to investment” and recommended that “the United States should condition bilateral aid to sending countries on their taking the necessary steps toward structural adjustment. Similarly, U.S. support for non-project lending by the international financial institutions should be based on the implementation of satisfactory adjustment programs.” The IRCA commission report even acknowledged the potential for harm, noting that “efforts should be made to ease transitional costs in human suffering.”5 NAFTA, however, was not intended to relieve human suffering. “It is the financial crashes and the economic disasters that drive people to work for dollars in the U.S., to replace life savings, or just to earn enough to keep their family at home together,” says Harvard historian John Womack. “The debt-induced crash in the 1980s, before NAFTA, drove people north.” He adds that the financial 25

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

crash and the NAFTA reform engineered by Treasury Secretary Rubin, together with New York’s financial expropriation of Mexican finances between 1995 and 2000, once again impelled economically wrecked, dispossessed, and impoverished people to migrate north. Displacement is an unmentionable word in the Washington discourse. But not one immigration proposal in Congress in 2006 and 2007 tried to come to grips with the policies that uprooted miners, teachers, tree planters, and farmers, in spite of the fact that Congress members voted for these policies. In fact, while debating bills to criminalize undocumented migrants and set up huge guest-worker programs, four new trade agreements were introduced, each of which would cause more displacement and more migration. Today, displacement and inequality are deeply ingrained in the free market economy. Mexican president Felipe Calderón said during a recent visit to California, “You have two economies. One economy is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. One economy is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is impossible to stop.”6 When Calderón says “intensive in labor,” he means that millions of Mexican citizens are being displaced, and that the country’s economy can’t produce employment for them. To Calderón and employers on 26

both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, migration is therefore a labor-supply system. Immigration policy determines the rules under which that labor is put to use. President George W. Bush says the purpose of U.S. immigration policy should be to “connect willing employers and willing employees.”7 He is simply restating what has been true throughout U.S. history. U.S. immigration policy doesn’t stop people from coming into the country, nor is it intended to. Its main function is to determine the status of people once they’re here. And an immigration policy based on providing a labor supply produces two effects: Displacement becomes an unspoken tool for producing workers, while inequality becomes official policy. Some 24 million immigrants live in the United States either as citizens or with documents, and 12 million without them. If these migrants actually did go home, whole industries would collapse. And employers benefit from large numbers of undocumented people, since illegality creates an inexpensive system. So-called illegal workers produce wealth but receive a smaller share than other workers in return—a source of profit for those who employ them. No one claims that these excess profits are “illegal” and should be returned to those who produced them. Instead, the producers themselves are called “illegal.” Companies depend not just on the workers in the fac-

David Bacon

Mauro López, a 22-year veteran mechanic at the Cananea mine. He wears a jacket with the logo of the mine’s private owner, Grupo México, which by the early 1990s owned most of the country’s formerly nationalized mines.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

tories and fields, but also on the communities from which they come. If those communities stop sending workers, the labor supply dries up. Work stops. Yet no company pays for a single school or clinic, or even any taxes, in those communities. In the tiny Mexican towns that now provide workers, free-market and free-trade policies exert pressure to cut the government budget for social services. The cost of these services is now borne by workers themselves, in the form of remittance payments sent back from jobs in Nebraska slaughterhouses, California fields, or New York office buildings. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox boasted that in 2005 his country’s citizens working in the United States sent back $18 billion. The World Bank estimates that in 2006 that figure reached $25 billion.8 At the same time, the public funds that historically paid for schools and public works increasingly leaves Mexico in debt payments to foreign banks. Remittances, as large as they are, cannot make up for this outflow. According to a report to the InterAmerican Development Bank, remittances accounted for an average of 1.19% of the gross domestic product between 1996 and 2000, and 2.14% between 2001 and 2006. Debt payments, however, accounted for a good deal more. By partially meeting unmet and unfunded social needs, remittances are indirectly subsidizing the banks.9 At the same time, companies dependent on this immigrant stream gain greater flexibility in adjusting for the highs and lows of market demand. The global production system has grown very flexible in accommodating economic booms and busts. Its employment system is based on the use of contractors, which is replacing the system in which workers were directly employed by the businesses using their labor. Displaced migrant workers are the backbone of this contingent labor system. Its guiding principle is that immigration policy and enforcement should direct immigrants to industries when their labor is needed, and remove them when it’s not. Guest-worker and employment-based visa programs were created to accommodate these labor needs. When demand is high, employers recruit workers. When demand falls, those workers not only have to leave their jobs, but the country entirely. Today, employers and the Department of Homeland Security call for relaxing the requirements on guest-worker visas. Although there are minimum wage and housing requirements, the Southern Poverty Law Center report, “Close to Slavery,” documents the fact that the requirements are generally ignored. “These workers don’t have labor rights or benefits,” Domínguez of the FIOB charges. “It’s like slavery. If workers don’t get paid or they’re cheated, they can’t do anything.” New guest-worker programs are the heart of the cor-

porate program for U.S. immigration reform, and are combined with proposals for increased enforcement and a pro-employer program for legalization of the undocumented. Proposals based on this three-part compromise are called “comprehensive immigration reform.” “The governments of both Mexico and the U.S. are dependent on the cheap labor of Mexicans. They don’t say so openly, but they are,” Domínguez concludes. “What would improve our situation is real legal status for the people already here and greater availability of visas based on family reunification. Legalization and more visas would resolve a lot of problems—not all, but it would be a big step,” he says. “Walls won’t stop migration, but decent wages and investing money in creating jobs in our countries of origin would decrease the pressure forcing us to leave home. Penalizing us by making it illegal for us to work won’t stop migration, since it doesn’t deal with why people come.” Changing corporate trade policy and stopping neoliberal reforms is as central to immigration reform as gaining legal status for undocumented immigrants. It makes no sense to promote more free-trade agreements and then condemn the migration of the people they displace. Instead, Congress must end the use of the free-trade system as a mechanism for producing displaced workers. That also means delinking immigration status and employment. If employers are allowed to recruit contract labor abroad, and those workers can only stay if they are continuously employed, they will never have enforceable rights. The root problem with migration in the global economy is that it’s forced migration. A coalition for reform should fight for the right of people to choose when and how to migrate, including the derecho de no migrar—the right not to migrate, given viable alternatives. At the same time, migrants should have basic rights, regardless of immigration status. “Otherwise,” Domínguez says, “wages will be depressed in a race to the bottom, since if one employer has an advantage, others will seek the same thing.” To raise the low price of immigrant labor, immigrant workers have to be able to organize. Permanent legal status makes it easier and less risky to organize. Guest-worker programs, employer sanctions, enforcement, and raids make organizing much more difficult. Corporations and those who benefit from current priorities might not support a more pro-migrant alternative, but millions of people would. Whether they live in Mexico or the United States, working people need the same things—secure jobs at a living wage, rights in their workplaces and communities, and the freedom to travel and seek a future for their families. 27

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

Desolation: Mexican Campesinos and Agriculture in the 21st Century

Indigenous migrant workers prepare food during the tomato harvest on a farm in the northwest Mexican state of Sinaloa. The number of migrant agricultural workers in the country has ballooned in the last decade and a half, and many of them are women and children.

Sergio Zermeño is a professor at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

he european union has steadfastly

opposed agricultural trade liberalization, as proposed by the United States, with arguments in favor of food security and employment.1 And it makes sense that the old continent, which is home, in proportional terms, to five times as many farmers as the United States, sees no incentive in opening its market to cheap, heavily subsidized U.S. food and having to pay even greater subsidies than it already does to protect its own important agricultural sector— and to prevent the very probable collapse of its

rich culinary tradition (coq au vin and Bordeaux or Big Macs and Coca-Cola?). Despite the high cost of European agricultural subsidies, they have allowed millions of farmers to remain integrated into modern forms of production and consumption, while keeping backwardness and structural dualism at bay. However, these policies, which defend social welfare in the core countries, harm developing countries: According to a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute, disseminated by the World Trade Organization, the rich

Heriberto Rodriguez / LATINPHOTO.org

By Sergio Zermeño

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

countries’ agricultural dumping, made possible by gener- real prices for corn and wheat declined by 45%, sorghum ous subsidies, result in the loss of about $24 billion each by 55%, and seeds and fertilizers by 50% and 60%, reyear in developing countries, and the European Union spectively. Between 1990 and 1999, the price of beans is principally responsible. If these subsidies were elimi- fell by 40%.5 nated, the countries of the South would triple their agriFollowing the agricultural logic of neoliberalism, cultural exports, reaching $60 billion annually, according it could cynically be said that if it is so much cheaper to the study.2 to produce staple grains in the United States and elseIf the proportion of Europeans linked to agricultural where, the best thing for Mexico to do would simply be production is five times higher than that in the United to import everything, paying with a portion of domestiStates, Mexico has a proportion 15 times greater, with cally produced petroleum. But obviously this wouldn’t one out of four Mexicans living in villages with popula- work, since the North Americans do not subsidize their tions of 2,500 or less. Although Mexican agriculture is farmers in order to feed the world. The very low subsicompetitive in fruits, vegetables, flowers, seafood, beer, dized prices of U.S. agricultural output were meant only and tequila—which together account for some to influence the fall in prices for staple goods $5 billion of exports each year, representing Already by produced in Mexico by small- and medium80% of its agricultural exports—Mexican capi- 2003, almost size farmers, and to essentially drive those tal has very little invested in the most imporfarmers out of business.6 half of tortilla tant agro-exporting companies (Dole, Chiquita, A great blow to this latter sector came during Fisher, and Del Monte).3 As the Mexican econo- production was the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari mist José Luís Calva affirmed long ago, if Mex(1988–94), which promoted the production of ico throws its hat into the ring of comparative in the hands industrialized tortillas. These are replacing the advantage, “not even a 10th of the area we lose of big industry, tortillas traditionally made by hand from masa for staple crops could be channeled toward harde nixtamal, the alkalized corn dough used by among which vesting fruits and vegetables for export to the small producers whose importance to the inUnited States.” His argument was logical: “The the Gruma dustry has been drastically reduced. Already markets for these products are not unlimited. Corporation by 2003, almost half of tortilla production In the 1980s, we accounted for 70% of U.S. was in the hands of big industry, among which vegetable imports. If we considerably increase controlled 70%. the Gruma corporation (owners of the Maseca our supply of exportable agricultural goods, company) controlled 70%. there really could be a sharp fall in the North American This was combined with the dismantling of the Namarket’s prices.”4 tional Company of Popular Subsistence (Conasupo), acMeanwhile, Mexico is not competitive in almost any cording to a provision of NAFTA. As a state agricultural other agricultural product. Why, then, has the country trader, Conasupo had played a role in regulating stockopened its borders for all products? Moreover, take the piling, establishing guaranteed prices, distribution, and following into account: In Mexico, each acre of planted importing grain. Its disappearance gave way to the great corn yields one ton, versus more than three and a half transnational retailers—Minsa, Corn Products Internatons in the United States; Mexico subsidizes its agricultur- tional, Anderson Clayton, Cargill, Pilgrims Pride, Maseca, al industry with $3.5 billion each year, versus $20 billion Bachoco, Purina, Bimbo, Nestlé, Sabritas—which sold in the United States; Mexico’s fertilizers, electricity, diesel, staple goods on the Mexican domestic market. These and gasoline cost up to 60% more than in the United companies bought corn, sorghum, wheat, and beans at States; and the Mexican government promotes dump- depressed prices from Mexican producers, and after subing against its own producers, having charged no duties jecting them to fairly simple processing, sold them at ever on corn imports that exceeded quotas since NAFTA was higher prices: While the real price of corn fell 45% in five instituted—duties that would have equaled $1.3 billion years, the cost of tortillas (which provide 75% of caloric between 1995 and 2000, and $429 million from 2000 to intake for 45 million poor people) went from 1.9 pesos 2002. And all this occurred while Mexican producers of per kilo in 1998 to 3.5 in 1999 to 5.5 in 2003.7 staple grains and other agricultural goods saw their wareThese very companies have benefited from two thirds houses filled up with no hope of selling anything during of the Mexican government’s subsidies, and they have the same years. Many simply did not harvest their crops further added to their profits by working together with because of the drop in prices: Between 1995 and 1999, transnational chains like Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam’s Club, 29

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

Auchan, and Carrefour, taking over a retail business that nies oriented toward the domestic market. Mexico’s smallbefore had been in Mexican hands.8 The massive rise in and medium-size producers lose, and the campesinos prices for corn and tortillas that was unleashed in 2007 either migrate or remain, surviving on subsistence concan thus be explained in this context: The large retail- sumption and the unprofitable sale of their surpluses. It ers had acquired, at 1,350 pesos per ton, a great part of is in this context that eight out of 10 Mexicans live in the previous year’s corn harvest from the state of Sinaloa, poverty, and two out of three in extreme poverty. where about half of Mexican corn is produced. ManipuFrom the macroeconomic point of view of globalizalating the supply of these enormous stocks, they man- tion and comparative advantage, improving people’s aged to sell this same grain, in Mexico City, at 3,500 quality of life matters little, and increasing subsidies to pesos, with a profit of more than 2,000 pesos per ton.9 the inefficient countryside would be idiotic, a waste of World prices for corn had been rising since the begin- resources. As former president Vicente Fox’s finance secning of 2007 because of its use in producing ethanol and retary, Fernando Canales Clariond, explained in 2003: the increase in the costs of basic inputs (diesel, gasoline, “The campesinos will have to transform themselves into and electricity), but the speculative jump that occurred industrial workers or true businesspeople, particularly at the beginning of that year—from six to eight pesos per the poor corn and bean producers.”11 What officials like kilo of tortillas—had no correlation whatever Canales made clear is that the perspective of with biofuel production and rising input costs, Many “open economy” does not value making an but rather with the multinationals’ hoarding. campesinos, effort to increase the domestic production of In mid-2008, these factors combined with the products imported at low prices, prices made faced with less possible by the very high subsidies they receive world food crisis, as we will see below. But even before the current crisis, the Mexi- than selffrom their countries of origin. Better that the 3 can government responded to the inflationary million grain producers, the half-million cofsufficient agitation of 2007 by opening borders to grain fee growers, the 800,000 livestock farmers, imports with no tariffs. Mexico imported yel- production, the 150,000 sugarcane growers—and in genlow and white corn from the United States to must now travel eral the 25 million Mexicans connected to the control the price and instituted no policies that countryside—either demonstrate their comwould give Mexican producers an incentive— long distances petitiveness or throw in the towel. that is, they chose not to take advantage of the to the large The number of Mexico’s agricultural day larise in prices, which would have benefited them borers, working for ever more depressed wages farms of the in the medium term, gradually reconstructing throughout Mexico’s north and west, has swelled. food autonomy. Rather, the government ceded north. In addition to the growing impoverishment and this market advantage to the very speculators marginalization to which these rural majorities who had provoked the price rise in the first place, since will be relegated, certain tendencies are already manifesting it was they and no one else who were in charge of com- to the detriment of their collective identity and social equimercializing the massive imports. librium: The most important of these is the “casualization” What a way to squander an opportunity to strengthen (precarización) of labor, which becomes informal, temporary, Mexico’s own non-monopolistic companies! But the Mex- and insecure. ican officials of the neoliberal era do not think in social While a great number of campesinos remain on their terms; in the imperial universities where they were edu- lands, rooted in traditional social structures and surviving cated, they were never taught to think this way. What’s from subsistence farming, many others, faced with less than more, these monopolist groups receive strong support self-sufficient production, must now travel long distances to from President Felipe Calderón. As the economist Ale- the large farms of the north, following the agricultural cycles jandro Nadal wrote in 2007, “Maseca [a subsidiary of of fruits, vegetables, and flowers (as well as demand from the Gruma], the largest corn flour company in Mexico and urban construction industry), returning home only at the the world, expects that after [the price hike], many corn planting season and again for the harvest. What is new about millers and nixtamal producers will leave the market, or this phenomenon of informal migrant farm labor is the exremain on its fringes. Today, Maseca already controls 50% tent to which it has spread in comparison with full-time emof the national tortilla market, and it is considering taking ployment with a formal contract—it now accounts for about over the entire market with these predatory practices.”10 80% of all agricultural labor in Mexico. Also new is the imThe agro-industrial exporters win, as do the big compa- portance of female and child labor, representing an effort to 30

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

In January, marchers in Mexico City denounced NAFTA’s role in driving up the price of food.

keep costs low and increase competitiveness. For such tasks as transplanting, harvesting, and packaging, women and children are underpaid by up to 30% to 40% compared to men. For many years, half of the informal workers in Mexican agriculture have been women, and they can easily be found migrating all around the country in small teams.12

Frida Hartz

hus, the laborers involved in mexico’s agricultural circuit are trapped within a logic of weakening social structures and anomie. Today’s agro-export companies, as opposed to their antecedents, use a reduced workforce of about 100,000 temporary workers, working an area that is also small: almost 5 million acres of corn, as opposed to more than 66 million in previous years.13 Informal workers endure terrible conditions and are paid extremely low wages, with no opportunities for upward mobility. Moreover, these migrant day workers have few labor rights, or rights of any kind, and as they go from one seasonal plantation to another, they are unable to put down roots or organize. Equally devastating is the undermining of domestic farmers, from the small to larger producers, who cannot compete with cheap agro-imports. Large foreign compa-

nies make the profits, as Mexico slips ever deeper into food dependency—during the Fox administration the country spent more than $42 billion on importing basic foods, 55% more than under his predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo.14 Extrapolating, we may calculate that this figure could approach $100 billion in the 2006–12 presidential term if we take into account that, according to the numbers from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography, the country imported $5.7 billion worth of food in the first four months of 2007 alone. Even by around 2002, Mexico depended on imports to fill almost half of its food basket. Now that all Mexican tariffs on foods have been eliminated, and the global price of food have has risen, we can only begin to imagine how this dependency will worsen. This was the general outlook in 2007, when, owing to a combination of factors, neoliberal certainties about the benefits of free trade and comparative advantage in the world food market were undermined. The sharp spike in corn prices at the beginning of that year already prefigured a suspicious change in behavior on the part of world regulators of staple-grain prices, but in the Mexican case, the hoarding of these products by the transnationals was so great that it was thought that importing higher quantities 31

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

of corn would stabilize prices and do away with the “exter- this we can add another determining factor: hedge funds, nalities” of hoarding. which began aggressively buying present and future grain But between mid-2007 and the first months of 2008, stocks, after their debacle in real estate, pushing up the the situation—not just in Mexico but worldwide— food prices as a part of their financial gambling. changed alarmingly: Corn prices on the Chicago market Within this framework we can clearly understand, though in April 2008 had increased by 50% over the previous it still causes repugnance, why the profits of the gigantic 12 months; wheat prices rose by 75% in the same pe- agro-corporations betray them as primarily responsible for riod; and rice prices rose by 75% in just the first two the price escalation and the increase en masse of people livmonths of 2008. The same occurred with other goods ing in misery throughout the world, as a result of manipulathat make up the basic food basket. Summing up the tion, hoarding, and speculation on inventories and prices: situation, the World Bank noted that between December Cargill increased its profits by 86% in the first trimester of 2006 and February 2008 average world food 2008; ADM by 67% in 2007, and in that same prices increased 48%.15 Cargill increased year, Monsanto by 44%; Bunge, 49%; and SynMany explanations for the crisis arose: (1) genta, 28%.21 its profits by 86% The rise in general costs of production and The point here, then, is that if Mexico is already transport associated with the increase in gas in the first facing a massive trade deficit in primary prodprices; (2) rising food demand from develop- trimester of ucts—almost $6 billion in 2007—it is obvious ing countries (as Brazilian president Inácio Lula that, given the world food market’s new tendenDa Silva put it: “The world was unprepared for 2008; ADM by cies, the country’s food dependency will severely China and India’s 2 billion inhabitants—out of 67% in 2007, worsen, as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing the 6 billion who live on the planet—eating director of the IMF, predicted in April: “The comthree meals a day”);16 (3) a worldwide change and in that same mercial deficits of countries like Mexico,” he said, in consumption habits, which has increased year, Monsanto “could increase as far as $10 billion, or one perthe consumption of meat and, therefore, centage point of GDP, because of food imports.”22 by 44%; Bunge, grains to feed livestock; (4) the diversion of World Bank president Robert Zoellick, concerned some foods toward the production of biofuels, 49%; and about unrest in Haiti and Africa, held up a loaf of to which the United States probably devoted Syngenta, 28%. bread, explaining that it cost a quarter of a family’s a third of its 2007 harvest and the European income in Yemen, and a two-kilogram sack of rice, Union a third of its vegetable oils, both domestic and im- saying it cost a family in Bangladesh half its daily income.23 ported;17 (5) the reduction in food reserves in developed Thus, food dependency is not an alarmist issue recognized countries because of the high costs of storing perishable only by defenders of the countryside and campesinos, but foods and adverse climatic conditions in countries where by the very stalwarts of neoliberalism themselves. grain exports are very important, like Argentina; (6) the The Bank of Mexico confirmed the country’s precarious anti-national attitude of agrarian groups in countries like state when it acknowledged, in April 2007 and March 2008, Argentina, Venezuela, and Bolivia, who prefer to export that purchasing the most important 127 foods and agriculfood, provoking an artificial shortage as a mechanism to tural inputs required import payments of $13 billion—or destabilize their governments;18 (7) reductions in exports $5 billion more than in 2005, the last year in which prices decreed by many exporting countries (Argentina, Brazil, for these products were stable. This underlined the increase Vietnam, India, and Egypt), whose governments are wor- in prices for corn, wheat, soy, powdered milk, and planting ried about shortages; and (8) the dramatic rise in fertil- seeds; but not so the prices of fruits, beans, and vegetables, izer and pesticide prices in just one year. This has pushed which the multinationals export from Mexico and whose many small- and medium-sized corn farmers toward prices have increased much less. This increase in the cost products that demand less of these costly inputs or to- of Mexico’s primary imports is equivalent to the country’s ward simply abandoning their fields. (In the last 10 years, petroleum surplus obtained in 2007.24 Mexico has increased fertilizer imports by 400%.)19 But the adversity is not the same for everyone. AccordAt first it would not seem obvious which of these facing to data from the USDA, Argentina and Brazil—two tors has had the greatest impact on the price increase, Latin American countries that have maintained tariffs on but according to a World Bank report leaked to the U.K. imported grains—will each buy about a million tons of Guardian, biofuel production is responsible for at least U.S. grain in 2008, while Mexico will bring in 11.3 mil75% of it, not 3%, as the U.S. government claims.20 To lion.25 Long live comparative advantage! 32

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Here Comes Oil Privatization! By El Fisgón , , Oil has sustained the Mexican economy since Lazaro Cardenas expropriated it in 1938 and founded the state oil company, Pemex.

I expropriate for sovereignty, for the future of Mexico … and because the foreign oil companies are a bunch of crooks.

Oil is vital to the Mexican economy. Industry needs electricity and oil.

Today, oil is the principal source of income in Mexico. For every peso the government spends, 40 centavos come from oil.

Enough with your populism. The government has to sell the oil industry.

Public companies are inefficient, but if they are privatized corruption will end, there will be better service . . . Listen…

Why?

What?

Because I want to buy it.

How can you say with a straight face that privatization will end corruption after the banking scandals, the phony bailouts, the sugar scandal, the sale of Mexicana airlines?

But Pemex has become a disaster.

Yes, because the neoliberal governments have wanted to privatize it for years.

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii Every time the neoliberal governments want to privatize, a company, first they bankrupt it. And this is what former presidents Salinas, Zedillo, Fox, and now Calderon have tried to do with Pemex. For decades, the corruption of the oil workers union, STPRM, and its leader carlos Romero Deschamps, has been widespread, but far from fighting it, the neoliberal governments have nourished it. So to make it worth your while, we made the administration extremely corrupt.

The neoliberals have barely invested anything in the petrochemical industry. For 25 years, not a single refinery has been built on Mexican soil. We’ve gotten to the point of selling cheap crude, only to buy back 30% of the gasoline we consume at high prices.

During the Fox administration, the government received $335 billion from oil. In 2006, because of the rise of oil prices on the world market, Mexico received $70 billion extra! From all this, practically nothing was reinvested in Pemex. Almost all went to huge salaries for the bureaucracy, lavish expenditures, and contracts for Fox’s in-laws.

Pemex is the second-largest oil company in the world before taxes, but the government is de-capitalizing, impoverishing, and bleeding it. In 2006, Pemex’s sales were over $90 billion...

But it paid $79 billion to the government in taxes.

They don’t understand business. Business is what the government gives you, not what you give to them.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii Nevertheless, they haven’t succeeded in bankrupting Pemex.

No. The greatest business in the world is the commission somebody’s going to make for selling Pemex at bargainbasement prices.

Oil is the greatest business in the world. Extracting a barrel of oil costs $3, and it sells for more than $100.

Privatizing oil is stealing from the nation. Why are you so insistent?

I told you, for the commission…

And for Bush and the oil companies?

Oil is a nonrenewable resource, and every day the world has fewer proven reserves. Well, I’m gonna keep at it.

Well, yes.

For Washington, it is strategic to appropriate all the big proven reserves on the planet. To appropriate the reserves of the Middle East, Washington started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. and Spanish oil companies want the Mexican oil reserves, , and Calderon seems ready to hand them over. Could that be why both Washington and madrid unconditionally support, Calderon’s illegitimate presidency? Is this yet another cost of the 2006 electoral fraud?

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

Privatizing oil is putting Mexico’s present and future at risk, the possibility of becoming an independent , country. But Calder0n insists on energy reform. It almost seems that he has commitments to the investors and multinationals that are demanding that he give them the oil. In fact, the privatization of oil is already under way amid investment in related activities and riskcontracts (which violate the Constitution). What’s more, it is known that there are at least five contracts pending with foreign oil companies, and that they want to give Texaco the country’s largest system of oil ducts. , Now Calderon and his allies want to legalize privatization, which is still prohibited by the Constitution.

At the beginning of 2008, the PAN, allied with the PRI, tried to quickly approve the oil privatization. Nonetheless, a legislative strike by the opposition combined with grassroots mobilization stopped this project.

A debate has begun in the Senate, and it has been clear that the PANistas lack arguments to defend their reform.

We don’t have the force of logic, but we do have the logic of force.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

Mexico’s “New Labor Culture”: An Interview With Union Leader Benedicto Martínez

By Fred Rosen

Daniel Rodríguez

n july, nacla’s fred rosen interviewed Benedicto Martínez, a longtime leader of Mexico’s militant, independent labor federation, the Authentic Workers Front (FAT) and vice president of the broader independent labor alliance, the National Workers Union (UNT). Martínez spoke to Rosen by phone from the FAT offices in Mexico City. The FAT was founded in 1960 to provide workers with a democratic and independent alternative to Mexico’s “corporate unions”—that is, unions that were incorporated into the then ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Although the PRI is currently out of power, corporate unionism persists in Mexico, and the FAT finds itself playing the same role it played almost five decades ago. In 1998, the group became part of the larger, more powerful UNT, which has attempted to form an autonomous movement to promote workers’ rights and interests, and to democratize and fight for the independence of the country’s trade union structure. Martínez spoke about the current state of labor in Mexico and about the attempts of the current ruling party, the National Action Party (PAN), to implement legislation that would

bring about what some members of the PAN have called a “new labor culture”—a “culture” that would weaken workers’ ability to engage in union organizing and collective bargaining and, in general, make labor relations more “flexible,” work contracts more informal, and employment more precarious. Since the 1980s, keeping wage inflation low and making the country an attractive lowcost production site for export-oriented transnational companies have been key components of both PRI and PAN economic policy. The unions that have historically been incorporated in the PRI have been called upon to keep wages under control, and in the process, they seem to have cemented their reputation as institutions whose first loyalty is to their political party rather than to their members. In this context, how would you describe the current state of workers’ wellbeing in Mexico? Well, over the long period you mention, there has been a worsening of working people’s conditions accompanied by the ceding of work-

Fred Rosen is NACLA’s senior analyst.

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

ers’ rights to the global labor market. There has been a concerted attack on independent unions, a retreat in adherence to labor laws, and a greater control of the work process by employers. There has also been a generalized attack on collective contracts. And things are not getting better. Last year, the first year of Felipe Calderón’s government, the minimum wage [to which many workers’ wages are tied] rose by 3.9%. But at the same time, the cost of a basic basket of goods just about doubled. Half the labor force is now working in the informal sector, without benefits or protections. More than half the new jobs created by the Calderón government have been temporary. The companies, in their desire to compete, have sacrificed many benefits, like paid sick days, that used to be standard. Little by little, employers—big ones as well as small ones—have been reducing benefits to cut costs. So there is a serious problem.

compatible with the administration’s neoliberal economic model. While his anti-labor reforms never became law, they must have had an effect on the mood of working people.

At the beginning of the decade, when Vicente Fox was president, his labor secretary, Carlos Abascal, tried to promote what he called a “new labor culture,” which would make labor more “flexible,” cut back on social protections, and in general make labor relations more 38

Workers don’t have time to listen to this discourse. We try to keep them informed about issues like labor law reform, but they are mainly worried about concrete things like the disappearance of good jobs, growing insecurity on their own jobs, and the dramatic rise in the cost of

People live defensively, trying to figure out how to earn enough to live on, how to complement their wages. And today more than ever, unemployment haunts the dreams of workers as the global labor market moves jobs from one country to another. Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution establishes a series of conditions of welfare for the working class, but it is not being complied with. In that sense, working people’s welfare is only a discourse, not a reality. And what do workers think about this contradiction between discourse and reality?

Mario Vázquez de la Torre / MVT / LATINPHOTO.org

Electrical workers install power lines in Toluca.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

report: mexico ii

living. Many export-based companies are reducing production, and in the auto industry, for example, there have been some plant shutdowns and layoffs. On top of this, the PAN government is trying to make it harder for workers to defend their rights. This creates a climate of insecurity and fear.

lective contract. Among other things, workers calling for a collective contract would have to publicly identify themselves beforehand, leading to the easy formation of a “blacklist” of pro-union workers who could be fired before any union was in place. The Lozano law would also allow for virtually indefinite series of temporary, probationary, and training work contracts, all This “climate of insecurity and fear” must be driving of which would leave workers in a totally unprotected the explosive growth of migration. work situation. The opposition to the Lozano reforms has been Yes, but there is another factor behind migration. Rural strong, but the employers are moving ahead with their areas are being abandoned because government help and designs for labor flexibility, and in that sense, while the resources no longer exist, so the younger generations are law hasn’t been reformed, daily practice is incorporatno longer interested in remaining in the countryside. ing many measures to make labor more flexible. Much They can no longer live with dignity. But as you suggest, of this, in fact, goes against the letter of the law, but it not only campesinos are migrating to the Unitis being implemented in the spirit of the law ed States. People from the cities are also migrat- The PAN has that follows from the reform of the “new labor ing because the problem of jobs and wages is closed ranks culture.” very serious. This phenomenon has correctly with some been called a political safety valve. What does that mean in practice? Does Mexico need better labor laws, or is the problem that existing laws are being violated?

of the most corrupt corporate unions of the PRI, particularly the National Teachers Union.

It’s a combination of things. It’s a question of the global labor market, which has brought a new dynamic to the companies. And with NAFTA and the opening of the economy, many companies have not been prepared for a competition of the order of magnitude that’s now going on. There are many pressures to cut costs, and the easiest costs to reduce are the wages and salaries of the workers. On the other hand, the government has not given priority to the well-being of wage earners. They have left it to the good will of the employers, who can basically do whatever they want. The labor reform that began to take shape during the Fox administration, named after Abascal, finally turned out to be a setback for the working class. Today many things are happening that the Abascal reforms didn’t contemplate, but are becoming regular practices of the Labor Boards [the local committees that administer Mexico’s labor laws]. Now Calderón’s secretary of labor, Javier Lozano, has proposed further anti-labor reforms that would make it even harder to organize. For example, the Lozano reforms would mandate that workers go through a series of hard-to-comply-with requirements before they could call a strike against a company that refused to sign a col-

In practice there are “training contracts” that simply state that you are working in a company that is offering you some on-the-job training and therefore paying you less. In addition, they are also establishing shifts that are convenient for the company. There are also contracts in which workers have lost parts of their benefits and part of their wages. What’s worse is that the government is combining the new discourse about individual rights with new alliances with the old corrupt and undemocratic corporate unions. It has promoted old-style “protection contracts” in which the company makes a deal with a corporate union to “protect” it from the organization of a legitimate union. It has also permitted the evasion of constitutional labor responsibilities through subcontracting and outsourcing many jobs. All this has made employment more precarious. According to the government and the business community, it’s the only way to maintain levels of competition. When it was out of power, the PAN used to be critical of the corporate unionism of the PRI. They used to argue for a democratization of labor relations. Now that they are in power, they have closed ranks with some of the most corrupt corporate unions of the PRI, particularly the National Teachers Union, to cut the power of independent unions and workers in general. Under the old corporate system, workers were gen39

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

report: mexico ii

erally better off if they belonged to a union, no matter how corrupt that union happened to be. You seem to be saying that’s no longer the case. There’s a distinction here. There are independent unions and there are corporate unions, many of which have pledged their loyalty to the PAN. Many corporate unions have no real presence in the workplace. They are not particularly concerned with the welfare of the workers. The union leadership allows the company to make decisions as long as the leadership gets a share of company revenues. And the company decides according to its own needs. This is a problem. We in the independent union movement are on the defensive, trying to avoid situations in which workers lose rights they have already won. Many workers are working under “protection contracts,” in which not even they know that they have a union. That’s even worse than a normal corporate contract. Under those conditions, the firm decides everything. For example, just recently a worker came to us for help. His union, a corporate union, is about to hold an assembly in which they will announce that they have agreed to remove all the benefits that the collective contract now has, and the workers will be left with nothing more than their wages. The assembly has been called to inform the workers, nothing more, not to discuss, just to inform them that the collective contract has been modified. In cases like these, the workers have no way to defend themselves from these abuses. How can the FAT and the UNT help workers in that kind of situation? We can help them organize themselves, but that is the serious problem we have. When workers get together and try to organize, the company responds with repression and firings. So given the difficult situation workers are living through, there’s a fear of losing their jobs. So there are many abuses here. Nonetheless, although the situation is hard, there are groups of workers that decide to organize and look for help. They come to us or to other groups to look for help, but in many cases they simply end up switching from one corporate union to another. The problem is the lack of knowledge that would be useful and helpful in really changing their work situation. Does the UNT see itself playing a broader political role? Now more than ever the UNT expresses the demands of the workers and the independent unions, and is in the forefront of opposition to the Lozano Law, which is even 40

worse than the earlier version of labor legislation proposed by Abascal. Although the proposed Lozano Law has not been put up for a vote, there is a fear that in the next session of the legislature it will be presented. So the UNT has been demonstrating, educating workers, and defending them from this law, which would circumscribe the right to unionize even further. And the UNT has also come to the defense of a broader alliance with the campesinos and with the progressive organizations of civil society for a struggle in defense of the energy sector and progressive social legislation. Does the UNT represent significant sectors of the labor movement? The strongest unions are those that represent telephone workers, social security workers, university employees, pilots, and flight attendants—basically the unions that founded the confederation about 10 years ago. They are also bringing in more local sections and national unions, not enough to change the world of labor here in Mexico, but yes, we are making progress. Has the electoral situation been discouraging to you? The struggle of the FAT, since its founding, has been to democratize the Mexican workplace and to democratize the labor movement as well. A strong party on the left would be very helpful to this struggle. So far, with all its internal discord, the PRD has been unable to play that role. But I don’t have very much confidence in the political parties. I think the challenge will come from a coming together of social organizations. Citizens have to pressure for change from below. This economic policy that’s being carried out to benefit just a few has to be changed from the grass roots. I also think the alliances from below have to stretch across national boundaries. I think that’s the only alternative we really have. There have to be links at the international level. Today it’s clear, for example, that we can’t fight against Monsanto on the question of grains without international allies. We have a situation now where these big companies blackmail workers in various countries. They say to workers in the United States, for example, if you don’t accept the conditions we are offering you, we will simply move to another country. That’s what we have here as well. We still have a long way to go, establishing common demands about wages, social security, and minimum standards in all countries.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

notes Elections in Mexico 1. Portions of this essay draw on many of the ideas I developed in collaboration with Enrique Conejero in the introduction we wrote together for a book we coedited, Democratización y globalización en América Latina (Spain: Universidad Miguel Hernández, 2005). 2. Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship and Community (Verso, 1992), 13. 3. Jorge Carpizo, El presidencialismo mexicano (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1994), 121– 22. 4. Silvia Gómez Tagle, “Public Institutions and Electoral Transparency,” in Kevin Middlebrook, ed., Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S. Mexican Studies, 2004), 88–95. 5. Norberto Bobbio, El futuro de la democracia (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 25. 6. David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 13. 7. Claus Offe, “El dilema de la sincronía: democracia y economía de mercado en Europa Oriental,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales no. 12 (May–August 1992): 189–206; José M. Maravall, “Economía y regimenes políticos,” Working Papers, Instituto Juan March, no. 59 (1994). 8. Adam Prezeworski, Michael Álvarez E., José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 164–68. 9. John Ackerman, “Democratización: pasado, presente y futuro,” Perfiles Latinoamericanos: Revista de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Sede México 14, no. 28 (July–December 2006): 117–58. Armoring NAFTA 1. See the official Web site, www.spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp. 2. Thomas Shannon, speech to the Council on the Americas, April 3, 2008. 3. Alejandro Estivill, conference on SPP, Universidad de las Américas (Cholula), June 12, 2008. 4. “Aprueban diputados que se penalice el delito de terrorismo . . . ,” La Jornada, February 21, 2007. 5. S ee “A Primer on Plan Mexico,” available at http://americas.irc-online.org. 6. I nternational Crisis Group, “Latin American Drugs: Losing the Fight,” March 14, 2008, available at www.crisisgroup.org. 7. S ee the recent report by the international Civil Commission on Human Rights, available at cciodh.pangea.org. 8. S ee Lourdes Godínez Leal, “Combating Impunity and Femicide in Ciudad Juárez,” NACLA Report on the Americas 41, no. 3 (May/June 2008): 31–33. 9. S ee Erich Moncada, “Mexico’s Military and the Murder at Zongolica (II),” NarcoNews, April 10, 2007, available at narcosphere.narconews.com. 10. A ssociated Press, “Report: Mexican Army Used Rape, Torture in Drug War,” September 21, 2007, available at www.usatoday.com. 11. V íctor Quintana, “Drug Trafficking, Violence and Repression,” CIP Americas Program, May 8, 2008, available at americas.irc-online.org. 12. Ibid. 13. J osé Galán and Laura Poy Solano, “Abierta violación al espíritu constitucional: expertos,” La Jornada, April 28, 2007. See also testimonies on the CCIODH video at cciodh.pangea.org. 14. L atin American Working Group, the Center for International Policy, and the Washington Office on Latin America, “Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S. Military Programs in Latin America,” September 2004, available at ciponline. org. 15. “ La Consulta, un logro del movimiento ciudadano,” La Jornada, June 23, 2008. 16. I nterior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño has been questioned for signing contracts with his family’s oil company while serving in public office; Ulises Ruiz, governor of Oaxaca state, stands accused of authoritarianism and violent repression of the social movement; Mario Marín, governor of Puebla, was recorded discussing the apprehension and harassment of human rights defender Lydia Cacho with a Puebla industrialist allegedly connected to the pedophile rings Cacho wrote about. 17. C entro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, “Sobre la situación de los derechos humanos en Chiapas, Balance Anual 2007,” available at www.frayba.org (translation by the author).

Displaced People 1. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response,” Washington, D.C., 1990. 2. USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service, “Mexico: Trade,” available at www.ers. usda.gov. 3. North American Transportation Statistics Database, “Transportation and the Economy,” Table 2-3, “Employment in Transportation and Related Industries,” available at nats.sct.gob.mx. 4. Jeanne Batalova, “Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Information Source, available at www.migrationinformation.org. 5. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response.” 6. Associated Press, “Mexican President Decries Anti-Immigrant Tone,” February 14, 2008. 7. Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, “Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform,” January 7, 2004. 8. “México es tercer país receptor de remesas en el mundo, según Banco Mundial,” July 15, 2008, www.informador.com.mx. 9. Inter-American Development Bank, “Remittances and Development: The Case of Mexico” June 28, 2005, available at www.iadb.org. Desolation 1. This article is a revised, updated version of Sergio Zermeño, “Desolación en México. Los campesinos del siglo XXI,” Nueva Sociedad no. 190 (March/April 2004): 37–50. 2. WTO study cited in Reuters, “Países en desarrollo pierden 24 mil mdd por subsidios al agro,” published in La Jornada, August 27, 2003. 3. Víctor Quintana, “Saldos del TLCAN,” La Jornada, December 31, 2002. 4. José Luis Calva, quoted in La Jornada, November 16, 1991. 5. Comisión de Desarrollo Rural de la Cámara de Diputados, La soberanía económica de México en riesgo, cited in La Jornada, November 28, 2002. See also Tania Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras,” in Masiosare, a supplement to La Jornada, January 12, 2003. 6. Blanca Rubio, Explotados y excluidos (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 2001), 128–29. 7. Ibid., 127, 131. 8. Luis Hernández Navarro, “La guerra de los alimentos,”La Jornada, October 22, 2002. 9. A lejandro Nadal, “Maíz, cosechar tempestades,” La Jornada, January 17, 2007. 10. Ibid. 11. Antonio Sánchez, “Entrevista: Fernando Canales Clariond: comercio, la prioridad,” Reforma, January 22, 2003. 12. Hubert Cartón de Grammont, “El mercado de trabajo en el campo: unas reflexiones a partir de la lectura del libro Portraits de Bahia, de Hèléne Rivière d’Arc,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología no. 2 (1991). 13. Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras”; Rubio, Explotados y excluidos. 14. Juan Antonio Zúñiga, “Creció 55 por ciento la importación de alimentos básicos en los pasados seis años,” La Jornada, January 16, 2007. 15. Roberto González Amador and David Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo altos precios de alimentos: FMI,” La Jornada, April 11, 2008. 16. Ibid. 17. Silvia Ribero, “Agrocombustibles: secretos y trampas del Banco Mundial,” La Jornada, July 5, 2008. 18. Peter Rosset, “La hora de La Vía Campesina,” La Jornada, May 9, 2008. 19. Imelda García, “Crece importación de fertilizantes,” Reforma, May 3, 2008. 20. Ribero, “Agrocombustibles.” 21. Alejandro Nadal, “Crisis alimentaria: ganancias para buitres,” La Jornada, May 7, 2008. 22. Víctor Suárez Carrera, “La economía agroalimentaria, un desastre,” La Jornada del Campo, April 8, 2008; González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo.” 23. González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo.” 24. Israel Rodríguez J. , “El alza en alimentos cuesta a México 5 mil mdd: Banxico,” La Jornada, May 4, 2008. 25. Verónica Martínez, “Refleja México ineficiencia en agro,” Reforma, April 29, 2008.

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

reviews

Cold War Terror in the Americas: A History Lesson By Pablo Morales

The War on DemocracY

(DVD, 2007), a film by John Pilger, 94 mins, www.bullfrogfilms.com

perhaps the most poignant moment

in John Pilger’s latest documentary, The War on Democracy, comes during an interview with Sister Dianna Ortiz, the U.S. nun tortured by Guatemalan security forces in 1989. “I’ve heard people say that what happened in Abu Ghraib is an isolated incident,” she says, with a mix of outrage and disbelief. “And I just shake my head and say: Are we on the same planet? Aren’t you aware of our history? Isn’t history taught in the classroom about the role of the U.S. government in human rights violations?” 42

The answer, of course, is no. And that is the film’s raison d’etre: to tell the story of U.S.-sponsored terror in Latin America. The opening montage sets the stage for this telling, linking the era of Cold War interventionism to the present day as it ranges over archival footage of Richard Nixon’s triumphant arrival in Guatemala City, following the Arbenz coup; Bush I being heckled at a press conference as he lauds U.S.-backed Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani for “trying to do a job for democracy”; and Bush II declaring that the United States is not interested in imposing anything on the unwilling, but in helping others “find their own voice.” The film then shifts its attention to presentday Venezuela, where Pilger covers the Hugo Chávez phenomenon and weaves the story of the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt into a wider history. The film’s narrative of the coup attempt covers little ground not already covered in the Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—the military-business conspiracy, the fabricated pretext of a massacre supposedly carried out by chavistas, the media’s role as the coup’s most effective weapon, the coup leaders’ dissolution of the National Assembly and Supreme Court, the popular uprising that led to Chávez’s reinstatement. But Pilger does add an important epilogue: Not only did the U.S. government know that the coup plot

was afoot (as declassified CIA documents demonstrate), but it had been channeling millions of dollars through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to leading Venezuelan opposition groups that played key roles in mobilizing the coup and whose members were given cabinet positions under the short-lived dictatorship. Cut to Pilger interviewing former assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega, denying U.S. complicity with an appeal to logic: “Just because [the coup] happened after we provided support to these groups,” he says, “doesn’t mean it happened because we supported them.” Pilger peers over his glasses, and replies in his Aussie-accented baritone: “Mmm, yes, of course.” (The film doesn’t mention that Noriega was himself a USAID functionary during the 1980s, charged with funneling “nonlethal aid” to the Nicaraguan Contras.) Pilger emphasizes Chávez’s status as a “hate figure” in the U.S. media, clipping together shots from cable-TV talking heads describing him as “an extreme threat” and his government as “criminal.” Echoing Pat Robertson, another says Chávez “should have been killed a long time ago.” Yet this is fluff compared to the histrionics we see from Venezuelan media, with their branding of Chávez as the second coming of Hitler. (Any viewer who thinks Venezuela is now somehow a bastion of state censorship will come away thoroughly disabused of the notion.)

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

reviews

Pilger interviews Chávez and visits La Vega, a hillside barrio in Caracas. There, he visits a governmentsponsored misión, where members discuss how to get deeds for their homes, and a state-subsidized grocery store, where a woman tells the camera that before Chávez, “I didn’t know we had rights like everyone else,” as she shows us a package of white beans stamped with an article from the Bolivarian Constitution. These scenes are contrasted with a visit to toney East Caracas, where John Vink, an affluent Venezuelan, welcomes the dapper, well-mannered Pilger, a perceived class peer, into his fortified mansion and shows off his copious objets d’art. Vink tells him: “We adore Miami. It’s our second home. We are very U.S.-minded.” Vink, like another businessman

Pilger interviews, is contemplating leaving Venezuela, which he sees as descending, or soon to be descending, into Bolshevik chaos. Yet, as Pilger notes, “capitalism has never had it better” in Venezuela. What, then, accounts for this panicky upper-class desire to escape? Pilger says it stems from the business class’s loss of political power, and leaves it at that. Unfortunately, the film, needing to get on with the story of U.S. interventionism, doesn’t have time to explore this important question with much depth. Indeed, it feels at some points as if the filmmaker was unsure whether this film ought to be a social documentary on contemporary Venezuela (which it is for about the first 40 minutes), or whether it should hew more closely to a survey of Washington-

supported interventions. With the story of the Venezuelan coup established, the film turns to the postwar history of U.S. interventionism in Latin America, scrolling the names of 21 countries in the region attacked by the United States, directly and indirectly, during Pilger’s lifetime. The retrospective of this history begins with the 1954 CIA coup against Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz, whom Pilger calls “the Chávez of his day.” The account of the invasion and coup—which would serve as the model for subsequent operations around the world, inaugurating the era of “plausible deniability”—includes footage of the late CIA operative (and Watergate figure) E. Howard Hunt matterof-factly explaining the strategy he helped devise against Arbenz: “What

Dispatches From Latin America:

On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism Edited by Vijay Prashad and Teo Ballvé In Dispatches from Latin America, 28 authors report on countries from Mexico to Argentina to map the contemporary political and social territory. Drawn from the pages of NACLA Report, this collection offers a riveting series of accounts that bring new insight into the region’s struggles and victories. With shrewd analysis rendered in accessible language, Dispatches lays plain the complex and vitally important conditions unfolding in 21st-century Latin America.

“The informed and penetrating in-depth studies that appear in Dispatches explore the complex variety of popular initiatives that are taking shape, their achievements and prospects, in what has become perhaps the most exciting region of the world.” Noam Chomsky, author of Failed States and Turning the Tide

buy online at nacla.org/publications 43

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

reviews

we wanted to do was have a terror campaign,” he says, “to terrify Arbenz particularly, terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland, Belgium, and Poland at the onset of World War II.” A similar, though more circumspect description—without reference to the Nazis as role models— comes from former CIA director Richard Helms, who is shown telling the Senate in 1975 that in the years following the Cuban revolution, the agency had task forces “striking at Cuba constantly,” attempting to blow up power plants, ruin sugar mills, and “do all kinds of things.” The narrative then shifts to Santiago, Chile, where Washington’s first neoliberal experiment in Latin America was only made possible by the bombing of the presidential palace. During this segment, Pilger again confronts an apologist for U.S. policy during the era, this time Duane Clarridge, chief of CIA operations in Latin America during 1981–84, and a key architect of the Contra war. His response to Pilger stands out both for its denial and its frankness. Naomi Klein recently remarked in an interview in these pages that “the right is embarrassed about the Latin American laboratory [for neoliberal policy].” She continued: “They frontdate the free-market crusade from its real start in 1973 to the 1980s, with Reagan and Thatcher, and then argue that the crusade was peaceful and democratic. They try to forget those early years under Pinochet.” Not so Clarridge, a dedicated Cold Warrior with little interest in keeping up appearances. At first denying that the fascist regime’s murder and torture victims numbered in the thousands, he asserts—evoking Madeleine Albright 44

on the disastrous Iraq sanctions of the 1990s—that Pinochet’s terror was worth it. “Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be changed in a rather ugly way,” he says. Later, he hails Pinochet’s “economic miracle,” spearheaded by Milton Friedman’s Chicago boys, who introduced “real economics” to Chile. The film then circles back to the present day, visiting perhaps Latin America’s most potent site of antineoliberal struggle: El Alto, Bolivia. Here, the story of repression is continued, as we see footage of the Bolivian army marching into the city and listen to Father Juan Delfin Mamani, as he shows us the church where the bodies of protesters were brought. But that story line is reversed, as Delfin recounts those tumultuous days of October 2003, when Bolivians swept into the streets of La Paz and threw out the Washington-friendly president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Ending on this upbeat note, Pilger warns any future wouldbe autocrats against crossing the “people on the hillsides,” invoking both Caracas barrios and El Alto. The film closes with some gorgeous wide-angle photography of both locales, nicely set to Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Though Pilger doesn’t say so explicitly, if Arbenz was the Chávez of his day, then the reverse is true: Chávez— together with Morales and Correa, and even Lula, Bachelet, and Kirchener—is the Arbenz of today, yet the coup against him failed. The dirty tricks of the past haven’t been working today, and this is really the key point. For the time being, at least, the strategy of U.S.-backed coups in Latin America has effectively been thwarted. Pablo Morales is NACLA’s editor.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

reviews

A Tale of Two Colonies: Tutelage and Accommodation By Luis H. Francia

American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico During U.S. Colonialism by Julian Go, Duke University Press, 2008, 377 pp., $23.95 paperback the yankee abroad has always been

a reluctant imperialist. He dons the mask of the kind but stern patriarch, reluctant to administer discipline, but forced to do so for the good of those for whom he claims responsibility. The paradox of Puritanism—which runs deep in the U.S. psyche—compels him to justify his guilty imperialist pleasures on moral and humanitarian grounds. The latest, most obvious manifestation of

this is Iraq, where the rationale for invasion—once the claims that this former U.S. ally possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to Al Qaeda were debunked—quickly shifted to the altruistic notion of introducing democracy to Middle Eastern soil. Iraqis, heirs to one of the planet’s oldest civilizations, would be schooled in the ways of a free and democratic government, U.S.-style. In his book, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning, Julian Go, a sociologist at Boston University, traces Yankee colonialism, conceived as a tutelary vehicle for responsible self-government, to the War of 1898. In this conflict, which inaugurated the so-called American Century, the United States easily defeated Spain in three months and, upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris in December of that year, took over the reins in Las Islas Filipinas and Puerto Rico. In the case of the Southeast Asian archipelago, the United States found itself embroiled in the vicious PhilippineAmerican War, predating the one in Vietnam by more than half a century and officially lasting from 1899 to 1902, but unofficially waged for several more years. The bloody conflict resulted in the deaths of about 400,000 Filipinos, and more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers. Against the backdrop of Manifest Destiny and the red-meat urgings of Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden,” the United States proclaimed that its approach to colonial rule would be one

of benevolent assimilation, and that its policies would reflect the unimpeachable desire to teach the subject populations to build and maintain a democracy. The premises of such an approach are obvious enough: one, that Filipinos and Puerto Ricans, left to their own devices, would be unable to “learn” democracy, and two, that the U.S. occupiers would be exemplary teachers. Operating with this neat rationale, however, meant ignoring a few inconvenient truths. For instance, the Malolos government that had been set up by the Philippine revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo and his cabinet, declaring independence in 1898, was self-servingly portrayed by Washington as an elitist attempt to grab power, as Go puts it, “for their own ends in disregard for the rights and opinions of the mass of the population.” Similar sentiments were expressed about the Puerto Ricans, who had already been steeped in party politics but were nevertheless viewed as corrupt as “the caciques of Latin American republics.” While studies of U.S. rule in each place have been extensive, Go points out that no attempt at a systematic comparative analysis between the two experiences has been made, and it is precisely such an analysis he seeks to construct in this book. The author draws a lucid portrait of U.S. colonialism as a tutelary project in its first decade and a half, from 1898 to 1912, and examines how the respec45

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

reviews

tive Filipino and Puerto Rican elites responded. The viewfinder Go uses for his analysis is culture, since it “provided the schema by which tutelary policy was conceived and then adopted” and “was also a critical dimension of enacting and fulfilling [such policy] on the ground.” Or, put another way, the meanings each group of elites took from or imparted to U.S. notions of democratic rule were tied in to their particular cultural models. He thus charts the responses of the respective elites, the “students,” as it were. Initially, the two elites reacted identically, attempting to “domesticate” U.S. colonialism to fit within their own schemas, already conditioned and shaped by Hispaniza-

tion. Both elites expected a certain degree of autonomy—the Puerto Ricans would use it as a platform for statehood, while the Filipinos aspired to independence—and that the occupiers would act as patrons. But these expectations were only intermittently met, as Go documents. You would think then that both elites would alter their expectations in similar ways. In fact, the two groups would later on diverge: The Puerto Ricans minimized their own schemas while willfully incorporating those of the North Americans, thereby effecting “a structural transformation” (italics in original). Thus, instead of aiming for the concentration of power in one jefe or party, they accepted sharing it, albeit reluctantly, with other political

groups. As for the Filipino elites, they “continually drew upon their preexisting schemas to make meaning of tutelage” and “reproduced their prior political culture while changing it in a very different way. Rather than abjuring their prior schemas for new ones”—as the Puerto Ricans did— “they modified them so as to revalue their preexisting system.” So why the divergence? Go provides several possible reasons, among them the fact that in Puerto Rico there had already been some form of elections, even under the Spanish. Before the outbreak of the War of 1898, there were already two major political parties on the island, the Incondicionales, or Spanish party, and the nativist Autonomist

NACLA welcomes David Bacon to New York on September 11, 2008 to discuss Illegal People. Check nacla.org for details.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

reviews

Party, headed by Luis Muñoz Rivera. Months before the war began, the Autonomists won island elections, thereby gaining a certain degree of self-government but still in the protective embrace of Madrid. This wasn’t the case in the Philippines, where any putative attempts at reform and eventual self-government were stifled, mostly at the behest of the almighty friar orders that had in essence become the state. Only when the Philippine Revolution of 1896 began were there half-hearted efforts toward democratic reform, and by then, of course, it was too little, too late. Thus, patronage, while a critical element in the colonial histories of both, had, in the case of Puerto Rico, a party-based element, while in the Philippines, it did not. Therefore “the Americans’ ruling strategies did not undermine the predictions the elite had made of them.” Put another way, U.S. concessions, no matter how minor, still represented a great deal more than Spanish tyranny ever offered. The reasons for the divergence Go cites are indeed significant, yet I wish he had paid more attention to the Philippine-American War’s role in such divergence. He asks, “Did the war in the Philippines have long-term repercussions that somehow shaped the fact that the Filipino elites’ path diverged from that of their Puerto Rican counterparts?” He concludes that it didn’t, since U.S. strategies in both places were similar. This is faulty logic: Such similarity is not evidence that differences were inconsequential, but simply that on a policy level, the Yankees may have chosen to ignore the fact of a war on the ground. One senses that Go himself isn’t quite convinced of his own argument, since he states elsewhere that from one perspective, “if tutelage in the Philippines failed to insinuate liberal democ-

Fumigation: Spreading Coca,Threatening Colombia’s Ecological and Cultural Diversity “The definitive dismantling of this failed policy…does an expert job of questioning claims that the fumigation program poses no health or environmental risks.” – Center for International Policy, “Plan Colombia and Beyond” The number of hectares fumigated in Colombia climbed from 60,700 in 1999 to 172,000 in 2006. In the same seven-year period, the area under coca cultivation in Colombia rose from 122,500 hectares to 157,200 hectares, according to U.S. government figures. Cocaine production in Colombia rose from 617 metric tons in 2001 to 640 metric tons in 2005, according to UN figures, despite an increase in fumigation every year during that period. Download this report at:

www.wola.org Or order from: (202) 797-2171

washington office on Latin America

racy, it was because the project itself contained inherent contradictions—an argument that parallels the argument that the Philippine-American War led to a loosening of tutelary effort.” Besides, he also notes that the Filipino masses continually exerted pressure on elite colonial intermediaries like Manuel Quezon, first president of the Philippine Commonwealth, through a relationship characterized by reciprocity and mediated through razón and inteligencia, to retain the demand for complete independence. Even if a significant number of the elite were privately more pro-U.S. and would have been happy with the status of a protectorate, they could not say so in public, for the memory of both the 1896 Revolution and the 1899 war against the United States was ever fresh in the minds and hearts of the body politic. The war in this instance is the

“Chemical Reactions: Fumigation – Spreading Coca and Threatening Colombia’s Ecological and Cultural Diversity” is a path-breaking study that will shift the debate on drug control policies and practices in the Andes and beyond.

specter that looms behind Go’s comparisons. If the author had paid it more mind, American Empire, with its many virtues, would have been even more insightful. As it is, the pundits contemplating Iraq’s possible futures would do well to read this book. Had there been more awareness of the complexities of Iraqi culture, particularly its political history, perhaps some of the more egregious and deadly blunders made since start of the U.S. occupation—immoral to begin with—could have been avoided. Luis H. Francia is the author of, among other books, Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago ( Kaya Press, 2001), and is editor, with Angel Velasco Shaw, of Vestiges of War: The PhilippineAmerican War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899–1999 (NYU Press, 2002). He teaches at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. 47

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

reviews

New & Noteworthy The Book of Salsa by César Miguel Rondón (translated by Frances R. Aparicio with Jackie White), University of North Carolina Press, 2008, 340 pp., $20 paperback

Tango: Creation of a Cultural Icon by Jo Baim, Indiana University Press, 2007, 214 pp., $19.95 paperback

Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific by Heidi Carolyn Feldman, Wesleyan University Press, 2006, 308 pp., $24.95 paperback

1980, césar Miguel Rondón’s The Book of Salsa is, according to the translator’s introduction, “the only book-length and systematic study of the production, performances, styles, movements, and musicians within salsa music, not only in New York but also in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.” In approaching salsa as a pan-Caribbean, transnational phenomenon, Rondón, a Venezuelan media personality, addresses some of salsa’s contradictory features, such as its status as both an “urban folklore,” in the words of Rubén Blades, and as a cash cow for music-industry elites who are often, though not always, located in the United States. “This music was produced not for the luxurious ballroom,” Rondón maintains, “but for hard life on the street.” For this edition of the book, its first English translation, Rondón wrote a new chapter titled “All of the Salsas,” a jaunty survey of developments in the genre since 1980—the rise of Dominican merengue; innovative new salsa artists in Colombia and Venezuela, even as New York salsa transformed into the slick, radio-friendly “romantic” version; the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon; and the loss of some the genre’s legends, like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Ray Barretto. A solid introduction to salsa studies. 48

this slim volume on tango mostly

in this study of the afro-peruvian

confines itself to its early, mythical era, roughly 1875 to 1925, and focuses on the evolution of the dance. The author hews to the “relative terra firma of extant written source material,” she says, “in the hope of offering a fresh, strong, yet transparent foundation for the study of many sides of the tango.” Though the dearth of such documents makes definitive history impossible, this account nonetheless locates tango’s moment of consolidation in the 1880s, with the rise of a “new group of people”—urbanized gauchos from the pampas who “re-created themselves within the context of the new waterfront culture of Buenos Aires.” This new tango subculture, composed of compadritos and minas, and marked by the urban patois Lunfardo, likely created its singular dance out of the raw materials of other ballroom social dances, which were not exclusive to the upper class. The author describes early tango dancing as a “contortionist,” more theatrical style, before it gave way to a “smoother” version, amenable to the middle- and upper-class theater stage. Noting that the Buenos Aires of the day was home to few women, the author includes three photographs of man-on-man tango, hinting at the homo-social origins of the dance, which in some accounts evolved as a ritualized conflict, replacing the duel.

“revival,” ethnomusicologist Heidi Carolyn Feldman offers not a definitive history of a genre, but rather a “multisited ‘ethnography of remembering’ about performed reinventions of Afro-Peruvian music in Peru and the United States.” Recently made available in paperback, Feldman’s book riffs on Paul Gilroy’s well-known concept of the Black Atlantic—a vast, transnational cultural world marked by double consciousness and circulating ideas—and proposes the Black Pacific as a newly imagined diasporic community, one that “negotiates ambiguous relationships with local criollo and indigenous culture, and with the Black Atlantic itself.” The book’s chapters offer detailed analyses, ranging over the landmark 1956 performance at the Lima Municipal Theater of Pancho Fierro company, “usually cited as the first major staging of Black Peruvian music and dance in the 20th century”; the rise of Afro-Peruvian theater in the 1960s and 1970s under the lead of choreographer Victoria Santa Cruz; the work of her brother, the poet Nicomedes Santa Cruz; the Perú Negro dance and music company, a key institution in the movement based in Lima; the 1990s “discovery” of singer Susana Baca in the United States; and a short overview of a new generation of AfroPeruvian artists.

originally published in

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

mala

Media Accuracy on Latin America

w w w. m e d i a a c c u r a c y. o r g

Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story By Dan Beeton

rotests in haiti over high food prices

have dominated U.S. media coverage of the country in recent months. While these reports have drawn international attention to an urgent situation, they have often lacked proper context. Haiti’s problems did not suddenly arise, yet the media began paying attention to them only after the food protests erupted in April, especially after six people were killed and the prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, was forced out of office.1 If the U.S. media have failed to cover the story of political instability in Haiti with the depth it deserves, it is certainly not the first time. In fact, it is the latest episode in a pattern of U.S. reporting on Haiti that has given many of the most important stories only a cursory glance. To get an idea of how and why this happens, I interviewed several U.S. journalists who have reported from Haiti, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. This is how one reporter describes some editors’ views on Haiti: “Everyone knows the place is a mess, so what are you going to tell me that’s new? What goes on there does not affect people

in the U.S.” Such lack of editorial interest has led to a near total absence of coverage of some of the most shocking incidents of violence, including the killing of unarmed civilians by United Nations forces, the Haitian National Police (HNP), and death squads. The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah), which began its mission in June 2004, has been marred by scandals of killings, rape, and other violence by its troops almost since it began. As has been documented by human rights investigators and declassified U.S. government documents, Minustah conducted a number of raids into Haiti’s slums—ostensibly to target armed gangs—that have repeatedly left scores of unarmed civilians dead.2 In a now infamous case, Minustah mounted an assault into Cité Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum, on July 6, 2005. According to declassified cables sent that day from the U.S. Embassy in Port-auPrince to the State Department, UN troops fired 22,000 shots in seven hours in a neighborhood where most people live in structures made of flimsy sheet metal.3 Perhaps as many as 30 people were killed by the time it was over, includ-

Dan Beeton is International Communications Coordinator at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Research assistance: Mark Smit.

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

mala

ing a number of children. Freelance journalist Kevin Pina and his colleagues documented the immediate aftermath of the shootings and the statements of victims’ family members and other witnesses on video.4 Even though Pina’s documentation became available two days later, just over a few dozen U.S. newspapers even mentioned the incident during the month of July, according to a Nexis search, most of them running short newswire briefs. These items typically described the incursion as an example of the UN mission’s success in its stated goal of eliminating gang members, ignoring reports of civilian deaths. Similar Minustah assaults in late 2006 and early 2007 received little attention. On December 22, 2006, for example, Minustah troops staged another raid on Cité Soleil in which, according to the Associated Press,

at least five people were killed (Reuters estimated 20).5 A Nexis search reveals that only four U.S. papers reported the incident; three of these ran an AP brief. The U.S. press has given atrocities committed by the HNP similar scant treatment. Since Jean-Bertrand Aristide disbanded the Haitian Army in 1995, the HNP has been the country’s principal domestic armed force. Following Aristide’s ouster in 2004, the HNP took on a more sinister character, assimilating members of anti-Aristide death squads. In one particularly disturbing and welldocumented incident, on August 20, 2005, dozens of machete-wielding men, accompanied by HNP officers in uniform, entered a soccer stadium in Martissant, where a USAID-sponsored game was under way, and hacked and shot at least six people to death while other specta-

tors rushed to escape. This massacre—perhaps one of the most brazen in Haiti to occur since the bloody reign of terror following the 1991 coup d’etat—marked the debut of what The Miami Herald described as a new “death squad,” the lame ti machete (“little machete army”).6 Like much of the violence directed against Aristide supporters and other activists in the 2004–06 period, the massacre was hardly noticed by the U.S. media. The AP, Reuters, Knight Ridder, and United Press International all filed stories, but only six U.S. papers bothered to print anything on the incident in the following month, according to a Nexis search. The Miami Herald was notable for its editorial condemning the incident—it was the only U.S. newspaper that did so. Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post reported the incident.

Latinnews.com

Latin American Newsletters Apply now for a free trial subscription

Since 1967, Latin American Newsletters (LAN) has been at the forefront of providing objective and reliable intelligence on Latin American political, economic, security and social issues. The expert analysis of our editorial team is available in a wide range of influential publications and services. Our subscribers in government, academia, NGOs, and the corporate sector all need to know what LAN is saying on the issues of today and tomorrow! Find out for yourself the true value of this information. To register online for a 7-day no-obligation FREE TRIAL, visit www.latinnews.com As soon as you have registered, you will gain free and unfettered access to the full range of Latin American intelligence services available, including the latest issue of the LAN’s flagship publication, Latin American Weekly Report available in English and Spanish. Other key resources include Latinnews Daily Briefing, Latin American Economy & Business, a Latin American Regional Reports series, and our unique Latin America – Asia Review. For all enquiries, please email info@latinnews.com or call Yolanda Drinot on +44 (0)20 7251 0012

www.latinnews.com

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008

mala

n contrast to the scarcity of organizations like the International coverage of the thousands killed, Republican Institute and the Intertens of thousands raped, and national Foundation for Electoral other atrocities committed since the Systems, which sought to discredit 2004 coup, during the three years and undermine Aristide’s governof Aristide’s second term (2001– ment.10 Reasonable estimates put early 2004), there were numerous the number of political killings—by articles, editorials, and the police or groups supop-eds in U.S. papers, One of the porting his government— including The New York during Aristide’s two terms Times and The Washing- biggest in office at between 10 and ton Post, describing and obstacles to 30. This contrasts with the condemning “despotism” more than 3,000 political under Aristide, whose improving killings that took place un“corrupt government . . . coverage of der the 2004–06 interim regularly used violence government (and the esHaiti is “finding against its opponents” (as timated 50,000 under the one New York Times edito- reporters who Duvalier dictatorships).11 7 rial put it). Many incidents of care enough Some of the supposed political violence and state-sanctioned violence to go there,  atrocities during the indescribed in U.S. news who have the terim-government period later turned out to be fabwere well documented, courage to ricated, such as the “La yet unlike in the years Scierie massacre” in the stand up to while Aristide was in oftown of St. Marc, in which editors who fice, editorials expressopposition groups at first ing outrage in papers like claimed that more than say there are The New York Times and 50 people were killed by sexier stories The Washington Post were Aristide supporters in a conspicuously absent. February 11, 2004, inci- to cover.” As death squads and the dent. Investigators and police murdered Lavalas reporters were able to confirm that supporters and others, the Times only three to five people had been did not run one editorial mentionkilled in a clash between pro- and ing—much less condemning—the anti-Aristide groups.8 sort of rampant political repression In 2007, scholar Peter Hallward and violence it had decried (even made an exhaustive inquiry into when evidence was lacking) under whether the allegations, by the U.S. Aristide. The Post did mention and media and others, of state-sanc- condemn the killings of “over 700” tioned human rights abuses during (while making sure to place some Aristide’s second term are actu- of the blame on “gangs that supally supported by the facts, arguing port Mr. Aristide”).12 Both papers convincingly that in almost every also have yet to run a single editoinstance the answer is no.9 As Hall- rial condemning any of Minustah’s ward and other investigators have killings or rapes of civilians; in fact, noted, the source for most of these the Post has more than once urged claims were groups that at the time Minustah to use greater force in were funded by the U.S. govern- putting down gangs—including in ment, including Washington-based an editorial on June 5, 2005, just

hours before Minustah would kill civilians in Cité Soleil.13 So why so little attention to Haiti after Aristide, when there has been far more political turmoil and violence to document? One reporter told me: “If the United States has spent millions of dollars funding the training of police officers, who then terrorize people or become drug traffickers, the U.S. would not be eager to have this information broadcast to American taxpayers.” Another reporter says his editor turned down an investigative piece on Rudolph Boulos, one of the wealthiest men in Haiti and a board member of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based lobby group. “Boulos is a very wellknown figure in Washington,” the reporter remembers his editor tell51

NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

mala ing him by way of explanation. Each of the journalists I interviewed recognized that U.S. media coverage of Haiti is inadequate in both quantity and in presenting a balanced description of events. It “has absolutely been skewed and misrepresentative of the reality,” in recent years, Pina said. Jennifer Bauduy, a former Reuters correspondent who reported from Haiti for two years, explained in an e-mail: “Haiti is not rich in resources, is not a significant trading partner, is not a major tourist destination, and so is not significant to the U.S. media. Added to this is a combination of racism and the language barrier.” New York Times investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich characterized part of the challenge to presenting a balanced picture of developments in Haiti as such: “Any story that veers from the conventional wisdom is going to encounter resistance.” Veteran freelance reporter Reed Lindsay described U.S. reporting on Haiti as suffering from a kind of parachute approach, in which correspondents unfamiliar with the country swoop in for a week or two. “Their coverage,” he said, “tends to be very

superficial at best, and often very dis- ers, during the interim government torted, because they don’t have time to headed by Gerard Latortue. In 2005 get to know the country.” He said bi- alone, several other journalists were ased reporting often results from cor- killed, including Abdias Jean, Robenrespondents’ reliance on elite sources. son Laraque, and Jacques Roche. “Of course they have to No wonder, then, that go to the poor neighbor- Haiti is not rich according to Bogdanich, hoods,” Lindsay added, one of the biggest obstacles in resources, “and they do, but their to improving coverage of time there is usually very is not a Haiti is “finding reportlimited. The perspectives significant ers who care enough to go that they are exposed to there, who have the courare usually limited and, I trading partage to stand up to editors think, often skewed, and I ner, is not a who say that there are sexthink this is often reflected ier stories to cover.” major tourist in their reporting.” The attention paid to the What’s more, the vio- destination, Aristide administration, lence in Haiti has not spared and so is not and many allegations of journalists. In March 2004, human rights abuses duronly days after Aristide was significant to ing that period that have flown out of the country the U.S. media. not stood up to scrutiny, on a U.S. plane, Spanish underscores how little atreporter Ricardo Ortega was shot and tention Haiti has received even while killed while covering an anti-Aris- some of the worst abuses in Haiti’s tide demonstration. In a recent press modern history have been commitconference, his family presented ted. In the case of Haiti, like other evidence that foreign troops—pos- conflict zones, the rewards may seem sibly U.S. Marines, who had arrived slim indeed for risking one’s life in to ensure Aristide’s removal—were order to uncover atrocities and inresponsible.14 Ortega’s death would convenient truths that might anger mark the first of many attacks on many local authorities—and some the press, especially Haitian report- here in the United States.

Notes 1. For an analysis of media coverage of the “food riots,” see Mark Schuller, “Haitian Food Riots Unnerving but Not Surprising,” Americas Policy Program Special Report (Center for International Policy, April 25, 2008), available at americas. irc-online.org. 2. Thomas Griffin, “Haiti: Human Rights Investigation, November 11–21, 2004” (Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of Miami School of Law, 2005), available at www.law.miami.edu/cshr; Harvard Law School, “Keeping the Peace in Haiti?” available at www.law.harvard.edu. 3. United States Embassy cable to the secretary of state and the U.S. Southern Command, Port-au-Prince, July 19, 2005. The cables were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Haiti Information Project. See www.haitiaction.net for more. 4. Haiti Information Project, “Haiti’s UN Occupation Forces Carry Out Massacre of Poor in Port-au-Prince,” July 8, 2005, and “Evidence Mounts of a UN Massacre in Haiti,” July 12, 2005, available at www.haitiaction.net. Some of this footage is included in Pina’s documentary Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits (Haiti Information Project, 2007). 5. Cited in Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (Verso, 2007), 308.

6. “Police Vigilantes, Machetes and Murder,” The Miami Herald, September 8, 2005. 7. Hallward, Damming the Flood; Athena Kolbe and Royce Hutson, “Human Rights Abuse and Other Criminal Violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: A Random Survey of Households,” The Lancet 368 (September 2006): 864–73; “Haiti’s Descent,” The New York Times, February 5, 2004; “Haiti’s ‘New Chapter,’ ” The New York Times, March 1, 2004. 8. For a more detailed account, see Hallward, Damming the Flood, 159–60. 9. Ibid., 153–74. 10. See also Griffin, “Haiti: Human Rights Investigation”; Walt Bogdanich and Jenny Nordberg, “Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos,” The New York Times, January 29, 2006. 11. Hallward, Damming the Flood, 155. 12. The Washington Post, “A Battalion for Haiti,” June 5, 2005. 13. Ibid. See also “Haiti, One Year Later,” The Washington Post, April 5, 2005. 14. Rosario Gómez, “Militares extranjeros mataron a Ricardo Ortega,” El País, May 10, 2008; Reporters Sans Frontieres, “Finger Pointed at US Interposition Force in the 2004 Death of Journalist Ricardo Ortega,” May 13, 2008, available at www.rsf.org.

Visit nacla.org for more media analysis. 52