The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and Indigenous Resistance in Mexico

Running Head: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) andIndigenous resistance in Mexico

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

and Indigenous resistance in Mexico

By: Michael Blosser

Concordia University-Portland

IDS- 501, Dr. Gerd Horten

April 15, 2015

2Indigenous resistance to NAFTA in Mexico

Introduction

Mexico has undergone a big transformation in its economic

and social structure in the last 20 years. Around 20 years ago,

Mexico attempted to become a key player in the global economy by

signing the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. This

free-trade agreement opened its economy to world markets and

corporations as an extenuation of the neo-liberal economic and

trade policies that were started by President Salinas in 1988 and

encouraged by international financial institutions such as the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Proponents of

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) stressed that it

would boost the Mexican economy and encourage economic growth and

foreign investment while detractors stressed that it would

destroy the local economy and leave Mexican workers at the will


of foreign capital and trans-national corporations (TNC’s). In

response to the government extenuating and increasing the neo-

liberal policies of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and the

signing of NAFTA, a group of indigenous revolutionaries called

the Zapatista’s, Ejecito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN)

rose up that same year in the southern state of Chiapas to demand

an alternative model and economy and a complete rejection of the

neo-liberal policies that NAFTA and the government proposed.

This essay will review the historical context of Mexico’s neo-

liberal policies and the indigenous and peasant social movements,

discuss the effect NAFTA has had on the Mexican economy and

society, and discuss the Zapatista and other peasant movements

that rose up in resistance and what these movements have become

and accomplished today.

Historical Context

Mexico has been a nation that has struggled to completely

grow out of its development stage. Mexico is a country that has


dealt with development issues such as economic and political

struggles and corruption along with a rampant drug trade that has

caused a surge in violent crime and homicides that have resulted

in Mexico having a homicide rate of 22 homicides per 100,000

inhabitants (Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia [OVV], 2014).

The Mexican Revolution, fought from 1910- 1920, and led by the

heroic figures of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, took back

land from the hacienda1 landlords and gave back the land and

property rights to campesinos2 for the first time in Mexican

history (McCarty, 2007). That glorified revolution gained a lot

of rights for the peasant farmers but due to quick assassinations

of most of the heroic leaders of the revolution the most lasting

legacy of the revolution was the formation of the party Partido

Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Although initially a party

that was supposed to carry on the ideals of the revolution it

became known for its authoritative means, human rights abuses and

corruption. The PRI ruled from 1929 until the year 2000 where

President Fox from the center-right party Partido Accion Nacional

(PAN) won the general election. The PRI party won back the


Presidency in 2012, claiming that they had rooted out the

corruption of the previous administrations.

[1] Landed estates or ranches of significant size

[2] Rural peasant farmers in Mexico

While the PRI was known as a corrupt and state corporatist

government, the land rights of the peasants weren’t directly

challenged until the neo-liberal policies were implanted by

President Salinas in 1988 (Bartra & Otero, 2005). Protected by

the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, these ejido (or communal campesino

farmland) lands, as they were called, belonged to the people in

common and could not be sold (McCarty, 2007). However, Mexico was

coming out of its 1982 foreign debt crisis as a result of low-oil

prices when President Salinas took power in 1988. President

Salinas and international financial institutions encouraged the

neo-liberal economic model of privatization and opening the

economy to markets as a solution to their debt crisis. President


Salina’s strategy was drafted along the lines of the Washington

Consensus, which advocated neo-liberal policies that centered on

trade liberalization and on the reduction of the state’s

intervention in the economy. President Salinas managed to change

the Constitution in 1992 so that ejido lands could be made

“private” property of individual members and thus available to

sell on the private market. This opened the door to the North

American Free Trade agreement that consolidated these new

privatization and free-trade policies into one multi-national

binding agreement.

NAFTA

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the

culmination of the neo-liberal liberalization of the economy that

President Salinas set Mexico on a path on starting in 1988. His

signing of the agreement at the end of 1993 finalized the free-

trade agreement with the United States and Canada and received

the blessing of the international financial community. This


agreement forged by the Washington Consensus and the

international financial giants, the International Monetary Fund

(IMF) and the World Bank, promised a rapid growth of Mexico’s

economy; a final step that Mexico needed to take to leave the

developing world. However, 20 years after the advent of NAFTA,

its results are decidedly negative.

NAFTA has had some successes but most of the consequences of

the free-trade policy, intended or not, were devastating to the

Mexican worker (Wallach, 2014). While United States workers also

suffered job, wage, and benefits losses under NAFTA, it was the

Mexican workers who suffered the most. One positive thing that

NAFTA did achieve for Mexico was an increase in its exports.

Exports leapt from $60 billion in 1994 to $400 billion in 2013,

although it should be noted that most of those profits were

swallowed up by big agribusiness that took root in Mexico once

NAFTA was approved (Castañeda, 2014). The major economic boom

that was predicted in Mexico simply did not happen. In the 20

years after the implementation of NAFTA, Mexico’s economy saw two

years of major economic contraction (1995 and 2009), two years of


zero growth (2001 and 2003), and four years of high performance

(1997, 2000, 2006, and 2010). This averaged out to a 2.6 annual

GDP growth rate of the Mexican economy (Castañeda, 2014).

However, the growth that the Mexican economy actually saw

under NAFTA went to big transnational corporations (TNC’s) and to

the political and land owning elites as Mexico's per capita

income just barely doubled over the past 20 years, rising, in

current-dollar terms, from $4,500 in 1994 to $9,700 in 2012-

growing at an average yearly rate of just 1.2 percent. Over the

same period countries that were not part of a free-trade

agreement, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay experienced

far greater growth in per capita GDP (Moreno‐Brid, Santamaria, &

Rivas Valdivia, 2005). Foreign investment, one of the main

promises by NAFTA’s proponents, simply has not increased but in

fact has decreased in terms of the GDP. In 1994, foreign

investment in the Mexican economy was at 11 billion (2.5% of the

GDP) and in 2013 that number is at 22 billion (less than 2% GDP)

(Castañeda, 2014).


The liberalization of the economy and opening it up to

global capital devastated the campesinos in Mexico. NAFTA

provided to U.S businesses and trans-national corporations an

abundant supply of cheap labor. The United States heavily

subsidies their agriculture sector and the local rural farmers in

Mexico were forced to dramatically reduce their prices in order

to compete in the global market. Hundreds of thousands of

farmers and their families simply went bankrupt (Otero, 2011) as

big agri-business and TNC’s stepped in to push off the few

campiseno farmers that stayed. These newly bankrupted rural

farmers and families, living in extreme poverty, in order to find

jobs either migrated to the huge mega slums around Mexico City

(Davis, 2005) or migrated to the United States; mostly

undocumented and under terrible conditions due to the

militarization on the border (Otero, 2011). The number of

Mexican born people living in the U.S jumped from 6.2 million to

12 million (this number includes the 1 million deportations

carried out by the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013) in

this time period (Castañeda, 2014). The amount of rural Mexican


farmers that left the country after NAFTA became so staggering

that remittances sent from the family members that made the

crossing into the United States to family members still in Mexico

became the second highest foreign monetary contribution to the

Mexican economy, second only to purchase of oil by foreign

companies and governments (Otero, 2011).

The neo-liberal policies introduced in the late 1980’s and

by NAFTA had a detrimental effect to Mexico’s agricultural

industry. Although Mexico’s workforce increased by 9.8% from

1998 to 2007, it decreased in the agriculture sector by 24%

(Otero, 2011). By 2003, most agricultural products became

liberalized which caused a huge shift to mono-cropping and to

high value fruit and vegetable products. This mono-cropping,

which was demanded by the global market, was very susceptible to

the fluctuations of the global market. One example of this is

when President George W. Bush of the United States introduced in

2006 a huge corn subsidy in order to reduce the U.S reliance on

Middle East oil; causing tortilla prices in Mexico to jump 60%

(Otero, 2011). As a result of NAFTA, Mexico became a net food-


import dependent nation (Levy, 2004) and by 2005 imported 72 % of

its rice, 59% of its wheat, and 23% of its maize. This resulted

in a doubling of the price in consumer goods and basic food

prices in Mexico (McCarty, 2007), all while the minimum wage in

Mexico decreased by 21% from 1993 to 2007 (Otero, 2011). In the

time period of 1984 to 2004, the families in extreme poverty rose

from 12.9 million to 15.9 million (McCarty, 2007).

The Zapatista uprising

NAFTA and its liberalization of the economy encountered vast

resistance in the indigenous and peasant community. One of the

biggest examples came from the group Ejecito Zapatista de

Liberacion Nacional (EZLN); or more commonly referred to as the

Zapatistas. The EZLN formed as an indigenous movement on

November 17, 1983 with 3 non-indigenous leftist activists joining

with 3 indigenous activists in the southern state of Chiapas; an

area with a high percentage of indigenous population but also a

high percentage of people living with overwhelming poverty. In

Chiapas, many indigenous communities in addition to living with


abject poverty had to deal with repression from police, soldiers,

and paramilitary groups that were paid for by local landlords or

corrupt PRI officials (Bartra & Otero, 2005). The Zapatistas

spent the next 10 years forming ties and trust with the

indigenous community in the area. Decisions were made by

community will, and after a community decision for armed

rebellion decided in late 1993, the Zapatistas revealed

themselves to Mexico and the world in July 1, 1994 by taking over

numerous towns in Chiapas, Mexico and declaring themselves an

autonomous State (Bartra & Otero, 2005). The Mexican government

responded by sending in armed vehicles and troops and bombing the

area with air-strikes but due to massive international and

domestic pressure, the violence subsided with limited deaths. In

April 1995, the San Andres peace accords mediated between the

Mexican government, the EZLN, and the Clandestine Revolutionary

Indigenous Committee (CRIC) started with the indigenous

communities calling for land reform, indigenous autonomy, and

cultural rights. President Zedillo rejected these accords in

1996 and the Zapatista communities have been constantly faced


with harassment, occupation, and violence from Federal, State,

paramilitary, and other armed forces since then. President Fox,

elected in 2000, removed the military checkpoints, but the

indigenous communities in Chiapas have still been subjected to

constant surveillance and intimidation (Stahler-Sholk, 2007).

In response to the rejection of the Zapatista and indigenous

demands by global capital and the Mexican government, the

Zapatistas decided to make their own autonomous communities and

project their movement to an international audience. In Dec of

1994, the Zapatistas created 38 indigenous municipalities in

Chiapas and in 2003 created 5 autonomous States called caricoles (a

Mayan term that means conch shell). The Zapatistas discovered

that when they rose up against the Mexican government in 1994,

they found that the Mexican government didn’t exist, but just

global capital in its place (Sub Marcos, 2003). In response they

created a self-sufficient model- from exchange and social service

projects, collective gardening, locally controlled schools, and

networks of health centers trained in combinations of traditional

and modern healing, etc… (Stahler-Sholk, 2007). The model of


the Zapatistas was a community based horizontal model that

created more egalitarian gender roles and less hierarchical

traditions. This model consisted of several layers, from the

political and military structure of the EZLN, the networks of

national and international supporters, and the support base of

indigenous communities in the “conflict zone.” Rejecting

government subsidies, the Zapatista communities created self-

sufficient structures and improvised a mode of relations with

National Government Organizations (NGOs) in order to preserve

community control; each autonomous council in a municipality

reviewed NGO projects and decided whether and on what terms they

could proceed. Subcomandante Marcos stated,

“It was a matter of time before people came to understand that the Zapatista

indigenous people had dignity and were not looking for alms,but rather respect.

. . . There is a more sophisticated kind of handout which ispracticed by some

NGOs and international organizations. It consists more or less in their deciding

what the communities need and, without even consulting them,imposing notjust particular projects but also the timing and form of their execution. Imagine


the desperation of a community that needs potable water and instead is given a

library or needs a school for children and is given a course

in herbiculture”

(Marcos, 2003, pt. 2).

The Zapatista community also stressed an important

egalitarian and community role of decision making. This was done

by the creation of the Junta’s de Buen Gobierno (the Junta’s of

Good Governance) which was a government council of two

representatives from each of the autonomous municipalities, and

whom rotated every 10-15 days. None of the military leadership

of the EZLN or the political leadership of the Clandestine

Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CRIC) was allowed to take

positions of authority on this government council. The

Zapatista’s stressed the idea of mandar obedeciendo, to lead by

obeying (Stahler-Sholk, 2007).

While the Zapatistas were the most famous example and are

continually active today, they weren’t the only peasant uprisings

and resistance in response to the implementation of the

liberalized economy and NAFTA. In 1988, 10 indigenous and


peasant organizations signed the Unitary Action Agreement

(Convenio de Accion Unitaria) which articulated demands for land,

and cultural demands for indigenous people. When this agreement

was rejected by President Salinas, they created the Agrarian

Organizations Coalition (Coalicion de Organizaciones Agrarias) of

12 indigenous and peasant groups and mobilized and staged

national protests. Other significant peasant movements and

protests happened in 1995 and particularly in a period in 2002

and 2003 in which peasants motivated to save the Mexican

countryside participated in 3-months of sit-ins, hunger strikes,

and mobilizations (Bartra & Otero, 2005). However, in spite of

the massive scale and popularity of the protests, these uprisings

only produced limited reforms, possibly due to the influence of

global capital on the Mexican government, and the fact that the

peasantry and indigenous struggles weren’t necessarily working

together.

Conclusion


Mexico has seen tremendous changes to its economic and

political structures since the implementation of the North

American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. This “liberalization”

of the economy was supposed to rapidly grow Mexico’s economy and

provide better opportunities for the Mexican, Canadian, and U.S

worker. The results have been the opposite. The U.S and

Canadian worker saw a loss of jobs, salary, and benefits, but it

was the Mexican worker who suffered the most. While the exports

of the Mexican economy grew, its economic growth stayed in the

hands of the select few, foreign investment decreased, Mexico

became a net food-importer, and the rural livelihood of hundreds

of thousands of Mexican farmers were destroyed; causing the mass

migration of millions of Mexicans, the most in its history

(Otero, 2011). However, alternative models and resistance rose

up at that same time. Peasant and indigenous uprisings fought

back against this new neo-liberal model demanding that their

voices be heard. The Zapatistas are one of the most famous

examples, still being active and continually evolving today.

They hope to provide an example and be part of the international


struggle for freedom, but they also want to exist and to be

heard. Major Ana Maria of the Zapatista says,

“Behind our black face, behind our armed voice, behind our unnamable name,

behind that we see you … behind we are the same simple ordinary men and

women that repeat themselves in all races, that paint themselves in all the

colors of the world. … [Because in] this corner of the worldwe are equal

because we are different…” (Maria, 1996, opening remarks).

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The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and Indigenous Resistance in Mexico

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