The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

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governments. The big issues were about the control of money, real property, and resources, not about trade per se. The results of NAFTA reflected this intention; between 1994 and 2002, U.S. Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico grew by 259%, while trade growth attributable to NAFTA was quite modest, with the exception of such particular areas as corn exports to Mexico. Prior to NAFTA, barriers to industrial trade in most sectors were fairly low and were subject to a variety of exceptions, such as the maquila program encouraging manufacturing enterprises in Mexico financed by foreigners. Much of the debate over NAFTA was a bit hysterical in describing “the sucking sound of U.S. jobs going south.” Some manufacturing firms did move operations to Mexico and some manufacturing enterprises in the U.S. gained new markets in Mexico. The net effect on industrial employment on both sides, however, has been small. vi In agriculture, however, NAFTA brought some powerful changes that particularly affected peasant farmers. NAFTA negotiators proposed an immediate elimination of many agricultural tariffs, including the high tariffs on U.S. grains entering the Mexican market. Some Mexican observers noted that this would mean that corn, or maize, grown on the superb and vast prairie soils of the U.S. Midwest in highly mechanized operations would flood Mexico with cheap corn and cause a collapse in small-scale Mexican corn production. Further, under NAFTA’s terms, the Mexican government’s program to hold up producer prices of corn while providing subsidized, cheaper prices to urban people would have to be eliminated. Predictions of up to fifteen million people leaving the land due to the effect of tariff reductions on corn imported into Mexico led to an agreement to phase in the reductions over a fifteen-year period. In return, the United States government promised to eliminate subsidies to U.S. farmers, which would have moderated the effect
on the Mexican rural economy as well making some Mexican agricultural commodities more competitive in U.S. markets. Most of the tariff reductions have now been made. However, in blatant disregard of the agreements made, the United States subsequently passed the largest farm subsidy program in history, and the subsidies largely go to grain farmers. In some areas of the Midwest, grain farmers receive more than half, and in some counties up to eighty percent, of their income from government subsidies. Iowa received $11.2 billion of federal crop subsidies from 1995 to 2003, most of it going to corn farmers. (The distribution of subsidies—with about ten percent of the largest farm operations receiving more than seventy percent of the subsidies—tends to widen the gap between the rich and the poor and penalize small farmers within the United States, as well as across borders.) vii The combined results of the NAFTA agreement and the continued subsidization of U.S. grain producers are now being felt, after a delay caused both by the phase-in period and by the peso crisis of 1994 that for a time significantly raised the price of U.S. imports to Mexico and made Mexican exports more attractive. By the end of the century, U.S. corn exports to Mexico began to rise rapidly. No firm numbers are available because it is difficult to isolate any single factor in the multiple reasons that Mexicans continue to leave their land and communities, but it is reasonable to believe that 1.3 million Mexican rural families have left the land due to the effects of NAFTA and Article 27 reforms viii . As a result both of the increasing desperation of more Mexicans to cross the border and tightened border security, the direct toll on Mexican migrants has been severe. It has been harder to return to Mexico to
Page 1 and 2: AFTERWORD: The Death of Ramon Gonza
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Page 11 and 12: in the name of austerity.) The pros
Page 13 and 14: some, including myself. People boug
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Page 19 and 20: that was committed to improving the
Page 21 and 22: study strongly suggests permanent n
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Page 27: xvi John Ross, 2000. “Defending t

The Death of Ramon Gonzalez and the 21st Century Dilemma

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