Anti CAFTA Action
from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base
Contents |
[edit] What is CAFTA
CAFTA, or the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is another puzzle piece in the neoliberal push to create the FTAA, or Free Trade Area of the Americas. The first puzzle piece, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was signed in by Congress during the Clinton administration. NAFTA opened up the borders of three North American countries: the U.S., Mexico and Canada, to overarching free trade policies such as eliminations of tariffs on half of all American goods exported to Mexico, and stricter intellectual property provisions.
[edit] Why NAFTA didn't work, and why CAFTA won't either
When NAFTA was signed in 1994, it was proclaimed that Free Trade would encourage economic growth for all countries involved, based on the economic concept of comparative advantage. The argument was that NAFTA would provide more jobs for workers in Mexico, and a larger market for exports from Canada and the United States, due to the now-dissappeared restrictions on business, particularly multinationals, in the three countries.
In reality, the results of NAFTA were disastrous for all but those who already held political and economic power. In Mexico, large multinationals opened up, now with few barriers to production such as pesky labor rights and environmental laws. Corporations now had the power to file "Chapter 11" lawsuits: if they felt as though the labor or environmental standards of a nation were impeding on their right to pursue profits, they could sue the government of that country. From Wikipedia.org's article on NAFTA: "For example Methanex, a Canadian corporation, filed a $970 million suit against the United States, claiming that a Californian ban on MTBE, a substance that had found its way into many wells in the state, was hurtful to the corporation's sales of methanol. In another case Metalclad, an American corporation, was awarded $16.5 million from Mexico after the latter passed regulations banning the toxic waste dump it intended to construct in El Llano, Aguascalientes."
These large businesses technically provided more jobs for workers, since they drove local artisans, manufacturers and farmers in the same sectors out of business, forcing them to find jobs in cities and often, in fields with which they had no experience. "Dumping" also became a large problem: as In the U.S. and Canada, labor unions have opposed the law, due to the resulting shift to cheaper labor in Mexico. Large agribusiness in the U.S., on the other hand, is graced with farm subsidies, which drive down the market price of produce: farmers in Mexico continue to oppose NAFTA because this artificial drop in prices makes it cheaper for Mexicans to import a lot of American produce rather than buy it from their own country.
Since NAFTA was signed, wages have decreased 20% in Mexico, and the income gap has drastically increased between the highest and lowest earners; despite all measures of economic "growth", equity has not improved. Some also blame the bill as a major contributor to "la crisis", or the Mexican economic collapse in the mid-nineties that led to a major surge of illegal immigrants and migrant workers crossing the border looking for work; 1.5 million farmers had been pushed off their land through government reclamation or bankruptcy. The U.S. has responded to this by increasing the militarization of the border and promoting a culture of isolationism to the south; today, even civilian groups like the Minutemen have taken up arms against the migrants. Several have been seriously injured and even killed, all illegally.
Militarism reigned in the signing-in of CAFTA, which many anti-CAFTA groups puport will be a repeat of the mistakes of NAFTA. Protestors in Guatemala were met with brutal police resistance when they tried to oppose CAFTA. Anti-CAFTA resistors in Mexico fighting to keep control of their land have also been beaten or killed.
Despite all the evidence and hard lobbying by social justice, human rights, and environmental advocacy groups, not to mention farmers, laborers and artisans in all countries, CAFTA was approved by the legislative bodies of Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. In the U.S., it recently passed in the summer of 2005, with a 217-215 vote in the House.
[edit] Resistance to NAFTA and CAFTA
- Zapatista Revolution - Anti-Free Trade action in the US - Civillian and worker demonstrations in Central America - Sugar beet farmers in Minnesota - Work on College campuses
