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IF NAFTA'S SO GREAT, WHY ARE MEXICANS FLOODING OVER OUR BORDERS

By Carroll Cox

The Bush Administration, like those that preceded it, are apparently still convinced that the global economy is the solution to the world's poverty. Maybe they cling to their cherished policies because they're so far removed from the lives of everyday people. Or maybe we have gone so far down the road of giantism that it's hard to back off and try some different directions. But despite Bush's claims to the contrary, it's becoming increasingly clear that global trade as it is practiced today is primarily of benefit to investors, bankers and transnational corporations.

Mexico is a showcase example of globalism's flaws, weaknesses that are rarely examined and reported by the press.

In the first two years of NAFTA, during which Mexico's deficit trade status with the U.S. soared into surplus territory which has increased every year since, about 2 1/2 million Mexicans lost their jobs. Prices of basic necessities such as gasoline, electricity, beans and tortillas rose at an unprecedented rate. Thousands of small businesses closed down and villages all over Mexico began growing marijuana because mass-produced corn, tortillas and other basic foods undercut local production.

According to Christopher Bollyn, writing in the American Free Press, one year after the crash of the peso in December, 1994, three-quarters of Mexican families could no longer afford the basic foods and services to keep them out of poverty. Even former President Clinton's $50 billion Mexican bailout, composed of U.S. taxpayer funds and financing from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, was not enough to stem the flow of desperate Mexicans flooding over the U.S. border in search of livelihoods.

The U.S. press, entranced with the Clintons and dedicated to extolling the virtues of "free trade," reported widely on Mexico's 30 percent increase in average salaries under NAFTA, but what was rarely mentioned was the 80 percent cost of living increase during the same period! Bollyn said the inflation rate rose to 51 percent in 1996, and another 20,000 small and medium-sized businesses went bankrupt. The Mexican government's own figures revealed that between 1993 and 1999 the real wages of Mexican workers declined by 21 percent and Mexicans earning the minimum wage lost 50 percent of their buying power.

According to Carlos Salas, of the Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA has mainly benefited maquiladora industries and the wealthy. Maquiladoras are assembly factories located in designated "free-trade" zones near the U.S. border, which make use of low-cost Mexican labor by "adding value" to imported components, which are assembled and re-exported.

Ted Lewis of Global Exchange, an international human rights organization based in San Francisco, calls today's so-called free trade, which is, in fact, very selective, "a new colonialism that has had devastating effects both in the Third World and in the industrialized countries."

President Bush will not be able to ignore for much longer that while the New World Order is undoubtedly creating a number of wealthy people, the percentage of the world's people becoming impoverished through the destruction of local economies is growing much faster. And while he may apply a bandaid by granting amnesty to many of the New World Order's Mexican victims, the wounds of the entire world cannot be healed by an America beginning to feel the loss of its own jobs and industries. Announcements citing "productivity growth" mask true economic conditions for the majority of people and are therefore fraudulent.

There simply aren't enough people with money in the world to buy all the goods and services created by the consolidated giants. And the gap between those who have and those who don't is growing every day.

The U.S./Mexican border can expect no relief in the near future.

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