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border protest update ping

Wouldn't such a protest block some of the drug shipments of Presidente Fox and his drug lord friends and employers, making expensive rerouting/rescheduling necessary?

Community organizations from El Paso will join campesino groups from across the border in an effort to better their economic crisis. The organizations blocked a border crossing Wednesday.

Why do I suspect they all left the protest in the same direction?

-Eric

I remember listening to a radio program, with guests representing both Mexican and US labor unions, who together insisted that NAFTA would devastate both sides of the border.

Both were convinced thatr their industries could not compete with industry from the other side.

Since this was Pacifica radio, the emphasis was on the fact that all progressive labor leaders agreed, with no exploring of the fact that they were agreeing to an opposite and mirror-image truth.

There is some truth to both cases, of course. US farmers can outfarm anyone. But still we buy an enormous amount of produce from Mexico, simply because of the longer growing season, and from Chile, due to the reversed growing seasons. This is why we have fresh produce year-round.

Some US industries have moved south to take advantage of lower labor costs. Some have moved back, because they discovered that there are other operating costs in Mexico that are higher. Remember, when a country is poor, there are ususally systemic problems that go beyond the simple lack of money. Mexico is a major oil producer and industrial country. If they are poor, it is not due to a lack of money.

In general terms, its not a zero-sum game, NAFTA has shifted some jobs north, some jobs south, but with a net increase in overall employment on both sides. NAFTA was originally brought about for two reasons; one, to offer a better alternative to the Chinese solution, which many companies have opted for, and also to counteract growing Japanese and Korean investment in Mexico. There is a large and growing Japanese and Korean presence in Mexico. Both countries have invested heavily in our "back yard", and NAFTA was intended to counteract that (although it has had the additional feature of attracting even more foreign investment in Mexico, as Japanese and EU investors take advantage of NAFTA to help their own products).

NAFTA was also expected to slow down illegal migration to the north, and I would say it has had an effect. I worked there for a while, and all of my techs had lived and worked in the US, and all had returned home to work in their chosen trades, once work was available in their home town. Of course the border remains fully open, US industry continues to prefer illegal workers to legal ones, and industrial development has yet to come to all of Mexico, so another half million go north anyway every year.

As an aside, the original motive for Chavez' coup in Venezuela back in '92 was the effort underway to establish a NAFTA agreement between Venezuela and the US. Venexuelans were convinced that it would destroy their economy. He lost the coup, but the free trade agreement was put on hold. He has since been elected, and has done for his economy what "free trade" could never have done, which is to run it completely into the ground. Different subject, though.