Final Web Report

The Right to Stay Home Alternatives to Mass Displacement and Forced Migration in North America Edited by Global Exchange

The Right to Stay Home: Alternatives to Mass Displacement and Forced Migration in North America © 2008 by Global Exchange All rights reserved including the right to reproduction in whole, in part, or in any form. This edition published in the United States of America by Global Exchange, 2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94110 www.globalexchange.org Book Design: Global Exchange and Design Action Collective Cover Design: Design Action Collective Library of Congress Control Number: 2008938059 ISBN: 978-0-615-25267-4 Printed in the United States of America (2008) Published by: Global Exchange 2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 255-7296 www.globalexchange.org Distributed by Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store Deep appreciation goes to all who have contributed writing and photographs to this report, as well as to the entire Global Exchange editorial team –Shannon Biggs, Dwight Dyer, John Gibler, Emily Keller, Ted Lewis, Hector Sanchez, and Angela Walker. Thanks also to designers, Sabiha Basrai and Josh Warren White; and copy editor, Chris Dodge. Front Cover Photo: Imperial County, California, USA. March 2001. Trained in hunting techniques, the Border Patrol agent estimated that migrants had made these prints twelve hours prior. Photo by Mizue Aizeki, first published in Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in An Age of Global Apartheid, City Lights Books, 2008. Back Cover Photo: Peasant tilling his field in Michoacan. Courtesy of La Jornada. To order more copies: www.globalexchange.org/the-right-to-stay-home or 415-575-5541

Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico. July 2006. Photo by Mizue Aizeki.

Table of contents

INTRODUCTION

Ted Lewis

.................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

A North America That Works For All Its People

Jeff Faux ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

The Right to Stay: Reactivate Agriculture, Retain the Population

Armando Bartra

.......................................................................................................................................................................

18

Equality And Human Rights, Instead Of Displacement And Criminalization

David Bacon

...............................................................................................................................................................................

26

To Regenerate What Is Ours

Gustavo Esteva

...........................................................................................................................................................................

32

NAFTA and Immigration: Toward a Workable and Humane Integration

Laura Carlsen

............................................................................................................................................................................

40

Contemplating Solutions to Migration Challenges

Bill Hing

......................................................................................................................................................................................

46

Migration and Development: Moving Beyond NAFTA

Amy Shannon and Oscar Chacon ......................................................................................................................................... 56

Reinventing the Traditions of the Lower Triqui Region

María Dolores París.

................................................................................................................................................................

62

Against the Current: Looking for Alternatives to Migration in the Mexican Countryside

John Gibler

..................................................................................................................................................................................

68

A Mexican Labor Perspective on the Issues Facing Mexican Workers in the U.S.

Bertha Lujan with Daniel LaBotz

......................................................................................................................................

76

The Unexpected Consequences of Deepening Integration: NAFTA and Immigration

Gabriela Lemus

Contributors

.........................................................................................................................................................................

84

.................................................................................................................................................................................................

92

INTRODUCTION: The Next Immigration Debate and the NAFTA and Immigration: Right to a Stay Home To ward Wor k a b l e and Humane Inte gration

By Ted Lewis At the heart of the fierce national debate over immigration reform legislation in the United States lie the fates of more than twelve million undocumented immigrants, more than half of whom come from Mexico. This debate, which will return to the center of the political stage sometime after the inauguration of Barack Obama, pivots on whether U.S. policy should account for and integrate these immigrants, or reject and criminalize them. Yet an equally important question—often lost from view amidst the heated rhetoric and political posturing that accompany this issue—is what we can do to better the bleak economic conditions in Mexico that compel an additional half million Mexicans to leave home and enter the United States without documentation every year.

Altering the well-established dynamics that underlie Mexico’s massive outmigration is not a simple task, and the critiques and proposals offered in this report reflect that. Our contributors offer elements of an emerging blueprint for change on both sides of the border. They put forward much-needed new ideas for policy change at the international level, ideas that are friendly to the interests of workers and small farmers. They call for reconsideration of counterproductive aspects of current trade and immigration policies. Perhaps most importantly, the authors examine what will be needed to stimulate local economic development in Mexico capable of keeping Mexican communities intact and reining in the slow-motion exodus of recent decades.

In light of this question and Mexico’s leading role in sending immigrants to the United States, we have invited a group of experts from both countries to join in issuing this report, The Right to Stay Home: Alternatives to Mass Displacement and Forced Migration in North America. The report’s authors include economists, anthropologists, law professors, journalists, and leaders of social organizations. In The Right to Stay Home they share an array of recent thinking about the powerful forces driving Mexican migration north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The aim of their analysis, ideas, and proposals is to stir conversation among the public, advocates, policy makers, opinion leaders, and journalists who cover immigration issues, on how to ease the crushing economic pressures that have won Mexico the unenvied position of being the world’s undisputed leader in out-migration.

6

Photo by John Gibler Deepening the conversation about the root causes of immigration is essential to the political viability and long-term success of any true immigration reform in the United States. Likewise it is critical to the futures of millions of Mexicans looking for opportunities to stay home in Mexico, or, for those who have already left, to return home.

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Formulating genuine, effective immigration reform that embodies the best values of the United States and is acceptable to the U.S. public and political representatives will challenge the political imagination and skills of any incoming U.S administration. And yet while a breakthrough on immigration reform is a widely shared goal, this report serves as a reminder that enduring change cannot be achieved without accounting for and responding to the realities faced by our southern neighbors. Nor can progress toward genuine reform be based on the dangerous illusion that further armoring the U.S.-Mexico border or detaining and deporting an increasing number of undocumented workers can provide realistic, humane, or lasting solutions to our common dilemma. Durable and just immigration reform must include a commitment to help stabilize Mexico’s most vulnerable immigrant sending communities. Strategic investment of resources to concretely support the ability of Mexicans to thrive at home should be central to the goals of policy planners in both Mexico and its neighboring trade partner, the United States. Likewise, a commitment to aiding Mexico’s communities should compel a comprehensive review of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that restores rights for workers, people, and nature. These are the issues taken up in The Right to Stay at Home. During the debate over NAFTA’s adoption fifteen years ago, North American elites hailed the pending treaty as a unique opportunity for Mexico to attract foreign investment and achieve rapid development. Some of the agreement’s more Pollyannaish boosters, like Mexico’s then-president, Carlos

Douglas, Arizona, USA. June 2004. “We’re fortunate enough to live in a country where there are lots of opportunities. And most of the people who we run into out here want to make that dream happen. Unfortunately, it’s our job to stop that dream.” —Border Patrol Agent Elizier Vasquez, Arizona, 2007. Photo by Mizue Aizeki. Salinas, predicted that under NAFTA, Mexico would soon rank among the powerful economies of the “first world,” thereby eliminating economic motives for emigrating north. Sadly, fifteen years after NAFTA became law the new opportunities promised by its boosters have failed to materialize. In fact, the economic gap between Mexico and the United States has continued to widen in terms of average wages, per capita GDP, and other key measures. In addition, income inequalities have widened within both Mexico and the United States during the same period.

During the first decade and a half of NAFTA, the rate of Mexican migration to the United States has more than doubled, despite newly built border fortifications that have made the journey north ever more costly, arduous, and deadly. Since 1995, when construction of the post-NAFTA border fortifications began, death rates have climbed steadily along the U.S.-Mexico border. By August 2008, a total of 4,827 had died. That means that since 1995, immigrants crossing the 1,969 miles of border between our two countries have died at a rate seventy times higher than that of East Germans killed crossing the Berlin Wall during its twenty-eight years of operation.

(For more background, see the accompanying box entitled “Mexico’s Economic Crisis of 1982 and the Immigration ‘Safety Valve.’”) Improving economic conditions on the ground in Mexico is essential to any comprehensive effort to slow or reverse the outflow of Mexicans to the United States. The people of both our countries have a common stake in making Mexico’s economy work for its people in ways that will provide more opportunities for Mexicans to earn a living while staying home. But despite the compelling case for change, the initiative is unlikely to come from Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s current ruler.

IN T R O D U C T ION

7

NAFTA and Immigration: Any plan for reducing economic The States, Humane on the other hand, Toreal ward a Wo rkab l United e and expulsion from Mexico must include a recently concluded a presidential camsubstantial and ongoing investment of paign in which the topics of NAFTA money, time, and attention to some of and immigration have come to the fore the country’s poorest regions and com- repeatedly. The country is on the verge munities. It requires a profound shift in of a potentially significant political shift Mexico’s public policy priorities. The that opens opportunities to recast the government would need to push for immigration question in more realisrevision of some of the most damaging tic ways that move beyond the deeply aspects of the current trade and invest- flawed legislation, poisoned national diment rules embodied in NAFTA, espe- alogue, and fatal political gridlock that cially the agreement’s agricultural chap- killed immigration reform efforts in the ter. It would also need to collect more 110th Congress. revenue, especially from those at the top of Mexico’s income pyramid, needed to President Elect Barack Obama ran on jump-start carefully targeted regional a party platform that acknowledges the economic development. Felipe Cal- need for the United States “to do more deron, a conservative and free-market to promote economic development in devotee who rose to power backed by migrant-sending nations, to reduce inMexico’s wealthiest citizens, has to date centives to come to the United States shown no inclination to do either. illegally.” The platform also includes a pledge to “work with Canada and MexIn 2006 Calderón ran for president as ico to amend the North American Free candidate of the ruling Party of National Trade Agreement so that it works better Action (PAN). He took office following for all three North American countries,” months of mass protest led by Andres hinting that Obama understands—or Manuel Lopez Obrador, the opposi- at least some on his team do—that adtion presidential candidate of the Party dressing the challenges of immigration of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), comprehensively means thinking bewho claimed—along with millions of yond the borders of our country. his followers—that fraud had thrown the election to Calderón. The Democratic Party position offers hope that common sense might have a Lopez Obrador, during his campaign, had foothold in an Obama administration, called for revision of key NAFTA clauses but the notorious distance between the and criticized the economic model that promises of political platforms and their originally gave rise to the treaty. Calderón, implementation as public policy underon the other hand, explicitly ruled out any alteration of NAFTA, and since taking power has joined ongoing efforts by the George W. Bush administration and the prime minister of Canada to expand NAFTA’s reach. Campaign pledges by Calderón to provide extraordinary support for economic development of Mexico’s most active migrant “sending communities” have gone unaccomplished. For now, change won’t come from the top in Mexico unless there is renewed pressure from below or strong encouragement and support from its northern neighbor.

8

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

lines thegration need for continued input and Inte pressure from informed citizens.

We offer The Right to Stay Home as something for people to think about and a tool to engage their neighbors, communities, and political leaders in a conversation about what it will take to build a future in which North Americans are joined as good and helpful neighbors, rather than separated by hostility and deadly barriers. Breaking the false political frame that pits the rights of U.S. workers facing hard times against those of Mexicans facing displacement by investing attention and resources to build opportunities for Mexicans to stay home has been the public policy path less trodden. Yet despite its challenges, it is the only path that leads to less immigration and a healthy future for our continent. For more information and resources, please contact us at Global Exchange. For more copies of this report, please visit Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Online Store. We also encourage you to make use of the online version of the report, which is linked to more background materials and resources: www.globalexchange.org/ the-right-to-stay-home. Sincere appreciation to Angela Walker, Dwight Dyer, Emily Keller, and Hector Sánchez, and Michael O’Heaney for their indispensable assistance in putting this report together.

Mexico’s Economic Crisis of 1982 and the Immigration “Safety Valve” The origins of Mexico’s modern economic woes go back more than a quarter century to the debt and liquidity crisis that hit Mexico in 1982, which brought an end to decades of steady economic growth and broad government subsidies for the poor. Paradoxically, new oil discoveries in the 1970s, that promised to be founts of prosperity, ultimately paved the way for Mexico’s financial meltdown. Easy international credit based on erroneous assumptions about potential revenue from new oil production led to a huge spike in government spending. Borrowed funds supported investment in the oil industry, expansion of social and subsidy programs, and even went to prop up the critically weak national currency, the peso. Corruption and misappropriation of public funds also played a big role in the government’s accumulation of more than eighty billion dollars of debt, twenty-five billion of which was owed to U.S. banks. In August 1982, falling oil prices, high interest rates, and dwindling foreign reserves forced Mexico to default and halt payment on these loans. As the first domino to topple in a worldwide series of defaults by more than twenty countries, including other major oil producers, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, and large economies like Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, Mexico’s response threatened the world financial system. Under international pressure, Mexico rescheduled its debt and accepted a $4.5-billion dollar “rescue” loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), conditioned on “structural mandates,” which included strict fiscal austerity measures such as deep cuts in government food and social programs and a privatization program designed to reduce the role of the government in heavy manufacturing, transport, communications, agriculture, and other key industries. Both the “crisis” and the IMF “medicine” caused great economic pain in Mexico. However, even as inflation ravaged Mexican household budgets and savings, Mexicans suffered and complained but did not revolt. Increased migration to the United States became a critical safety valve that released the potentially explosive political pressures that had built up during that decade. Today’s far higher levels of migration to the United States continue to protect the government from the ire of millions of Mexicans who choose to flee Mexico to seek opportunity abroad rather than stay home and fight for their rights.

Detail of mural in Altar, Sonora—a Mexican town close to the border. Photo by John Gibler.

IN T R O D U C T ION

9

NAFTA Immigration: A North and America that Works for All its People To wa rd a W or k a b l e an d Humane In te gration

Jeff Faux Dissecting the continent-wide web of political and economic interests underpinning the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Faux links NAFTA’s failure to spur Mexican economic growth and job creation to the recent spike in undocumented migration. Faux examines North American trade and labor integration from regional and global perspectives, expounding the need to recast NAFTA and U.S. immigration policies within a conceptual framework that explicitly acknowledges the trade-immigration connection. Focusing on improved Mexican economic competitiveness and income distribution as key to reducing immigration incentives, he proposes EU-model “cohesion funds” to encourage institutional reforms and stimulate investment in Mexican infrastructure and social development. Faux concludes with a call to develop and implement a common legislative agenda, including a North American Bill of Rights and a Continental Development Strategy.

Introduction Immigration, by definition, is a phenomenon of both sides of a frontier. Yet in the United States it is commonly seen as an issue that should be addressed by unilateral U.S. government decisions. Thus framed, the public’s understanding of the immigration is too narrow to lead to sensible, humane, and lasting solutions. Not all recent immigrants to the United States are Latinos. And not all Latinos come from Mexico. But the dramatic increase in undocumented Mexican workers has elevated immigration to a divisive and potentially explosive issue. In the United States the debates for the most part ignore the conditions in Mexico that have made people so desperate that they risk their lives to cross the border in order to get grueling work at low pay. Also ignored is NAFTA’s major contribution to the problem.

10

NAFTA’s Unfulfilled Promises Promoters of NAFTA would rather forget it, but a major part of their argument for the agreement was that it would reduce illegal migration from Mexico. As the late political reporter Elizabeth Drew observed, “Anti-immigration was a subtheme used, usually sotto voce, by the treaty’s supporters.”1 Often it was not so “sotto.” At a 1993 White House rally to pressure Congress to approve the treaty, President Bill Clinton promised that there would be “less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home.”2 Said ex-president Gerald Ford: “We don’t want a huge flow of illegal immigrants into the United States from Mexico. . . . If you defeat NAFTA, you have to share the responsibility for increased immigration into the United States, where they want jobs that are presently being held by Americans.”3 Another ex-president, Jimmy Carter, added that if Congress turned down NAFTA, “illegal immigration will increase. American jobs will be lost.”4 The anti-immigration card was not just played by U.S. leaders. When Mexican president Carlos Salinas came to Washington to promote NAFTA he asked: “Do you want our tomatoes or our tomato-pickers?”5 At the time, illegal immigration from Mexico was not a major political issue in the United States. But instead of alleviating the conditions that were causing out-migration to the United States, NAFTA made them worse. Since its implementation in January 1994, the annual immigration of undocumented workers from Mexico has roughly doubled. In effect, NAFTA turned a modest and manageable rate of out-migration from Mexico to the United States into a political crisis on both sides of the border.

widely publicized forecasts that the agreement would generate a massive economic boom south of the border turned out to be dead wrong. For example, the U.S. undersecretary of commerce predicted that Mexico’s growth would be “between a supercharged 6% a year, worthy of Asia’s tigers, and a startling 12% per year,”6 comparable to China. Instead, Mexico’s growth has averaged 3 percent, far too small to provide jobs for its growing labor force. Secondly, the massive imports of subsidized grain, beans, and other commodities from the United States and Canada, encouraged by NAFTA, has destroyed the livelihood of at least two million farmers and devastated the communities that depended on them. Migration off the farm was nothing new; it has been going on in Mexico, as in most of the world, for decades. What turned it into a crisis was the impact of NAFTA and the Mexican government’s brutal legal attack on small landholders that accompanied it, which produced the sudden and massive dislocation of farm families. The dislocation was deliberate. Behind their rosy rhetoric, Mexico’s neoliberals and their U.S. collaborators were pursuing a large-scale program of government social engineering aimed at forcing Mexico’s rural population off the land and into the cities, making way for the corporate takeover of Mexican agriculture. Once in the cities, the rural migrants were expected to provide cheap labor for the foreign investment that NAFTA was supposed to generate. Ten years after NAFTA, Tina Rosenberg wrote in the New York Times: “Mexican officials say openly that they long ago concluded that small agriculture was inefficient, and that the solution for farmers was to find other work.”7

First and most obviously, NAFTA failed to deliver on Clinton’s promise of great new In order to calm the fears of farmers, the opportunities for Mexican families. The Mexican government promised generous

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

financial and technical assistance that would enable small farms to increase their productivity in order to meet the new competition. But after the treaty was signed funding for Mexican farm programs was severely cut back. Meanwhile Congress massively increased subsidies for U.S. agribusiness. This enhanced “comparative advantage” enabled U.S. food multinationals to drive Mexican farmers out of their own markets.

There were many motivations and interests that contributed to the political support for NAFTA. But one surely was the concern in Washington—after the Mexican presidential election of 1988—that some future leftist government might reverse the neoliberal “reforms” of Mexico’s governing oligarchs. By facilitating business partnerships between the rich and powerful in all three countries protected by an international treaty, NAFTA was an attempt to make these “reforms” permanent, thereby saving the Mexican elite from having to share income, wealth, and political power with their country’s people.

The promised demand for labor in the cities never materialized. So the displaced campesinos joined the swelling army of unemployed and underemployed that feeds into the migrant stream headed north—to the maquiladora at the border After NAFTA was approved, one promiand beyond. nent Mexican analyst wrote that it was “an agreement for the rich and powerful The communities left behind, deprived in the United States, Mexico and Canada, of men and increasingly of women as an agreement effectively excluding the well, have been devastated. Those who ordinary people in all three societies.”8 stay are too old or too young to migrate. In this sense, “ordinary people” refers to For the people who do remain, there the vast majority in all three nations who are few options. In some places narco- must work in order to maintain a decent traffickers have stepped into the vacuum, standard of living for themselves and their financing seed and providing protection families. But NAFTA did more than leave for those who would diversify into rais- them out. By providing extraordinary ing marijuana. protections to private multinational investors and undermining government caClass Across the Borders pacity to protect workers, farmers, small If NAFTA had been the simple free-trade business, and others with weak market agreement that its supporters claimed it power, NAFTA was designed to reduce was, it could have been written on a few the bargaining power of ordinary citizens pages. Instead it is a thousand pages de- in the new North American common signed to expand and make permanent market that it created. So it is not surpristhe transition to neoliberal economics in ing that the growth that did occur after all three countries—Canada, the United NAFTA further imbalanced the already States and Mexico—that had begun uneven distribution of income among in the 1980s. Its core objective was to regions and people. In Mexico, growth shift government policy away from na- has been heavily concentrated in the bortional economic and social development der export industries, which do very little and toward the support of short-term to develop local supply networks within profit-making opportunities through the country. Domestic industries producderegulation, privatization and erosion ing for the internal economy—where the of the social safety net. local multipliers are much higher—were

“We had jobs in Mexico... What we didn’t have were salaries.” Courtesy of La Jornada. abandoned by government policy and increasingly undercut by North America retailers and Asian manufacturers. For those at the top on both sides of the border, NAFTA has generally been a great success. The story of the Citigroup purchase of Banamex is one illustration of how it worked (see text box). As this story illustrates, NAFTA has created a cross-border class of business and political elites whose power and wealth is continental in scope. Yet the citizens of Mexico, the United States, and Canada are encouraged by their media and political leaders to think of it in exclusively national terms. Thus, in a recent poll, a majority in each nation responded that the other two nations benefited more than theirs did.

A NO R T H AME R ICA T HA T W O R K S FO R ALL I T S P EO P LE

11

In fact, workers in all three countries bore the costs while their elites gained the benefits. In NAFTA’s first decade, real worker compensation (wages and benefits after adjustment for inflation) fell dramatically behind the increase in workers’ productivity in all three countries’ manufacturing sector—which is where imports and exports are concentrated. Workers’ productivity rose 68 percent, 33 percent, and 81 percent in Mexico, Canada, and the United States, respectively. Wages on the other hand, inched up 2 percent, 3 percent, and 5 percent. In the new North American integrated economy, workers have more in common with workers across the border than they do with bosses who happen to share their nationality but are suppressing their wages.

he has been silent about the harsh and brutal conditions suffered by Mexico’s own domestic labor force and migrants to Mexico from Central America.

Since Mexico’s ordinary working people are generally poorer and live closer to subsistence than those in the United States or Canada, the effect of NAFTA and neoliberal policies have hit them the hardest. Hence the acceleration in out-migration.

Where We Are Headed

The wife of a Mexican official exclaimed recently at a private dinner party, “If the Americans seal off the border, there will be a revolution here.” But revolution or not, Mexico cannot develop by sending its most ambitious and industrious workers to the United States. The people who migrate are the working-class risk takers—those who save up the $2,000 to pay a smuggler to take them across the river and who, once in the United States, send home remittances out of their meager wages. Mexico needs these people. It paid for the cost of their upbringing and education, in effect subsidizing U.S. consumers of low-wage work.

On our current trajectory, things will get worse for as far into the future as we can see. Even the Mexican government acknowledges it; a November 2007 report concluded that even if the overall economy grows steadily, low wages and social inequality will continue to generate Like NAFTA, increased immigration to heavy out-migration to the United States the United States—legal or illegal—ben- at the current annual rate of roughly efits the rich and powerful on both sides 500,000—for the next fifteen years.9 of the border. In the United States, they have a source of docile inexpensive labor Mexico’s overall growth is actually flagto undercut domestic wages. In Mexico, ging. The International Monetary Fund the oligarchs get a double benefit. First, estimates that Mexico grew more slowly remittances provide the economy with in 2007 than all but one country in Latin an annual injection of over $20 billion America. For 2008 it expects Mexico to in hard currency. Second, they get to ex- be at the bottom—below even Haiti. The port their most ambitious, energetic, and next few years look particularly grim. The frustrated workers, who otherwise would slowdown in the U.S. economy has already be a source of political trouble. rippled though Mexico. Remittances from Mexican workers in the U.S. have dropped For Mexico’s elite, the public focus two years in a row. Mexico may also be on the condition of Mexican workers heading toward its own major financial in the United States also has the great crisis brought on by sub-prime credit-card virtue of diverting political attention loans from the almost totally foreignfrom the condition of Mexican work- owned Mexican banks to consumers who ers in Mexico. The current Mexican do not earn enough to pay them back. president—like the last one—has been loudly indignant, and rightly so, over Mexico is a not a naturally poor counthe maltreatment of undocumented mi- try. It has plenty of resources, including grants at U.S. farms and factories. But oil, hardworking people, and a domes-

12

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

tic market of over one hundred million potential consumers. The core problem with the Mexican economy is that it is ruled by an oligarchy of rich families in a system of hyper-crony capitalism. As in many developing countries, the largest part of Mexico’s economic problem lies not in restricted export markets but in the stifling maldistribution of wealth and power that restricts internal growth. There is a widespread assumption in all three countries that NAFTA was a onetime event that occurred some fifteen years ago. But NAFTA was designed to be dynamic, not static.. It is the legal, or more accurately the “constitutional,” framework within which the continental political class is busy filling in more deals and agreements away from public scrutiny. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is an obvious example. The SPP had two stated objectives. One was to integrate the military and police functions in the “War on Terror.” The second was to further the neoliberal agenda with policies that would promote more continental deregulation and the privatization of natural resources, including Mexican oil and Canadian water. There is nothing necessarily odious about governments cooperating in these areas. Whatever you think about the War on Terror, it makes sense for authorities to work together to keep people from setting off bombs in public places. The problem is that the SPP’s national security agenda is a creature of the U.S. military-industrial complex and is an instrument for spreading and encouraging the worst antidemocratic habits of the police in all three countries. The Mérida Initiative, for example, mimics the failed, wasteful, and disgracefully misguided U.S. “War on Drugs.” It is an arrangement in which Mexico gets guidance on how to control the drug market within its borders from the United States, which has proven unable or unwilling to do it within its own borders. Like the War on Drugs, it is largely a plan to fatten the

The newly built border wall at Sasabe on the Sonora-AZ border. Photo by John Gibler.

budgets of the police with money from and humane society but in a continental First, North American economic inteoutside sources that makes them even market with robber-baron values and gration—whether it continues under less locally accountable. without a social contract. NAFTA or in another form—is here to stay. We cannot put the toothpaste Neither is it necessarily wrong for gov- The result of our current political and of NAFTA back in the tube. Every day ernments to harmonize laws and proce- economic trajectory is predictable. More more business connections in finance, dures to facilitate commerce. After all, uneven growth and economic dislocation, marketing, and production are being Mexico, the United States, and Canada more out-migration, more ethnic tension hardwired for the continental market. have been trading with each other for a between the legal and illegal members of Almost 70 percent of U.S. trade with couple of centuries, long before the ar- the U.S. working class. Mexico is within the same firm or related rival of NAFTA and neoliberal ideology. firms producing the same final product. But the SPP’s economic agenda is entire- Where Do We Go from Here? A wide array of manufacturers of elecly in the hands of the cross-border elite Writer James Baldwin once wrote, “Not tronics, telecommunications equipment, (its economic arm is the North American everything that is faced can be changed. textiles, and automobiles have permaCompetitiveness Council, composed al- But nothing can be changed unless it is nent supply lines running across the bormost entirely of representatives of large faced.” A strategy for a change in direc- ders. For professionals from the United corporations and banks from all three tion of trade and immigration policy States and Canada—and increasingly countries) whose interest is not in a just must begin by facing some realities. from Mexico—career ladders are already

A NO R T H AME R ICA T HA T W O R K S FO R ALL I T S P EO P LE

13

Maribel Ramirez and Laura and Alejandro Langley top and bag onions at sunset. Onion harvesters work in the morning and evening, and don’t work during the early afternoon when the heat is unbearable. Photo by David Bacon.

continental. At the other end of the labor market, migrant workers from Mexico have spread to virtually every region in every industry to the north. Despite the barriers, many undocumented migrants move back and forth across the border. They are not as free to move back and forth as people from Mississippi who migrate to Chicago, but they are more free than undocumented workers from Russia who migrate there. Second, it follows that simply demanding that NAFTA be torn up and that we return to the pre-NAFTA world will not work. Barack Obama’s quick retreat on this point after his 2008 presidential primary campaign illustrates that abrogating

14

the treaty is not in the political cards. More importantly, polls suggest that although most Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. citizens think that their country has not benefited, most also think that integration is a good idea.10 This makes it easy to paint opposition to integration as essentially “reactionary”—an attempt to hold back the future.

makes sense. But opposition to immigration often spills over into xenophobia: “Mexicans are taking our jobs,” “Americans are taking over our businesses,” “Canadians are undercutting our lumber prices.” Scapegoating foreigners can make it easier to gain popular support but in the end it makes it harder to create the cross-border alliance of ordinary people that is needed In all three countries, the opposition to challenge the cross-border alliance to integration has been rooted in the of elites. defense of national sovereignty, with a strong flavor of simple nationalism. Moreover, defense of sovereignty can also Since a strong public sector is essential rationalize the neoliberal agenda. Politito reclaiming democratic control over cians in all three countries have attacked the market in all three countries, de- efforts to put labor rights and standards fending national government authority into NAFTA and “NAFTA-Plus” on the

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

grounds that it violates the sovereign right of each nation to manage its own social policy, while at the same time having happily given away the sovereign right to manage their financial markets and tax systems. A third reality is that none of the proposed immigration reforms in the U.S. debate lead to a permanent satisfactory solution. The generic solution of the Republican Right is simple and easy to understand: deport people who are here illegally and build an impenetrable wall along the border. Deporting twelve million people is absurd and virtually everyone knows it. And while the wall and increased vigilance may have some short-term effect, history suggests that it cannot stem the tide of desperate people. In contrast, the Democratic bumpersticker solution to illegal immigration is to legalize those who are here. This is certainly a sensible proposal, since wholesale deportation is impractical. But it does not deal with the future. Indeed, it is not unreasonable for the average American voter to think that legalizing those already here would increase the incentive for those who still want to come. This in turn raises the spectrum of unlimited immigration—a political nonstarter. This has led some Democrats—including liberals like Senator Ted Kennedy— to endorse George Bush’s proposal to legalize future flows with a program of temporary “guest workers.” Popular resistance to such a program is high, however, and the House of Representatives last year said no. This year the Senate approved a bill that would allow a maximum of two hundred thousand temporary workers from all countries to work here at any one time. This is the highest number that could conceivably gain enough political support for passage, and it is too small to accommodate anything near the number of Mexican workers who, if current policies contin-

ue, will be heading for the border over the next decade or so. A fourth reality is that global competition is dramatically undercutting the competitive position of the United States and the linked economies of Mexico and Canada, which like the United States are losing jobs to the rest of the world, particularly Asia. For the last two decades, this reality has been masked by the unique status of the U.S dollar as the world’s economic reserve currency, which has allowed the United States to borrow from the rest of the world in order to maintain its high level of consumer spending, providing the chief export market for both Mexico and Canada. This is clearly not sustainable and is now changing. Each of the North American countries will need a strategy to prevent further erosion of its living standards. Given the reality of the economic integration, a coordinated approach to the shared problem of economic growth is essential. This brings us to the paralyzing and contradictory paradox of the evolving North American market. Given the extent of economic integration, we need shared and coordinated policies to support a prosperous economy and a social contract that extends across the borders. But under current political conditions, policy coordination will be dominated by business and political elites. These elites have little interest in making their economies as a whole (as opposed to their particular investments) prosperous, just and humane. There is an old political saying: “You can’t beat someone with no one.” That is, you cannot win elections just by criticizing a bad candidate; you have to have a candidate of your own. Thus, in order to win the war against neoliberal integration in North America, the progressive opposition needs its own progressive version of a just and sustainable North American economy upon which to build a vision and politics that can represent the future, not just protect the past.

Clearly, to be politically effective, the alternative must evolve out of wide debate, dialogue, and discussion among the many people and institutions needed to make up a serious cross-border popular movement. One starting point for that discussion might be a set of common demands for a revision of NAFTA. The foundation for a common program already exists. It is strongest and most conscious among farmers and their organizations and political allies in Mexico. For several years they have been demanding that their government renegotiate the lethal concessions it made in the agriculture chapter of the agreement. Yet each time they demonstrate and agitate, they are told by their government that revision is impossible because Canada and the United States will not do it, a message reinforced by the statements from the U.S. and Canadian embassies in Mexico City. Mexican farmers cannot win their fight without strong allies in the United States and Canada. But the alliance must be based on mutual self-interest, not just a charitable impulse. Today there are constituencies in both the United States and Canada that would support a renegotiation of NAFTA in their own interest. The most important are the trade unions and environmental groups that want labor and environmental protections. Polls show that a majority of citizens in all three countries favor such protections in trade agreements. Thus there is a solid basis for the organizing of companion and connected demands for NAFTA renegotiation. The pledge during the 2008 presidential primaries by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (whose husband pushed the agreement through Congress) to renegotiate NAFTA – which was incorporated into the 2008 Democratic Party platform — reflects this popular pressure in the United States. NAFTA should be more than renegotiated; it should be replaced with a new

A NO R T H AME R ICA T HA T W O R K S FO R ALL I T S P EO P LE

15

vision for a people-focused North American economy. For starters, the debate needs to be connected to the issue of immigration and aimed at a more fundamental change in the basic idea of the agreement. Here we can take some inspiration from the European Union. The European Union is a common market that allows for the free movement of workers across borders. When the treaty setting up the European Union was being debated, there was resistance and anxiety among the richer member countries that workers from the poorest nation—Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greec—would overrun their economies. So the European Union was constructed with a conscious “cohesion” policy. The wealthier countries provided loans and grants for infrastructure, industrial development, and other activities designed to close the gap between richer and poorer economies. Despite the European Union’s continued struggles over a social charter, the basic policy was a resounding success. Unlike NAFTA, the poorer nations grew faster than the richer ones and the gap between them narrowed. In the case of Ireland, it disappeared. Most stunning of all is what did not occur—the feared mass migration of the unemployed. As it turned out, when decent opportunities were created at home—even if the jobs were not as

16

lucrative as in the richer nations—people preferred to remain in their own country. So one aim of a new North American deal would be to provide for a similar fund for investment in Mexico in exchange for changes in Mexican law and institutions that would allow the income of Mexican workers to rise as their economy grows. These would include guarantees for free trade unions, enforceable minimum wages, and an increase in education and other social spending. The cost of such a cohesion fund would be about $100 billion, much of it in the form of loan guarantees rather than cash, not an insignificant sum but certainly affordable for a nation willing to waste $2–3 trillion on a hopeless war in Iraq. This overarching vision could include a bill of rights for citizens of North America, enforceable in all countries, which would reassert the primacy of civil protection of individuals and democratic government over the extraordinary privileges that NAFTA gives to corporate investors. It would also provide for a continental development strategy that shifts the economic policy objectives of all three countries from subsidizing pursuit of global profits by corporate investors to support of greater self-sufficiency, resource conservation, and increased investment in health, education, and other social goals. This is but a sketch of the kind of broad

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

vision that might—with debates, elaboration, and coordinated political work— appeal to majorities in all three countries in contrast to the reactionary agenda their corporate-financed-policy classes are pursuing. A cross-border movement with such a common program could build on the many organizational and personal relationships that already exist. Early steps to gain experience and trust could include joint actions against corporate abuses that span the continent. A simultaneous strike against a common employer or a protest against a common environmental abuse could dramatize the interests that people in all three countries share. Progressives could develop a common legislative agenda, introducing the same proposals in all three legislatures. Such a political project here in North America could reinforce beleaguered progressives in Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia who are trying to bring to life regional models of development that respect human life and dignity. Finally, it could help undercut U.S. elites’ illusions of their moral right to rule the world—an imperial agenda to which elites in Mexico and Canada have given overt and covert support— and force a new generation of leaders to turn to the humbler but more productive task of making their own part of the globe a better place.

In 1982, when the peso crashed, the Mexican government bought Banamex as a way of rescuing the bank and its Mexican owners from bankruptcy. In 1991, Mexican president Carlos Salinas resold it for $4.6 billion to a business group headed by a close ally, Roberto Hernández. Two years later, Salinas signed NAFTA, which—although it was scarcely mentioned—included a timetable for dismantling Mexico’s law against foreign ownership of its commercial banks.

In 1999 Rubin resigned as treasury secretary to become chair of the executive committee of Citigroup. Two years later, shortly after the date on which foreigners could buy controlling interest in Mexican banks, Citigroup bought Banamex for $12.5 billion plus a seat on the Citigroup board for Hernández. Recently Hernández masterminded the Citigroup taxexempt purchase of Aero México from the Mexican government in part with the money from that government’s continued subsidy of Citigroup/Banamex.

Robert Rubin, a former co-chair of Goldman-Sachs, who had helped finance Carlos Salinas’ privatization program, was the foremost champion of NAFTA in the Clinton White House. When another peso crisis hit Mexico in the winter of 1994–95, Rubin, then U.S. treasury secretary, engineered a bailout with government subsidies of the Wall Street holders of Mexican bonds. As part of the complex deal, Salinas’s successor, Ernesto Zedillo, accelerated the opening of Mexican banks to foreigners. At the same time, Zedillo subsidized a rescue of Mexican banks by having his government buying the banks’ largely worthless portfolios of uncollectible loans on credit.

Ironically, as even Carlos Salinas has admitted, the almost 100 percent foreign-owned Mexican banking system has been even less responsive to the need for local business credit than it was under the old, inefficient Mexican ownership. The bankers from New York and Madrid are more interested in taking deposits out of Mexico and investing abroad, and in making high-interest-rate loans to consumers to buy Chinese imports, than making loans to develop Mexican businesses.

Notes 1. 2.

Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: the Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1994), 299. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Remarks by President Clinton, President Bush, President Carter President Ford and Vice President Gore in signing of NAFTA Side Agreements, Washington DC, September 14, 1993. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Jeff Faux, The Global Class War (New York: Wiley 2006), 37. 6. Jeffrey Garten, “The Big Emerging Markets: Changing American Interests in the Global Economy,” remarks before the Foreign Policy Association, January 24, 1994. 7. Tina Rosenberg, “Why Mexico’s Small Corn Farmers Go Hungry,” New York Times, March 3, 2003. 8. Jorge Castañeda. The Mexican Shock (New York: New Press, 1995), 69. 9. “Conapo: la migracion hacia Estados Unidos continuará al menos 15 años,” La Jornada, November 25, 2007, 7. 10. Stephen J. Weber, “In Mexico, U.S. and Canada, Public Support for NAFTA Surprisingly Strong, Given Each Country Sees Grass as Greener on the Other Side,” WorldPublicOpinion.org, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brlatinamericara/161. php?nid=&id=&pnt=161 (accessed August 13, 2008).

A NO R T H AME R ICA T HA T W O R K S FO R ALL I T S P EO P LE

17

The Right and to Stay: NAFTA Immigration:

Reactivate the Population To wa rd aAgriculture, W or k a b l e Retain an d Humane In te gration

Armando Bartra Focusing on the impact of free-trade policies in the Mexican agricultural sector, Bartra expounds on the need to retain and enhance Mexican food and labor sovereignty to stem the “migration compulsion” gripping rural farming communities. He outlines the shortcomings of government poverty-alleviation programs and the consequences of the migration exodus—including crippling labor shortages and remittance dependency— on Mexican agricultural production and peasant livelihoods. Advocating the “right to not emigrate,” Bartra calls for a new relationship between the Mexican government and agricultural producers based on renewed state commitment to rural social welfare and concrete actions to stimulate local economic development.

Introduction Global and growing, migration from South to North and East to West is not a manageable population adjustment but rather an uncontrolled human flow. It is an uncontainable demographic torrent that speaks less of a virtuous balance between labor supply and demand, and more of plunder and brutal exclusion dramatized by legions of marginalized people in movement—an ailing yet hopeful army pursuing a mirage across rivers, oceans, and borders, and sowing the whole world with “aliens.” No neighborhood in the “developed” world is safe from the invasion of “southies” or “Orientals.” The remedy for this maddening twenty-first-century exodus is, at least in part, the recovery of food and labor sovereignty in sending countries through the revitalization of agricultural sectors and investment in peasant producers. The urgency is now greater than ever: as rising oil prices signal the end of cheap transportation and global demand for biofuels intensifies, basic

18

food-grain production is increasingly Migrants have always existed but today forced to the sideline. they form a legion, a legion that coincides with the introduction of “structural 1. The Ailment adjustment” programs and the launch of As tariff barriers have been dismantled NAFTA in 1994. The policies that were to allow for free exchange of goods and supposed to carry the country into the services, walls have been built to prevent First World, have instead forced Mexifree movement of workers, criminaliz- cans into the United States. The intering migrant access to the labor markets national treaties that were supposed to of the developed world. The millions of deliver us from underdevelopment have undocumented workers in the United instead made us flounder in crisis and States are a disadvantaged army of sur- exodus. Paradoxically, NAFTA hardly plus labor with low wages, poor working touches on migration issues. The failure conditions, weak unionizing rights, and of NAFTA speaks to the discrimination few if any social benefits. They represent of “human merchandise” and debunks a cheap, vulnerable workforce, willing to the hypothesis that commercial liberaltake the worst jobs and work to the bone. ization will stimulate Mexican economic Economically profitable for employers, growth and job creation, thereby decreaslabor illegality is socially disruptive. ing out-migration and improving wages and working conditions in the receiving Migratory Mexico country’s labor markets. We are an abandoned and in-transit country, the world champions of exo- The remedy turned out to be worse than dus. No country is emptying as quickly the ailment. Trade liberalization unas Mexico. Nearly thirty million Mexi- der extreme asymmetries has destroyed cans now live on the other side of the the Mexican economy. It has killed off border, of which less than half were small- and medium-sized businesses that born in Mexico and perhaps one half serve the domestic market and provide of that are undocumented. A country jobs, and wiped out peasant agriculture with a shattered present and uncertain that feeds nearly a quarter of the popfuture means an uprooted and transient ulation—in particular, the producers nation. Mexicans are a binational peo- of basic grains on which the country’s ple. The symbiosis with our northern food security depends. The wholesale neighbor is also evident in substantial dismantling of Mexico’s productive inand growing economic flows. Remit- frastructure has generated a growing and tances, the money sent home by mi- uncontrollable exodus. grants, reached $25 billion in 2007—an amount three times the value of agri- The “Demographic Bonus” cultural exports, much higher than an- Mexico’s central bank began measurnual tourism revenue, larger than total ing remittance flows in 1995. In 2004, foreign direct investment, and second it recorded fifty-one million transaconly to oil exports. These remittances tions worth an average of $327 each, greatly exceed federal expenditures on approximately $16 billion. However, this rural programs such as Alianza para el figure includes only recorded transacCampo and Procampo, even after tak- tions; we must still account for the value ing into account the Ministry of Agri- of funds sent through friends and family culture’s operating costs. members, as well as merchandise sent as

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Former Mexican Agriculture Minister and Golf Enthusiast, Javier Usabiaga. Photo by Rocha, courtesy of La Jornada.

gifts. Citing a study by the University of California, Rafael Alarcon, an academic at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, states that “nearly a third of remittances are sent through relatives and friends.”1 If this is true, remittances are grossly underestimated and the amount should be approximately 30 percent higher. Jose Santibañez Romellón, president of the same academic institution, also considers the central bank’s figure “questionable”—besides remittances, it includes other types of transactions, including “illicit ones,” making “the amount that actually reaches homes slightly more than half that reported by the bank.”2 If this analysis is correct,

remittance amounts are severely overesti- cumulative foreign direct investment bemated and the figure should be halved. tween 1994 and 2003, they simply compensate for the current deficit, sustain The difference between these calcula- the value of the peso, and stimulate the tions is dramatic but the problem is not domestic consumer goods market. so much with the magnitude of the remittances as with the recipients them- Although Mexico’s population is predomselves. Here discrepancies fade away: inately young today, in twenty or twenty“Remittances are a complement to or a five years it will be mostly old. There are substitute for wages and not investment currently over eight million people aged capital,” concluded an International sixty and older, making up 7.7 percent Monetary Fund (IMF) study in 2005.3 of the population. By the middle of the Reiterating its position, the IMF states, century, there will be thirty-six million “Remittances can be identified not as senior citizens—28 percent of the total capital for economic growth, but rather population. The central problem is that as compensation for poor economic the majority of Mexicans reaching workperformance.” Therefore, although ing age over the last two decades have remittances represent over half of the not joined the labor market; rather, they

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY

19

“How many more? Already more than 2,000.” Painted on a cross on the Mexican side of the border in Sasabe, Sonora. Photo by John Gibler.

20

have remained unemployed, entered the to $17 billion, approximately 9 percent. underground crime economy, or been Furthermore, these figures refer only to forced to leave the country. the sector where most remittances originate, and do not include mixed-origin A Banamex-Citigroup study established families or Mexican-American families. that while 80 percent of Mexicans resid- If these groups were included, the ining in the United States are between fif- come of Mexican migrants would rise to teen and fifty-five years of age, only 55 over $400 billion. percent of the population falls within this age group in Mexico. The disparity is even Compared with these figures, remittancstarker if we focus on young adults: 30 es are pocket change. They are less still percent of migrants are between the ages of if we consider that the $187 billion or twenty-five and thirty-five, while in Mex- $400 billion earned by migrants is largely ico only 15 percent of the population is wages or self-generated income. That is, within this age range. This shows that the we must still account for employers’ profpercentage of young adults in the diaspora its, large figures which depend on capital is double that in the home country. If it is stock and a capital earnings rate—factors worrisome that, for lack of a better future, that increase as wages are driven down one in eleven Mexicans lives in the United by the presence of migrants in the U.S. States, it is downright alarming that one labor market. The value added accrues to in six young adults is already on the other the U.S., not the Mexican, economy. side of the border, while a large number of those that remain in Mexico are desperate- The destruction of the great reservoir ly trying to leave. The end of the migra- of subsistence productivity that was the tory compulsion is nowhere in sight: since Mexican countryside and the dismancurrent economic policies cannot sustain tling of the small- and medium-sized eneconomic growth and satisfy the demand terprises that provided employment has for new jobs—much less make up for the caused a perverse positive feedback loop. cumulative deficit—the pressure on the The young and more skilled labor force labor market will remain at current levels emigrates to the United States, where for another decade. productivity and wages are higher. Consequently, the income generated by youths Citing a recent study, Isabel Guerrero, born, raised, and educated in Mexico does World Bank director for Mexico and Co- not serve to increase the country’s wealth lombia, explains that the reduction in ru- and productive capacity but rather those ral poverty since 2000 is primarily due to of our neighbor, deepening asymmetries “the increase in direct transfers”—both that ultimately drive the exodus. public, such as the Oportunidades program, and private, mainly remittances.4 The Need for Strong Arms This means that the increased income of When indigenous peoples and peasants the poorest sectors of the population is migrate, they greatly diminish labor due to transfers, rather than an increase availability in the countryside, driving in productivity or improved terms of up relative wages. The problem deepens trade. While the value of remittances is when remittances start arriving. Coupled undeniably high, they represent a very with resources from “human capital desmall share of the wealth generated by velopment” government programs like Mexican workers in the United States. Progresa (which really only prepares fuAccording to Rodolfo Tuirán, “90% of ture migrants), remittances raise the the income [of Mexicans in the United cost of labor even more. These transfers States] remains in that country, and only sustain subsistence livelihoods, however 10% is sent back to Mexico.”5 Tuirán precariously, and place local wages in adds that Mexican migrants earned some competition with the diaspora’s dollars $187 billion in 2004 and sent back close and the government’s subsidies.

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

“The border is so large because we are on our knees.” Painted on the Mexican side of the border wall, directly in front of the Sonora State Migrant Support Office in Nogales, Sonora. Photo by John Gibler.

Coffee production is an example of the grave imbalances created by labor market shortages. The crop is mostly marketed internationally, and small growers, each managing more than half a million holdings of less than ten hectares (approximately 24.7 acres), predominate. In addition to recurring drops in producer prices, peasants now have to deal with the shortage of laborers willing to pick it. In 2004—despite the fact that international prices for the crop were high that year—a Oaxacan coffee grower stated, “Coffee growing is very laborious. My wife and I cannot handle it all, but there are no workers here. Between the greenbacks sent back

by migratory youth and the Oportunidades money the government gives away for having lots of kids, nobody here wants to work. We’re better off cutting down the plantation.”6 And so it goes elsewhere. In Veracruz state, “bad weather, abandonment of fields because of migration, and the everdecreasing availability of laborers will cause a drastic drop in production, a drop of fifty percent.”7 In the mid-1990s, very few Chiapanecos left for the United States. Today, around thirty thousand people leave every year, most of whom are indigenous. “Chiapas

peasants are substituting the dollar harvest for the corn harvest,” concludes Daniel Villafuerte, a professor at the Chiapas Science and Arts University. The situation became critical in late 2007: “The coffee sector crisis in Chiapas is taking a turn for the worse because of the labor shortage. Day workers—including Guatemalans—are reluctant to come work due to low salaries. Chiapas is the top coffee producer in Mexico . . . but the sector’s current situation is very worrying. . . . Thousands of local workers, including the owners of croplands, have emigrated to the United States leaving many communities with only women, children, and the elderly.”8

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY

21

The Mixteca region of Oaxaca is one of the poorest areas in Mexico. Indigenous Mixtec, Triqui and other groups from this region now make up a large percentage of the migrants who have left to work in the United States. But many people try to stay on the land and farm, despite the difficulty. Zacarias Salazar plows his cornfield behind oxen, in the traditional... Photo by David Bacon.

2. The Remedy Travels are enlightening but when migration is the result of a social catastrophe, it is impossible to normalize or dignify. While the pain can be attenuated, the real solution lies in attacking the causes of the exodus, not just its symptoms. Despite being very important, the issue of migrants’ rights does not go to the root cause of the human avalanche: the destruction of peripheral societies’ economies. In the new era of globalization, nations have lost the last tatters of food and labor security. Countries such as Mexico are incapable of meeting their population’s basic food and employment needs.

22

Migrants’ Rights and the Right to Not Emigrate I do not want to condemn migration, which is a right, but the “right to leave” becomes a compulsion when its symmetrical guarantee, the “right to stay,” does not exist. The “right to stay” implies the existence of the material and spiritual conditions necessary to make staying an option, not a curse. This right is absent when there is no security, when there are no liberties, jobs, dignified income, or hopeful future. Globalization’s greatest gift to rank-and-file “peripheries” has been to snuff their expectations of a bright future. After the 1910 revolution, each new generation of Mexicans could see some improvement over their

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

parents’ living conditions and could hope for further improvement for their offspring. This conviction was lost in the 1980s when technocratic policies reduced options for progress by rejecting welfare state provisions and betting on a neoliberal model that cared only about exports. By giving up on the internal market, this model also got rid of any redistributive policies. Susan Gzesh, director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago, reminds, “Any durable ‘solution’ to the massive Mexican exodus to the United State should include . . . measures that provide . . . those not wishing to migrate the means to remain in their

country. Some groups advocating for human rights are starting to focus on ‘the right not to emigrate.’”9 This right must be guaranteed by the state. The Mexican Constitution’s Article 27 asserts that “the State will foster the conditions for integral rural development, with the purpose of creating jobs and guaranteeing the peasant population’s welfare.” Article 123 is even more explicit: “Every person has the right to dignified and socially useful work; to that effect, job creation and social organization for Labor will be promoted, under the guidelines established by the Law.” However, since the rest of the article deals only with relations between employers and workers, a bylaw is needed to guarantee the right to work. Just as the Mexican Lower Chamber passed the Food and Nutrition Security and Sovereignty Planning Law in 2006, a similar law for labor security and sovereignty should be passed. It should include the principles of “democratic planning” and “directorship of development” that the Constitution bestows on the state. Also, it should define criteria, strategies, and instruments to make it inclusive and egalitarian. It should guarantee a “dignified and socially useful job,” a right currently unavailable to both the half million Mexicans that move to the United States every year and the equal number who annually sink into the underground economy. The free market does not provide food and employment. If we want food and employment security, we need sovereignty in food and labor matters and consistent government action in defense of our social welfare. Food sovereignty should be understood as the nation’s capacity to foster sustainable production of grains and other basic crops, as well as the population’s capacity to earn sufficient income to purchase those goods. Labor sovereignty should be understood as the capacity to sponsor the creation of sufficient dignified jobs to ensure economic stability for the population.

I do not propose autarchy. The EU is the prime modern example of how countries can mutually benefit from associations that cede some degree of sovereignty. I also do not propose food and labor self-sufficiency. It is not inadmissible to import some foodstuffs and to say goodbye to some migrants; what is inadmissible is to critically weaken nations by creating absolute food and labor dependency.

3. End of an Era Revaluing the countryside demands a new rural-urban pact, and within this framework, a new relationship between the state and small rural producers. The peasant movement has been asking for this since at least the 1995 protest marches, a year after the implementation of NAFTA. The movement vindicated its demands in 2003, then under the guise of the Countryside Cannot Take it Anymore movement, when the government signed the National Accord for the Countryside. These demands are heard but not answered; the pacts are signed but not honored. The political class is convinced that agriculture must blindly submit to “market signals,” and that peasants do not have a place in the export agribusiness model. After World War II, agricultural prices started a long decline. Food prices have dropped 75 percent in the last thirty years. This decline is due less to new land being farmed—indeed large tracts were subsidized out of production—and more to greater productivity resulting from Green Revolution technologies that granted producers relative independence from agro-ecological conditions. In addition to the explosive increase in irrigation, there was widespread mechanization, introduction of improved seeds, a steep hike in the use of chemical fertilizers, new herbicides, and a broad range of pesticides. These developments, along with subsidies, turned the metropolitan countries into the world’s granary, relegating pe-

Former Mexican Agriculture Minister and Golf Enthusiast, Javier Usabiaga.Illustration by Rocha, courtesy of La Jornada. ripheral countries to the role of agricultural raw material suppliers and food importers. This state of matters has ended. The Economist’s food-price index is at its highest point since its measurement started in 1845, and cereal stocks, as a share of total production, are the lowest in record. At the end of 2007, wheat reached $400 per ton, the highest price in memory, and corn hit $175 per ton, a new record. The end of cheap food is inseparable from the end of cheap fuels. These high prices mark the close of a historical cycle of capitalist expansion that began some two hundred years ago, an economic order sustained by growing energy consumption (more energy has been used in the last twenty years than in all previous human history) that was only possible thanks to high-density fossil fuels. The impact of oil, gas, and coal

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY

23

Leaving the provision of foodstuffs in private hands in times of crisis facilitates extractive agriculture’s final strike against peasants and indigenous communities. Besides not creating jobs, agribusiness degrades soils, water, and biodiversity, and favors mining-style land cultivation that has already shown its limitations. By monopolizing the means of production, patented seed, and the marketing system, agribusiness controls supply. Since demand for basic foodstuffs is inelastic, prices have no limits besides corporate voracity and the starving consumer’s willingness to pay. Excess profit is appropriated not by local agents, but by transnational grain companies— businesspeople who, unconcerned with countryside welfare, want to make the most money in the shortest time while establishing a predatory agricultural model that forfeits agricultural jobs.

An unemployed woman and man sit in the shade waiting to sell pumpkin seeds to unlikely visitors. The church in the back ground was built using migrants’ remittances through the federal “three-for-one” program. Photo by John Gibler. combustion on a massive scale is leading us to an irreversible environmental crisis. As the use of these fuels declines, the associated historical development model will come to a close; its energy characteristics are so unusual that we are unlikely to see anything like them again.10 With the exhaustion of oil reserves, a socially destructive and environmentally predatory paradigm of civilization, characterized by unsustainable energy consumption, will run out of steam. The alternative to this seeming dead end lies not in the development of new energy sources designed to maintain current levels of consumption, but rather radically rethinking and transforming our systems of production, marketing, and consumption. The world needs more food but it cannot produce it the way it used to. With high prices, low stocks, rising trans-

24

portation costs, progressive diversion of agricultural lands to other uses, and intensifying global warming effects on crops, depending on basic grain imports is ruinous for countries that can afford them and suicidal for those that cannot. In the future, recovering food security and sovereignty to ensure self-sufficiency, at least in the most highly consumed goods, will be not only socially and politically pertinent, but also economically profitable from the perspective of national accounts. However, how and by whom can the foods needed by each country be produced? The answer is not agribusiness for two reasons. First, its technological model is predatory. Agricultural expansion using this model will have incalculable environmental damage. Second, its economic rationality is speculative. It will maximize profits by cultivating ever farther and less fertile land.

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

The local, national, and global alternative is collective peasant-household production, operating within an institutional framework that enhances social, environmental, technological, and economic virtues. Household production can increase agricultural supply as it has done historically. Nevertheless, if it lacks public support and confronts an unregulated economic environment, it will end up selling at cost or below; exhausting its natural and productive resources, instead of conserving and increasing them. If agribusiness extracts excessive profits from society, peasant agriculture pays the price and its long-term viability is compromised. What we need is a new agreement between rural and urban worlds in which cities recognize and remunerate the real contributions of a socially just, environmentally sustainable, economically efficient countryside. This effort must be embodied in public policies that give technical and economic viability to socially and environmentally necessary food production, government actions that decisively intervene in the agricultural market to revitalize the rural world through regulation and compensatory policies.

In its 2008 World Development Report agriculture section, the World Bank acknowledges that “it is necessary to make this sector the center of development programs”—3 billion of the 5.5 billion inhabitants of developing countries live in the countryside, making “a revolution in the productivity of small rural producers” necessary. This recognition is welcome. However, to make such a productivity revolution effective, these countries will need to revitalize their peasant economies. Revitalization depends on two preconditions: the establishment of food sovereignty through a reallocation of basic foodstuff production to reduce the energy waste of the global agricultural export industry that privileges global markets over local ones, and the establishment of labor sovereignty to reduce the economic cost and cultural and social erosion driving forced migration.

Changing directions will not be easy but successful experiences point in the right direction. The state of Zacatecas, with half its population living as migrants, is an emblem of the exodus. It is also a laboratory for alternative uses of remittances. Under the 3 x 1 Program— which offers federal, state, and municipal matching funds on a dollar per dollar basis—over two thousand development projects have been launched between 1993 and 2007.11 The Zapotec towns of Santa María Guienagati and Santiago Lachiguiri, Oaxaca, members of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region (UCIRI), are precursors of organic coffee production. Both have been exporting to the European Fair Trade Market, which they helped to create in 1988. Despite this, their inhabitants have not escaped the migratory com-

pulsion. In 2003, the towns officially registered three thousand hectares of woodland as Protected Community Area for conservation and sustainable development. They are now developing ecotourism projects on this land, and their words synthesize the argument of this essay: “Youth have already caught the migration bug. . . . Between remittances and the money the government passes around . . . there are fewer and fewer people willing to work. However, in Lachiguiri and Guienagati, we are determined to resist. For example, instead of running to the United States to earn famous dollars working for gringos, it is better if the güeros come here to vacation at the Cerro de las Flores. That way, instead of us having to go suffer in those places, they themselves will bring the greenbacks. Besides, we will treat them better here than they would ever treat us over there.”12

Notes 1. 2. 3.

Juan Balboa. “Transferencia de Bolsillo y Clubes Migrantes,” La Jornada, September 6, 2004. Jose Santibáñez Romellón, “Los Mitos de las Remesas,” La Jornada, June 13, 2005. Paola Giuliano and Marta Ruiz-Arranz, “Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth,” Working Paper No. 05/234, International Monetary Fund, 2005. 4. Roberto González Amador and Rosa E. Vargas, “Baja Pobreza Rural, Pero Crece Desigualdad,” La Jornada, August 25, 2005. 5. Alma E. Muñoz, “Los Migrantes Destinan a Remesas Casi 10% de Sus Ingresos Anuales,” La Jornada, June 18, 2005. 6. A. Bartra, R., Cobo and L. Paz Paredes, Cafetales Campesinos (Instituto Maya, 2005). 7. Andrés T. Morales. “Prevén Desplome de la Caficultura en Veracruz,” La Jornada. December 7, 2007. 8. Rodolfo Villalba. “Chiapas: Falta de Nano de Obra Agrava Crisis en la Caficultura,” La Jornada, December 29, 2007. 9. Susan Gzesh, “Derechos Humanos y Migración: Una Mirada desde Estados Unidos,” La Jornada del Campo, February 12, 2008. 10. See Jack Santa Bárbara, “The False Promise of Biofuels,” International Forum on Globalization and Institute for Policy Studies, 2007. 11. Rodolfo García Zamora, “Zacatecas: Emblema de la Migración,” La Jornada del Campo, February 12, 2008. 12. Rosario Cobo and Armando Bartra Puerta del Viento, Cerro de las Flores, Área Comunitaria Protegida (México: UCIRI, 2007).

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY

25

Equality Human Rights, Instead of Displacement and NAFTA and and Immigration: Criminalization To wa rd a W or k a b l e an d Humane In te gration

By David Bacon Detailing the economic displacement of Mexican agricultural and manufacturing workers produced by NAFTA and precursory privatization and economic restructuring, Bacon frames trade and immigration policy as two parts of a single system. He argues that U.S. free-trade agreements with countries of unequal economic strength have become a mechanism to produce workers, while guest worker and employment-based immigration policies are designed to act as an unacknowledged labor supply system for U.S. industries. Highlighting the inherent contradiction between current trade and immigration policies, Bacon asserts that trade policy reform is as important to solving the immigration crisis as granting legal status, rights, and benefits to undocumented workers, and calls for the unlinking of immigration status and employment. Economic crises provoked by NAFTA and other economic reforms are now uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the country’s most remote areas, where people still speak languages that were old when Columbus arrived from Spain. While California farmworkers twenty and thirty years ago came from parts of Mexico with a larger Spanish presence, migrants today come increasingly from indigenous communities in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. Rufino Dominguez, former coordinator of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, says there are about five hundred thousand indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the United States, three hundred thousand in California alone. “There are no jobs, and NAFTA drove the price of corn so low that it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore,” he says. “We come to the United States to work because there’s no alternative.”

26

As he points out, U.S. trade and immigration policy are part of a single system, and the negotiation of NAFTA was an important step in the development of this relationship. Since NAFTA’s passage in 1993, the Congress has debated and passed several new trade agreements—with Peru, Jordan, Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. At the same time it has debated immigration policy as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work. Meanwhile, a rising tide of anti-immigrant hysteria has increasingly demonized those migrants, leading to measures to deny them jobs, rights, or any pretense of equality with people living in the communities around them. To resolve any of these dilemmas, from adopting rational and humane immigration policies to reducing the fear and hostility toward migrants, the starting point must be an examination of the way U.S. policies have both produced migration and criminalized migrants. Trade negotiations and immigration policy were formally joined together when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986. While most attention has focused on its provisions for amnesty and employer sanctions, few noted one other provision of the law. IRCA set up a Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development to study the causes of immigration to the United States. The commission was inactive until 1988 but began holding hearings when the United States and Canada signed a bilateral free-trade agreement. After Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari made it plain that he favored

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

a similar agreement with Mexico, the commission made a report to President George H. W. Bush and to Congress in 1990. It found, unsurprisingly, that the main motivation for coming to the United States was economic. To slow or halt this flow, it recommended “promoting greater economic integration between the migrant sending countries and the United States through free trade” and that “U.S. economic policy should promote a system of open trade.” It concluded that “the United States should expedite the development of a U.S.Mexico free trade area and encourage its incorporation with Canada into a North American free trade area,” while warning that “it takes many years—even generations—for sustained growth to achieve the desired effect.” The negotiations that led to NAFTA started within months of the report. As Congress debated the treaty, President Salinas toured the United States, telling audiences unhappy at high levels of immigration that passing NAFTA would reduce it by providing employment for Mexicans in Mexico. Back home Salinas and other treaty proponents made the same argument. NAFTA, they claimed, would set Mexico on a course to become a First World nation. “We did become part of the first world,” says Juan Manuel Sandoval, coordinator of the Permanent Seminar on Chicano and Border Studies at Mexico City’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. “The backyard.” NAFTA instead became an important source of pressure on Mexicans to migrate. The treaty forced yellow corn grown by Mexican farmers without subsidies to compete in Mexico’s own market with corn from huge U.S. producers, subsidized by the United States farm bill.

Agricultural exports to Mexico more than doubled during the NAFTA years, from $4.6 to $9.8 billion annually—$2.5 billion in 2006 in corn alone. In January and February of 2008, huge demonstrations in Mexico sought to block the implementation of the agreement’s final chapter, which lowered the tariff barriers on white corn and beans.

Poor people in Mexican cities fared no better. Although a flood of cheap U.S. grain was supposed to make consumer prices fall, the opposite occurred. With the end of the CONASUPO stores and price controls, the price of tortillas more than doubled in the years that followed NAFTA’s adoption. One company, Grupo Maseca, monopolized tortilla production, while Wal-Mart became As a result of a growing crisis in agricul- Mexico’s largest retailer. tural production, by the 1980s Mexico had already become a corn importer Under Mexico’s former national conand, according to Sandoval, large farmers tent laws, foreign auto makers like Ford, switched to other crops when they could Chrysler, General Motors, and Volkswanot compete with U.S. grain dump- gen were required to buy some of their ing. But NAFTA then prohibited price components from Mexican producers. supports, without which hundreds of Workers labored in the parts plants that thousands of small farmers found it im- produced them. NAFTA, however, propossible to sell corn or other farm prod- hibited laws requiring foreign producers ucts for what it cost to produce them. to use a certain percentage of local content The CONASUPO system (Compañía in assembled products. Without this reNacional de Subsistencias Populares), in straint, the auto giants began to supply which the government bought corn at their assembly lines with parts from their subsidized prices, turned it into tortillas own subsidiaries, often manufactured in and sold them in state-franchised grocery other countries. Mexican parts workers stores at subsidized low prices, was abol- lost their jobs by the thousands. ished. And when NAFTA pulled down customs barriers, large U.S. corporations NAFTA was part of a process that began dumped even more agricultural products long before, in which economic reforms on the Mexican market. Rural families restructured the Mexican economy. One went hungry when they could not find major objective of those reforms was the buyers for what they had grown. privatization of the large state sector, employing millions of workers. By the early Mexico could not protect its own ag- 1990s, Mexico had sold not just its mines riculture from the fluctuations of the to one company, Grupo Mexico, owned world market. A global coffee glut in by the Larreas family, but its steel mill in the 1990s plunged prices below the cost Michoacan to the Villareals, and its teleof production. A less entrapped govern- phone company to Carlos Slim. Former ment might have bought the crops of Mexico City mayor Carlos Hanks drove Veracruz farmers to keep them afloat or the city’s bus system deeply into debt and provided subsidies for other crops. But then bought the lines in the 1990s at once free-market strictures were in place public auction. prohibiting government intervention to help them, those farmers paid the price. Rich Mexicans were not the only benefiVeracruz campesinos joined the stream ciaries of privatization. U.S. companies of workers headed north. were allowed to own land and factories,

Deported migrants cross back into Mexico at the border between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora. Photo by John Gibler. eventually anywhere in Mexico, without Mexican partners. U.S.-based Union Pacific, in partnership with the Larreas, became the owner of the country’s main North–South rail line, and immediately discontinued virtually all passenger service, as railroad corporations had done in the United States. As the Larreas and Union Pacific moved to boost profits and cut labor costs, Mexican rail employment dropped from over 90,000 to 36,000. The railroad union under left-

EQ U ALI T Y AN D H U MAN R IGH T S

27

produced shrank during U.S. recessions. In 2000–01, four hundred thousand jobs were lost on the U.S.-Mexico border, and in the current recession thousands more will be eliminated. All of these policies produce displaced people who can no longer make a living or survive as they have done before. The rosy predictions of NAFTA’s boosters that it would slow migration proved false. Between just 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost nine hundred thousand jobs in the countryside, and seven hundred thousand in the cities. Since 1994, six million Mexicans came to live in the United States. Another million went to work in the maquiladoras. In just five years, from 2000 to 2005, the Mexican population living in the United States increased from ten to twelve million. With few green cards or permanent residence visas available for San Diego, CA. Expensive homes in a new development overlook the “La Gallinita” Mexicans, most of these migrants were camp, made by indigenous Mixtec and Zapotec farm workers from Oaxaca, on a hillside undocumented.

outside Oceanside. Photo by David Bacon.

wing leaders Demetrio Vallejo and Valentin Campa had been so strong that its strikes challenged the government in the 1950s. The two spent years in prison for their temerity. Facing privatization, railroad workers mounted a wildcat strike to try to save their jobs, but they lost and their union became a shadow of its former presence in Mexican politics. After NAFTA the privatization wave expanded. Mexico’s ports were sold off and companies like Stevedoring Services of America, Hutchinson, and TMM now operate the country’s largest shipping terminals. The impact on longshoring wages was devastating. In Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, the two largest Pacific coast ports, crane drivers made $100–160 per day before privatization in the late 1980s. Today they make $40–50. In 2006, spreading poverty and the lack of a program to create jobs and raise living standards ignited months of conflict in Oaxaca, in which strikes and demonstrations were met with repression by an unpopular government. Leoncio

28

Vasquez, an activist with the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB) in Fresno, California, says, “The lack of human rights itself is a factor contributing to migration from Oaxaca and Mexico, since it closes off our ability to call for any change. In NAFTA’s first year, one million Mexicans lost their jobs when the peso was devalued. To avert the sell-off of short-term bonds and a flood of capital to the north, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin engineered a $20 billion loan to Mexico, which was paid to bondholders, mostly U.S. banks. In return, Mexico had to pledge its oil revenue to pay off foreign debt, making the country’s primary source of income unavailable for social needs, and foreign capital took control of the Mexican banking system.

People were migrating from Mexico to the United States long before NAFTA was negotiated. Juan Manuel Sandoval emphasizes that “Mexican labor has always been linked to the different stages of U.S. capitalist development since the 19th century—in times of prosperity, by the incorporation of big numbers of workers in agricultural, manufacturing, service and other sectors, and in periods of economic crisis, by the deportation of Mexican laborers back to Mexico in huge numbers.” But from 1982 through the NAFTA era, successive economic reforms produced more migrants. Ejidatarios who lost their land found jobs as farm workers in California. Laid-off railroad workers traveled north, as their forbears had during the early 1900s, when Mexican labor built much of the rail network through the U.S. Southwest. The displacement of people had already grown so large by 1986 that the commission established by IRCA was charged with recommending measures to halt or slow it.

As the Mexican economy, especially the border maquiladora industry, became increasingly tied to the U.S. market, Mexican workers lost jobs when Its report urged that “migrant-sending the market for what those factories countries should encourage technological

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

modernization by strengthening and assuring intellectual property protection and by removing existing impediments to investment” and recommended that “the United States should condition bilateral aid to sending countries on their taking the necessary steps toward structural adjustment. Similarly, U.S. support for non-project lending by the international financial institutions should be based on the implementation of satisfactory adjustment programs.” The IRCA commission report even acknowledged the potential for harm by noting that “efforts should be made to ease transitional costs in human suffering.” NAFTA, however, was not intended to relieve human suffering. “It is the financial crashes and the economic disasters that drive people to work for dollars in the United States, to replace life savings, or just to earn enough to keep their family at home together,” says Harvard historian John Womack. “The debt-induced crash in the 1980s, before NAFTA, drove people north. . . . The financial crash and the Rubininduced reform of NAFTA, New York’s financial expropriation of Mexican finances between 1995 and 2000, drove the economically wrecked, dispossessed and impoverished north again.” Displacement is an unmentionable word in the Washington discourse. But not one immigration proposal in Congress in 2006 and 2007 tried to come to grips with the policies that uprooted miners, teachers, tree planters, and farmers, in spite of the fact that legislators voted for these policies. In fact, while debating bills to criminalize undocumented migrants and set up huge guest worker programs, four new trade agreements were introduced, each of which would cause more displacement and more migration. Today displacement and inequality are deeply ingrained in the free-market economy. Mexican president Felipe Calderón said during a recent visit to California, “You have two economies. One economy

On May Day immigrants and their supporters filled the streets of Los Angeles twice in one day -a huge march downtown, and another through the Wilshire district’s Miracle Mile. There were so many people that those participating said they were sin numero -- uncountable. Marchers of all races and nationalities protested the bills in Congress that would criminalize... Photo by David Bacon. is intensive in capital, which is the American economy. One economy is intensive in labor, which is the Mexican economy. We are two complementary economies, and that phenomenon is impossible to stop.” When Calderón says “intensive in labor,” he means that millions of Mexican citizens are being displaced, and that the country’s economy cannot produce employment for them. To Calderón and employers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, migration is therefore a labor supply system.

Immigration policy determines the rules under which that labor is put to use. President George Bush says that the purpose of U.S. immigration policy should be to “connect willing employers and willing employees.” He is simply restating what has been true throughout U.S. history. U.S. immigration policy does not stop people from coming into the country, nor is it intended to. Its main function is to determine the status of people once they are here. And an

EQ U ALI T Y AN D H U MAN R IGH T S

29

Mixtec men from Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, wait for work early in the morning. They live in the Los Peñasquitos canyon on the north edge of San Diego, and work as day laborers and farm workers — wherever they can find work. Photo by David Bacon. immigration policy based on providing a labor supply produces two effects. Displacement becomes an unspoken tool for producing workers, while inequality becomes official policy. Some twenty-four million immigrants live in the United States as either citizens or with documents, and twelve million without them. If migrants actually did go home, whole industries would collapse. And employers benefit from large numbers of undocumented people, since illegality creates an inexpensive system. So-called “illegal” workers produce wealth but receive a smaller share in return—a source of profit for those who employ them. No one claims that these excess profits are “illegal” and should be returned to those who

30

produced them. Instead, the producers California fields, and New York office themselves are called illegal. buildings. Companies depend not just on the workers in the factories and fields but also on the communities from which they come. If those communities stop sending workers, the labor supply dries up. Work stops. Yet no company pays for a single school or clinic, or even any taxes, in those communities. In the tiny Mexican towns that now provide workers, free-market and freetrade policies exert pressure to cut the government budget for social services. The cost of these services is now borne by workers themselves, in the form of remittance payments sent back from jobs in Nebraska slaughterhouses,

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox boasted that in 2005 his country’s citizens working in the United States sent back $18 billion. Some estimate that in 2006 that figure reached $25 billion. At the same time, the public funds that have historically paid for schools and public works increasingly leave Mexico in debt to foreign banks. Remittances, as large as they are, cannot make up for this outflow. According to a report to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, remittances accounted for an average of 1.19 percent of the gross domestic product between 1996 and 2000, and 2.14 percent between 2001 and 2006. Debt payments accounted for 3 percent annually. By

partially meeting unmet and unfunded social needs, remittances are indirectly subsidizing banks. At the same time, companies dependent on this immigrant stream gain greater flexibility in adjusting for the highs and lows of market demand. The global production system has grown very flexible in accommodating economic booms and busts. Its employment system is based on the use of contractors, which is replacing the system in which workers were directly employed by the businesses using their labor. Displaced migrant workers are the backbone of this system. Its guiding principle is that immigration policy and enforcement should direct immigrants to industries when their labor is needed and remove them when it is not. Guest-worker and employment-based visa programs were created to accommodate these labor needs. When demand is high, employers recruit workers. When demand falls, those workers not only have to leave their jobs but the country entirely. Today employers and the Department of Homeland Security call for relaxing the requirements on guest-worker visas. Although there are minimum-wage and housing requirements, the Southern Poverty Law Center report “Close to Slavery” documents the fact that the requirements are generally ignored. “These workers don’t have labor rights or benefits,” Dominguez charges. “It’s like slavery. If workers don’t get paid or they’re cheated, they can’t do anything.” New guest-worker programs are the heart of the corporate program for U.S. immigration reform and are combined with proposals for increased enforcement and a pro-employer program for legalization of the undocumented. Proposals based on this three-part compromise are called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

“The governments of both Mexico and the United States are dependent on the cheap labor of Mexicans. They don’t say so openly, but they are,” Dominguez concludes. “What would improve our situation is real legal status for the people already here, and greater availability of visas based on family reunification. Legalization and more visas would resolve a lot of problems—not all, but it would be a big step,” he says. “Walls won’t stop migration, but decent wages and investing money in creating jobs in our countries of origin would decrease the pressure forcing us to leave home. Penalizing us by making it illegal for us to work won’t stop migration, since it doesn’t deal with why people come.” Changing corporate trade policy and stopping neoliberal reforms is as central to immigration reform as gaining legal status for undocumented immigrants. It makes no sense to promote more free-trade agreements and then condemn the migration of the people they displace. Instead Congress must end the use of the free-trade system as a mechanism for producing displaced workers. That also means unlinking immigration status and employment. If employers are allowed to recruit contract labor abroad and those workers can only stay if they are continuously employed, they will never have enforceable rights. The root problem with migration in the global economy is that it is forced migration. A coalition for reform should fight for the right of people to choose when and how to migrate, including the derecho de no migrar (the right not to migrate—the right for an alternative to migration). At the same time, migrants should have basic rights regardless of immigration status. “Otherwise,” Dominguez says, “wages will be depressed in a race to the bottom, since if one employer has an advantage, others will seek the same

“We have a problem. In order to build the antiimmigrant fence, we need to hire thousands of illegal workers.” Cartoon by Fisgon, courtesy of La Jornada. thing.” To raise the low cost of immigrant labor, immigrant workers have to be able to organize. Permanent legal status makes it easier and less risky to organize. Guest worker programs, employer sanctions, enforcement, and raids make organizing much more difficult. Corporations and those who benefit from current priorities might not support a more pro-migrant alternative but millions of people would. Whether they live in Mexico or the United States, working people need the same things— secure jobs at a living wage, rights in their workplaces and communities, and the freedom to travel and seek a future for their families.

EQ U ALI T Y AN D H U MAN R IGH T S

31

NAFTA and Immigration: Regenerating Our Own Path

To ward a W o r k a b l e and Humane Inte gration

Gustavo Esteva Esteva exposes and debunks a set of enneeds to stop this leakage of highly century a similar complex prejudice has trenched misconceptions and myths that trained individuals. focused on the peasantry: there are too guide Mexican and U.S. development poli- • Temporary, contract migration—Over many of them. It is a widespread attitude cies and ultimately drive peasant migrathe years, groups of Mexican peasants among the Mexican elite who have adtion. Drawing on historical examples and and U.S. agricultural producers have opted U.S. society as a model and who logic, Esteva tackles the notion that the road established stable arrangements for fail to take into account the reality and to “progress” requires industrialization and contracting labor during harvest sea- aspirations of a majority of Mexicans.2 urbanization, rejects the “American way son. Producers require security in availof life” as a universally valid development ability of labor during critical periods, Starting with José López Portillo’s presiblueprint, and challenges the economic thus preferring stable and trustworthy dential campaign in 1976, this prejudice principle of comparative advantages. Esarrangements. Peasants get appropri- was stated clearly: Mexico will be unable teva’s alternative development vision focuses ate salaries and working conditions: to become a modern, advanced country, as on rebuilding food sovereignty and selfin two to three months’ work, they long as a third of its population remains sufficiency of rural communities through receive the income they need for one in the countryside.3 The United States is the revitalization of small-scale peasant agwhole year and are able to keep grow- capable of being the main agricultural riculture. Specific policy proposals include ing their own crops and perform other producer in the world, using only 2.5 improved land tenure security, technologiactivities in their own communities. percent to 4 percent of its labor force, it cal innovation, ecological restoration, and • Urban migration—A growing share of was argued. The model implied that to support for sustainable farming practices. Mexican migrants to the United States modernize agriculture, Mexico needed comes from cities. This population de- to rid itself of peasants. As soon as he Introduction mands specific initiatives and policies. was sworn in as president, López PortiThis essay concentrates on the analysis llo adopted an aggressive modernizing of initiatives and policies that foster the Prejudices rural policy, rooted in that conviction permanence of peasants in their own The Mexican government’s policy frame- and on the new oil wealth. This policy communities in Mexico. It focuses on work is based on deeply rooted preju- soon “awakened ‘deep Mexico’ into reeconomically feasible, socially just, and dices (misconceptions), which are shared action,” as Interior Minister Reyes Herecologically sensible ideas for peasants by their U.S. counterparts, by the media, oles expressed with concern in 1978. to find appropriate and dignified ways and by wide sectors of Mexican society, Thus policy took a sharp turn with the to earn a living so that they will not be especially among the middle and upper Mexican Food System (1980–82). Even forced to migrate. It does not discuss the classes. It is worthwhile to first examine though this program had spectacularly following aspects: this framework, which is the principal successful results and should be taken obstacle to creating sensible policies, into account when considering other • U.S. policy—The United States could measures, and initiatives aimed at stop- policy changes, the shift to the current contribute to mitigating temporary ping migration. policy in 1982 dismantled the system of and permanent immigration from state supports for agriculture, built over Mexico, according to its own interthe previous fifty years, discouraged peasests, without recourse to repressive Surplus Population, Urbanizaant producers, and sought to reduce the measures. The most important thing tion, and Development rural population. would be to disseminate trustworthy For a long time, but especially over the information about the phenomenon last half-century, a marked prejudice has This policy rests on a conviction that the in order to fight existing prejudices.1 arisen regarding the existence of a surplus road to progress necessarily requires in• “Brain drain”—A growing number of population in rural areas. In the nine- dustrialization and urbanization, which Mexican professionals and scientists teenth century it was a common thing take place to the detriment of the rural are migrating to the United States. to hear that Mexico had too many “Indi- population. This orientation was clearly Generally, they are welcome in the ans”: it was critical to educate them into stamped on the policies of the Mexican United States and have little trouble extinction (as “Indians”), transform them governments in the last half century. regularizing their legal status. Mexico into “regular Mexicans.” In the twentieth As peasants were settling in the land

32

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

redistributed by president Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), who put half the country’s arable land in the peasantry’s hands, official policy focused on “green revolution” goals and on the artificial creation of a “modern agriculture” in the country’s north. The aim was to meet labor demand through accelerating industrialization, urbanization, and “liberating” rural areas from their “surplus” population. Thus the country went through a demographic transformation. In 1945, 75 percent of the population was in the countryside; fifty years later, only a third of the population remained. Lastly, the aforementioned prejudices are part of one that established over the last fifty years that economic and social development is a necessary and universal social aim for countries like Mexico. The predominant concept of development is clearly associated with the “American way of life” as the universal definition of a good life. Recognition that extending this way of life to the whole planet is not feasible in economic and ecological terms led to policy changes aimed at meeting basic necessities, to guarantee certain minimal standards of welfare, but assuming this adjustment was considered a transitional stage. In sum, Mexico’s economic, political, and intellectual elite share the premise that there are too many peasants, that the rural way of life is inferior and backward, and that it should disappear as the country develops.

Comparative Advantages The theory of comparative advantage supports the promotion of free trade throughout the world. This theory provides the fundamental orientation of the Mexican government’s policies, which, besides sponsoring free trade, attempt

to stimulate production in areas where Mexico has comparative advantages, and discourage it in those where competition with its main trade partners, especially the United States, seems impossible. In keeping with this orientation, Mexican authorities strive to steer commercial agriculture toward export crops of high economic density or toward crops for internal consumption that have internationally competitive returns. At the same time, they discourage peasant agriculture, which they consider inefficient and unable to compete with commercial producers in national and international markets. The current policy tries to achieve a positive agricultural trade balance, as close as possible to a production style that mirrors the contemporary ideal of “agriculture without people.” The prejudice is generally accepted that consistent application of the principle of comparative advantage will be beneficial to Mexico and all of its inhabitants, deCartoon by Helguera, courtesy of La Jornada. spite the great sacrifices it will demand of certain sectors in the short run. several decades thanks to strong pressure from the peasantry, lay down the necesIt is not possible to review all of the theo- sary foundations for an adequate indusretical and historical issues needed to trialization process. Generally, however, counter the dominant prejudices. Before the last half-century’s policies systemdiscussing alternative initiatives and poli- atically dismantled the rural sector, ecocies, however, we must first take the fol- nomically, socially, and ecologically. This lowing into account. orientation’s irrationality is akin to that of a contractor using ground-floor materials The Role of Agriculture for building an edifice’s upper floors. History shows that industrialization rests on a strong agricultural sector. Today’s The Ideal of Urban Life industrially advanced countries were able Truly, modernization has manifested itto base this process on an agricultural self everywhere as accelerated urbanizasector capable of sustaining it. Countries tion, creating an ideal of the urban life. cannot grow like eucalypti, with a great Immense population centers were thus canopy and a shallow root. created, Mexico City claiming first place globally with over twenty million people, In Mexico, the land reform policy of the a fifth of the country’s total population. 1930s, which continued over the next Presently, however, these megacities keep

R EGENE R A T ING O U R O W N P A T H

33

growing only in the global south. There is growing conscience in “advanced” countries that modern cities are unsustainable; giant population centers are beginning to shrink, as rural and suburban lifestyles are vindicated as real options, despite the fact that productive activities are still tied to cities. At the same time, numerous studies following a strict costbenefit analysis demonstrate that peasant agriculture is more efficient than commercial production.

The Myth of Development

Jumping the Fence. Tijuana. A worker looks over the fence between Mexico and the U.S., trying to find a moment when the Border Patrol may not be looking so that he can cross. Photo by David Bacon.

34

advanced countries and has pernicious collateral effects. This is why true freetrade agreements have never been fully implemented in any country and all resort to regulation and protection. Nevertheless, a large share of the Mexican officials involved in commercial opening, for the last twenty-five years, did not take into account historical precedents and adopted the doctrine of comparative advantages with dogmatic fundamentalism. Such fundamentalism reverberates widely in attitudes and policies, which cannot all be examined here. However we must underline a very relevant aspect for migration. The theory and principles of comparative advantages do not apply at all for the majority of Mexican peasants, because they do not produce for the market and they reject that the fruits of their labor, maize in particular, be treated as commodities. The implicit economic rationality of the theory of comparative advantages has no bearing on them, because their behavior is motivated by principles other than those established by the theory.

Starting in the 1980s, the myth of development has been subjected to penetrating criticism and the concept of post-development has been established concurrently. Academic institutions and pragmatic, everyday actions of millions of people have converged to rid us of the notion of a universal definition of the good life, as associated with the American Dream, and to vindicate the multiple alternative ways of defining the good life. In contrast with conventional development thinking centered on economic growth, a multitude of policies and initiatives now focus on materializing alternative definitions of the good life that are economically and What Is to Be Done ecologically feasible and socially just. Revalue and support economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sensible The Myth of Comparative ways of rural life. Policies or programs Advantages conceived and implemented for the rural Starting with David Ricardo’s original sector as a totality should be abandoned formulation, the theory of comparative and substituted for those addressing advantages argues in favor of free trade the heterogeneity of the reality on the under the assumption of complete and per- ground, which requires differential treatfect mobility of all factors of production. For ments for every rural actor.4 Official polthe principle of comparative advantages icy and social efforts must be oriented to to be valid, there should be free circula- prioritize peasants. Commercial agricultion of labor, capital, and goods between ture must be let to fend for itself, under trading countries. This is how the United market pressures. States was built, once barriers between the original thirteen colonies were torn Despite the permanent hostility to down. This is the principle that is success- which they have been subjected for fully applied in the European Union. This over five hundred years, there are now principle, however, has not been a part of more peasants in Mexico than ever the North-South free-trade negotiations. before, in absolute terms. This is a deeply vital sector, fully committed to It is well known that free trade, which its way of living, as evinced especially theoretically benefits all countries, is al- by indigenous peoples. The only soways more beneficial to more industrially cial indicator that has not shifted in

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Gloria Merino (r), a Triqui curandera, or traditional doctor, her niece, Catalina Ramirez Merino (l), and a third Triqui woman in a traditional huipil, together with a group of Triqui children. Photo by David Bacon.

the last half century in Mexico is the number of small rural communities (those of up to 2,500 dwellers), which amount to over 110,000. Every year, some communities disappear, but are replaced by new ones. The defense of this way of life is supported by a growing number of urban dwellers that flock to these communities, fleeing the nightmare of living in large cities. Instead of attacking peasants, seeking to expel them from the countryside and their productive activities, they should receive massive support from the government and society. This policy would substantially abate peasant emigration to the United States.

Food Sovereignty The general policy change could start with an emphasis on food sovereignty.5 This term is contaminated by its association with the state but in present usage, as it applies to communities, regions and the entire nation, it signifies self-determination of diet guidelines and how to satisfy them. The aim is that people, communities, and the country in general determine for themselves the quantities and quality of their food, and that the whole population has access to sufficient foodstuffs to satisfy their basic necessities, according to their own definitions of the good life, their customs, and traditions.

This policy implies that the agricultural chapter of NAFTA be renegotiated, under terms that address the needs of millions of Mexican peasants. Corn and beans should be protected fully. At the same time, the notion of food sovereignty and its legal expression should be discussed in a nationwide debate.

Food Self-sufficiency Food sovereignty is expressed in practice as food self-sufficiency, which involves three distinct elements: • Capacity to produce enough food for all • Capacity to achieve this production with the country’s resources and technology

R EGENE R A T ING O U R O W N P A T H

35

Altar, Sonora. The path through the desert to the border to cross into the US starts here, north of Route 2, which goes through the Sonoran desert just south of the line. Photo by David Bacon.

• Self-reliance of producers, communities, regions, and the country as a whole, all along the food production chain and covering all of its processes.

National self-sufficiency objectives should be carefully examined. Peasant agriculture cannot be expected to meet the cities’ demand for food; it will be able to meet the needs of the rural populaSelf-sufficiency does not mean autarchy tion and generate some surpluses. Urban and must be defined in relative terms, both needs must be tended to by commercial in its component parts as in its levels. It agriculture and imports. does not discard imports but keeps them to a reasonable minimum on basic foodstuffs. Environmental Regeneration Also it tries to keep market forces from de- Habitat destruction is a major factor termining rural production. For very differ- pushing peasant emigration. Irresponent reasons, “advanced” countries apply this sible practices by public and private principle by strongly subsidizing their rural developers and the expansion of livestock sectors. A central motivation for peasant breeding on agricultural lands largely emigration is their inability to grow enough eroded or destroyed the peasantry’s profood to feed their families. Restoring this duction conditions and its capacity for ability should be a central policy objective. autonomous subsistence. Some of their

36

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

practices, ecologically sensible at the scale they were implemented for centuries, turned destructive once they could not be implemented in the traditional way.6 Policies and actions aimed at environmental regeneration can contribute substantially to abate peasant emigration. Policies in this area include the following: • Revaluation of empirical knowledge. Peasants have great knowledge about how to maintain a sensible relation with nature. This knowledge has been systematically marginalized and undervalued. • Emergency regeneration. Large areas of the country suffer extreme

environmental degradation, and they must be urgently dealt with to avoid a greater catastrophe. • Protection of production. Many environmental protection measures are often planned to the detriment of peasants, who are turned into “environmental stewards” at best. Using the appropriate technology, it would be possible to treat the areas that require protection without displacing peasants. The same principles could be applied to the entire set of peasant productive activities. • Cultivation of water management. Very special attention must be paid to all aspects of water extraction, storage, safety, and distribution. The water wars have already started and, in general, peasants are on the losing side, thanks to the economic and political pressure of more powerful groups, many of which use water irrationally, monopolizing and destroying its sources. Appropriate technologies that would meet peasants’ needs with modest investments and changes to current practices are already at our disposal but usually face the interests of dominant structures. A policy that would give peasants preference over water use rights and help them use it sustainably would have immediate effects on their capacity for autonomous subsistence and, hence, lower emigration pressures. • The saving of forests and jungles. Mexico has lost half of its forest and jungle coverage. There are multiple examples, many internationally recognized, that demonstrate autonomous communal organizations’ capacity to adequately manage forests and jungles. Their activities compare favorably with those of forestry firms, if ecological, economic, and social criteria are strictly applied, and not only those of maximum profit. This activity can offer wide possibilities for peasants’ employment and income, but it needs to be supported, not attacked.

Security in Land Tenure The effects of the 1992 constitutional amendment that opened ejido and communal lands to market forces have not met expectations about modernization, production, or productivity. On the contrary, it has produced a great deal of insecurity and conflict. The arbitrary and corrupt application of the new agrarian laws has led to the continuous plunder of peasant communities, particularly indigenous ones, leaving them with no other option but migration. This issue is of enormous significance and calls for large legal and institutional changes, which will only be possible if a different policy orientation is adopted.

Democratic Practices Although Mexico is formally a democracy, it lacks many of the characteristics of a truly democratic society. Social struggles are currently working toward: • Perfecting representative democracy to eliminate fraud, fine tuning electoral processes, and insuring the application of the rule of law and checks and balances • Representative democracy: plebiscite, public referendum, recall elections, public office accountability, participatory budgeting, transparency, etc. • Subordinating these forms to radical democracy, where citizens make the decisions that affect their lives and steer the work of public officials. Few policies would contribute to reduce

emigration as much as democratic consolidation.

Reintegrating the Structure of Production Colonial heritage and insensible industrialization clearly separated primary sector production and final demand. Processing agricultural products on an adequate scale can be the link to reconnect them, avoiding traditional commercial chains and waste. In addition to raising the value of peasant production, processing agricultural products can be a strong source of employment for peasant youths, especially in the off-season. This would help to create sources of dignified income for those who, unable to find them in rural communities, would otherwise be forced to emigrate. Technology policy needs redefining. Reorienting technology policies to support the adoption of so-called “appropriate technologies,” which are adequate for the conditions under which peasant producers operate and which can be appropriated by them, is of special importance. It is critical to stimulate technological innovation, as well. There is a wide field of possibilities, where a modest investment can translate into solid productive opportunities. 1.

Among the main prejudices we seek to fight are: 1) the conviction that undocumented workers negatively affect the salaries and jobs of U.S. citizens; 2) the general conviction

R EGENE R A T ING O U R O W N P A T H

37

that extreme poverty is the root cause of Mexican migration to the United States; 3) the conviction of U.S. citizens that people the world over want to live in the United States, in pursuit of the American Dream; 4) the general conviction that the United States is the result of English colonization and that the presence of Hispanics in the territory was irrelevant, which helped create an anti-Hispanic “black legend” that feeds broad prejudices against today’s immigrants. 2. They adopted this model even to name the country: United Mexican States. 3. In the Consulting Council meetings of the PRI’s Institute of Political, Economic, and Social Studies, which handled key tasks during Ló-

38

pez Portillo’s campaign, Edmundo Flores formulated the candidate’s policy in these terms. See, among other sources, Revista del Consejo Consultivo del IEPES, nos. 1–3. 4. Numerous studies show that even policies demanded by all peasants, such as guaranteed, minimum support prices, have very negative consequences for those who need them most. Equal treatment to unequal partners is unjust and counterproductive. 5. The notion of food sovereignty has been widely vindicated in both academia and political struggles, the world over. In Mexico the concept enjoys broad recognition. The LIX Congress recently passed the National Food Sovereignty and Security Act that attempted to syn-

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

thesize the main consensus on the issue, but eventually contradicted substantive aspects. 6. Numerous studies show that raze and burn practices that were applied for centuries in tropical areas allow appropriate regeneration of the vegetation, because cultivated areas are abandoned cyclically and new ones are opened up. When peasants are forced to cultivate a patch of land indefinitely, a vicious spiral of cultivation and erosion arises. This circumstance worsens when livestock breeders occupy the land, as has happened extensively in Chiapas. For example, see Víctor Toledo, Ecología, Espiritualidad, Conocimiento (Morelia: Jitanjáfora Morelia Editorial, 2006).

Aguaxaca: The Common Task of Conserving the Rio Atoyac-Salado Water District The name “Aguaxaca” evokes the sacredness of water. Through this initiative, society and government seek to protect the natural resources on which water availability depends, while attempting to improve the living conditions of city and rural dwellers. Aguaxaca encompasses the drainage area of the Atoyac and Salado rivers, from the mountains to the urban areas, where some six hundred thousand people live. Rapid urbanization fosters the uncontrolled rise of demand for water, while reducing the collection surface. The combined Atoyac-Salado is one of the country’s most polluted rivers, the principal contaminant being raw sewage. Under the auspices of the Oaxacan Nature and Society Institute, and working hand in hand with its community and institutional allies, Aguaxaca aims to conserve the “natural sponges” that remain; to restore cities’ and towns’ potable water networks; to improve rainwater collection; to make agricultural irrigation more efficient; to promote saving and rationing urban water use; to establish a fair price for potable water service and to support the communities that insure the flow of water; and to return safe, treated water to the environment. To accomplish its goals, Aguaxaca integrates: • The Picture: to capture the natural and social setting of the drainage area, through participatory research and a holistic approach. • The Panel: to involve all the institutional and local actors, through the Oaxacan Water Forum. • The Plan: to consensually set the rules of the game. • The Tools: to take concrete and demonstrative actions to foster conservation and social welfare, and to build capacity by linking traditional knowledge with modern techniques. • The Voice: to inform about water issues in the communities and the city, and to facilitate consensus democratically. Examples of strategy implementation: • Public policy discussions at the Oaxacan Water Forum involving local, state, and federal officials,

community leaders, NGOs, academic researchers, and private think tanks. • Design of financial mechanisms to establish a fair price for urban water-use rights and to reimburse rural communities for aquifer conservation services. • Establishment of demonstration centers that showcase permaculture techniques, waste disposal, water management, soil conservation and organic horticulture, and raise environmental awareness in the population. • The “Innovations in Efficient Irrigation and Sustainable Production” project created a financial mechanism to assist small producers in investing in greenhouses and irrigation systems that save water, increasing and diversifying agricultural production and taking care of the environment. Together, they help build a green belt around the city of Oaxaca to constrain its growth and to ensure its water supply. • The Water Festival promotes environmental awareness through a poster competition, videos, weekly radio shows, and the Song for Water contest. Aguaxaca was a Kyoto World Water Grand Prize finalist in 2006. The accomplishments presented in Kyoto included: • The increased social and natural knowledge of the Atoyac-Salado river drainage area • The consolidation of the Oaxacan Water Forum as a plural and multidisciplinary space for planning and discussion • Widespread reforestation of the river’s drainage area • Establishment and operation of pilot centers for soil conservation and regeneration and stream restoration • Dozens of workshops on alternative technologies, such as ecological toilets, efficient wood-burning stoves, efficient irrigation systems, and sustainable production practices • Diffusion of the project and its aims; fostering horizontality in policy discussions; and local, national, and international cooperation • Education of the rural population and awareness creation in the urban population.

R EGENE R A T ING O U R O W N P A T H

39

NAFTA and Immigration: Toward a Workable and Humane Integration

By Laura Carlsen Carlsen expands on narrowly tradefocused evaluations of North American free-trade policies to offer a broad-based critique of NAFTA that links deepening economic and social disparities between the U.S. and Mexico with increased migration flows. Exposing the agreement’s structural biases, Carlsen contrasts the benefits accrued by transnational corporations with rising unemployment and insecurity experienced by Mexican workers and peasants. Carlsen’s reform proposals offer a broad array of interconnected changes in both trade immigration policies, including state-led protection of weak economic sectors and the “common good,” movement toward a fair-trade framework through grassroots-inspired and community-led development solutions, expansion of viable paths to citizenship, and improved adherence to international human rights and labor standards.

Introduction Every hour, Mexico imports one and a half million dollars’ worth of agricultural and food products, almost all from the United States. In that same hour, thirty people—men, women, and children— leave their homes in the Mexican countryside to take up the most dangerous journey of their lives, as migrant workers to the United States.1 No matter what one’s stance on these two defining characteristics of our age—economic integration and immigration—one thing is absolutely clear: they are related. For the past fifteen years, the marketbased trade and investment policies embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have led to a massive South-North flow of immigrants, while restrictive immigration laws in the United States create a North-South pushback. Like opposing wind currents that confront forces, the result is a storm.

40

This storm has decimated the Mexican countryside. It has created unemployment, inequality, and insecurity on both sides of the border and left the U.S. immigration system in shambles. Until U.S. trade and immigration policies change direction, the storm will continue to gather force.

Unequal Integration and Borderline The misnamed North American Free Trade Agreement actually sought to “lock in” a broad range of economic reforms,2 including tariff elimination but also investment guarantees, a stringent intellectual property regime, and rules limiting government involvement in the economy. In Mexico, many of these reforms began with the 1982 debt crisis, expanded with 1986 GATT membership, and extended when then-president Salinas de Gortari carried out market reforms to prepare the Mexican economy for NAFTA.3 NAFTA established a new bar for market access and foreign investor guarantees. Tariff barriers were a small part of the overall agreement, since Mexico had already unilaterally lowered many tariffs. Up against a compliant Mexican negotiating team committed to the interests of its own economic elite—and behind the backs of both publics—U.S. negotiators achieved terms favorable to large corporations, such as investment promotion provisions, intellectual property protection, new markets, and access to resources, including cheap labor. The result was a trade agreement that was unprecedented in the world.4 Even strategic products and services were slated for tariff and barrier eliminations under NAFTA, and the Mexican state relinquished basic development policy tools, such as government procurement preferences to support local industry, management of the basic food chain,

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

and performance requirements for foreign companies regarding technology transfer, backward linkages, or adoption of stateof-the-art environmental practices. Measured by the degree of integration, the NAFTA experiment has been extremely successful. The U.S.-Mexico border has become the most highly integrated region of the world and a laboratory for economic integration—$35 million of goods cross the border every hour.5 The International Monetary Fund reports that total trade among the three NAFTA countries has more than doubled, while total merchandise trade between the United States and Mexico nearly tripled, from $81.6 in 1993 to $266.6 by 2004.6 But there are serious signs that the experiment is failing. Although the U.S. economy was more than fifteen times larger than Mexico’s and the Mexican economy suffered from major disadvantages,7 there was no weight given to a need to compensate for the disparities between the two, as was done in the European Union.8 Despite claims that NAFTA would bring about convergence between the U.S. and Mexican economies, economic disparities between these nations have actually increased over time.9 As the following graph shows, the enormous gap between Mexican and U.S. GDP per capita has actually widened slightly since NAFTA—the opposite of what was blithely predicted. During the NAFTA period, U.S. GDP per capita rose while the Mexican rate essentially flatlined. NAFTA also failed to bring about convergence in wage levels as promised. In 1993 Mexican manufacturing workers earned on average 14.7 percent of the U.S. hourly manufacturing wage; by 2003 the figure had dropped to 11.3 percent.10

Under NAFTA, the real minimum wage It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The in Mexico has decreased to a level that no promises of NAFTA supporters in the longer can sustain workers. early nineties assured citizens of both Mexico and the United States that conThe U.S.-Mexico border in many ways vergence, employment, and a robust is the eye of the storm referred to earlier. Mexican economy would result in a From the Pacific Ocean, through Arizona more prosperous and harmonious North deserts, to the Gulf of Mexico, the region America, where undocumented migrahas become an area of intense interaction tion would be a thing of the past. So between the two countries, but also of in- why does the current situation look so creasing violence, hostility, and conflict. different? The rapid transformation of the Mexican economy under NAFTA has displaced workers and eroded livelihoods. In a series of socially coerced conversions, farmers and factory workers have become migrants, migrants have been pronounced criminals, and these “criminals” have been forced underground.

The Debate: Is NAFTA to blame? There is a basic consensus that the postNAFTA era has not seen significant gains for the Mexican people. For the majority, promises of higher standards of living have not been borne out. Instead, Mexico faces an employment crisis and flat real wages, price hikes—especially for

Figure 1: GDP per capita, current dollars PPP. Graph by Global Exchange.

basic goods, economic insecurity, and rising inequality. There is an ongoing debate over to what degree these evident economic woes can be attributed to NAFTA. Since economic restructuring measures predated NAFTA and domestic policy plays a role, it is not possible to completely untangle the causes of the current situation. But the main point to bear in mind is that NAFTA was not just a trade policy for Mexico. It was the cornerstone of its economic restructuring, designed to lock in an export-oriented, market economy. After NAFTA, Mexico went on to sign forty-two trade agreements modeled on NAFTA, making it the free trade champion of the world. However, these are largely irrelevant given that 90 percent of Mexico’s trade is with just one country, the United States. Mexico bet the house on export-led, open-market economic development tied to the U.S. economy. Exports grew, but who really benefited? Only 1.2 percent of Mexico’s three million registered businesses engage in non-oil exports. The Ministry of the Economy reports that in 2005 37,344 businesses exported under NAFTA and divided among themselves $186 billion dollars reported for that year. Even within this small group, benefits concentrate in a handful: 601 companies—1.6 percent of exporters and only 0.02 percent of all businesses, mostly transnationals—receive 76.3 percent of the export value, or $142 billion.11 Nice work, if you can get it. To benefit these lucky few, Mexico gave up its right to adopt policies to support sectors that provided strategic services to the country but were unable to compete on the world market.

Figure 2: Mexican Real Wage Index. Graph by Global Exchange.

NAF T A AN D IMMIG R A T ION

41

On top of the broccoli machine, pulled behind a tractor, women pack the heads of broccoli cut by the men working below. They wear bandannas around their faces to protect them from breathing dust, and as a shield from the sun. Many workers in this crew are indigenous migrants from Oaxaca and Guerrero. Photo by David Bacon.

Recommendations 1. Trade What we already know about NAFTAstyle free-trade agreements is that along with increasing trade, they generate inequality. One study shows that urban wage inequality grew from 0.408 in 1989 (Gini index) to 0.46 in 2000.12 Adopting a trade policy that widens the gap between rich and poor here and abroad does nobody a service in the long term. Unless we change course, the social costs of our current trade policy will grow over the years and what we already see—unemployment and underemployment in our communities and abroad, environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, and growing gaps between those who benefit and those who are harmed— could develop into more serious problems of instability and widespread poverty.

42

A new policy would assure predictability • Renegotiate NAFTA´s agricultural and stable markets for U.S. producers, chapter. The terms of NAFTA must guarantees—not privileges—for U.S. inbe modified to permit government vestors, and basic rights for workers everyregulation of basic food production where. It will imply a more active role of and supply, and provide policy instrugovernments in balancing a competitive ments so poor Mexican farmers are open-market system with protection of not forced to compete with subsidized weaker sectors and the common good. large companies for their own markets. The petition to withdraw corn and It will also mean denying some of the beans from the free-trade agreement demands large corporations make in and support small farmers and food the name of competitiveness. This is sovereignty is not a blow against freenot necessarily negative—it is past time trade precepts but a common-sense to break up powerful monopolies that demand for public policy that places distort the terms of trade. If there is one livelihoods and jobs first. thing we have learned from NAFTA, it is that “trickle down” does not work un- • There must be mechanisms of flexibilless you squeeze at the top. Companies ity when the terms of trade threaten must recognize responsibility for the livelihoods, food security, or health. communities whose labor and resources This flexibility has been lacking in go to make the products they sell and the NAFTA and other FTAs. Negotiations profits they reap. have been inflexible, with developing countries finally giving in to terms U.S. regional trade policy has sent many they know will harm part of their popof our communities into crises. New ulation. The pound of flesh exacted trade and immigration policies can help from poor countries in exchange for pull them out, and avoid a similar fate access to the U.S. market in the end for other communities. The Bush adhurts both partner countries and the ministration is pushing hard to pass United States, since the terms of the the three free-trade agreements (FTAs) agreements exacerbate inequality and before Congress—Colombia, Panama close off opportunities, leading to inand South Korea—as part of creating a creased immigration and potential sohistoric legacy and leaving in place procial unrest. corporate policies that are difficult to reverse. This creates an unavoidable battle • Do unbiased and comprehensive imin the short-term that could very well be pact studies. There is a false dichotomy won by a broad (not detail-oriented) oppresented to us: protectionism, seen as position with unity of purpose. an evil of the past, and free trade, seen as the only path to the future. The • Call a moratorium on all new FTAs, Bush administration has presented including the three before Congress unmitigated free trade as if it were synnow. The moratorium should last unonymous with freedom in the polititil new studies have been thoroughly cal realm, even though there are many evaluated on the immediate and longhistorical experiences that prove that term impact of FTAs in the United the two do not automatically correlate. States and signing countries to deterIn Latin America, the administration mine whether this model works. The has used this erroneous assumption South Korea, Colombia, and Panama to divide nations between allies that FTAs before Congress should be reare “democratic, open-market supjected not just for the particular cirporters” and enemies that supposedly cumstances of each case but because threaten U.S. security. In reality, many the FTA model is seriously flawed as of the latter are countries searching trade and foreign policy. to diminish the polarizing effects of

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

trade and investment liberalization. Until we reject ideological posturing and analyze the real impact of FTAs we will never arrive at more just and viable trade policies for all our countries and a more prosperous and stable hemisphere. To develop a sustainable and fair trade policy, the debate must become less dogmatic and more pragmatic. It’s time to take a close look at what is really happening under free trade agreements and be open to corrections or creative changes in course. For years, governments have ignored or sought to patch over the serious problems generated in the United States and Mexico by NAFTA. There now exists abundant information on trade flows from the office of the United States Trade Representative but little on the impact of FTAs on human lives. Congress should call for studies that report the trade and investment data, but also provide information on social indices and concrete examples, even where direct cause and effect with NAFTA is difficult to ascertain.

for everyone. Increased international trade in itself is not a measure of success. Families with economic security, children with food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads—these should be the yardsticks for measuring success and they should be applied not only within the United States but to our partner countries as well. If the immigration problem has taught us anything, it’s that in a globalized world the inequities experienced in one country will spill over into the next. Turning away from an orthodox freetrade model in no way means rejecting or reversing all liberalization measures. But it does mean that each country, including the United States, has a right to develop national economic policies that view the international market as a tool, not a holy grail. Strategic sectors require protection, workers’ rights must be actively defended, and more flexible mechanisms such as special products, safeguards, and exemptions, should be allowed in order to promote development.

• The results then should be heeded. One • Promote grassroots solutions. Commuof the very few studies on the impact nities have already begun to develop “In free trade democracies, what matters is not of NAFTA in Mexico was done by the community redevelopment projects democracy, just free trade.” Cartoon by Fisgon, General Accounting Office in 2005. to deal with the damage caused by courtesy of La Jornada. The study concluded that there was NAFTA, as well as demanding modian urgent need for rural compensafications to the agreement. A new coffee to handicrafts, community-run tion funds.13 Nothing was done. Since trade policy can find many pointers credit unions, and a myriad of other then, many of the negative impacts in these local experiences (see Esteva small-scale endeavors. These require predicted in the study have been borne and Bartra in this volume). In the little resources and can have major benout with no policy response whatsoevUnited States, funds for community eficial consequences. They should be er. The decimation of the campesino redevelopment led by residents would supported. economy in many parts of Mexico as a be far more effective than the current • Support family farmers in all countries. result of economic integration without NAFTA Adjustment Assistance proWorldwide it is the smallholder farmtransitions or support has resulted in gram. People themselves are best at ers who feed us. With over 200,000 millions of farmers forced to migrate. defining the skills they need to rebuild farmers forced out of farming in the in a new environment and the kind of United States and millions in Mexico, • Regulate trade, don’t mandate free projects that will provide jobs, generit’s time to take a careful look at their trade. The free-trade model develate income and serve a real need in the overall contribution to society. U.S. oped in the 1980s and 1990s has community. farm policy should assure farmers proven unsuccessful in solving the everywhere a fair price by enforcing major challenges of decreasing pov- In Mexico, grassroots solutions include antitrust legislation to break the stranerty, leveling inequality, and promot- community organizations working on englehold of agribusiness over our food ing sustainable development. There is vironmentally sound farming practices,14 production, and ban dumping that alno longer (if there ever was) a global fair-trade cooperatives that make direct lows them to undermine food producor national consensus that FTAs work links to consumers in everything from tion in Mexico and other countries.15

NAF T A AN D IMMIG R A T ION

43

Agricultural laborers at grain depot. Photo courtesy of La Jornada. • Accompany trade policy with aid for sustainable development. U.S. aid to Mexico should be used to encourage efforts like the grassroots solutions discussed above and compensate for damage done by NAFTA. NAFTA’s extension, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), has gone off in the complete opposite direction. Instead of directing aid and programs to regions negatively affected by the agreement, it has facilitated business for transnational corporations—the only sector of society directly represented in its negotiations. Most recently, the SPP process has led to Plan Mexico, a proposal to dramatically increase aid to Mexico, but for law enforcement, intelligence, and military equipment. This creates a grave danger of militarizing a politically polarized Mexico and increasing the potential for conflict. Creating healthy employment in the United States and Mexico would have a far greater impact on reducing the illegal drug trade than surveillance planes, and would also be more effective in reducing immigration pressures. • Open up the debate. Trade and integration policies affect all citizens and define the course of the nation. They should be broadly debated by an in-

44

formed public. The SPP, in which being. By holding deportation and only business representatives and blacklisting over the heads of workers, government officials define the extenthese programs have led to employer sion of NAFTA rules, should be rejectabuse, and there are documented cases ed in favor of open discussions, access that border on slavery conditions.17 to all information on rule changes and proposals, and active participation of • Suspend enforcement programs that affected sectors, including labor, enviinclude deportation, raids, racial proronmentalists, and human rights and filing, militarization of the border, civil liberties groups. and fencing. End criminalization of migrants and militarization of the bor2. Immigration16 der. These are lose-lose policies costing Basic Demands: millions of taxpayers’ dollars with the • Provide legal residency visas to immivisible effect of dividing communigrants currently in the United States ties and endangering human lives and who meet basic criteria. This will perwithout eliminating illegal border mit them to move between jobs, with crossings. security for themselves and their families, and travel out of the country. This • Strengthen a single standard of labor flexibility, now impossible due to their rights, defending all workers, both unrecognized status and the enornative and foreign born (see Lujan in mous backlog of visa and citizenship this volume). requests, would make it possible for those who may choose not to remain • Separate security and anti-organized in the United States to return to their crime measures from immigration enplaces of origin without losing the opforcement. Customs and Border offition to return. In the past, migration cials should be concentrating on illegal patterns were often cyclical. Today drugs and arms traffickers, rather than restrictionist measures have made that spending a significant amount of their impossible, thus increasing the numresources on pursuing undocumented ber of permanent migrants, whether immigrants in the desert. Reducing authorized or not. the number of unauthorized entries by expanding work visas and family • Facilitate and broaden family reunificareunification permits, and supporting tion measures. Family ties are among Mexican development and revamping the strongest motivators of mobility in trade policies are first steps, but polithe world. If we turn our backs on the cies must also distinguish between mineed to allow families to be together, grants and organized crime in order to we create an incentive for illegal immibe more effective and avoid a public gration. Access to family reunification perception that migrants are common visas must be expanded and funding criminals. released to expedite processing of requests pending. • Strengthen human rights guarantees and protect civil liberties of migrants, • Develop a viable path to citizenship for including stringent measures against long-time immigrant workers and resihuman trafficking and slavery, signing dents in the United States. and upholding the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrants, restoring due • Expand the number of green cards process for immigration charges, and available. Guest-worker programs that entering into binational agreements permit only seasonal work and visas that limit the use of arms and viobased on a specific employment sepalence against undocumented workers rate the labor power from the human and respect rights and humanitarian

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

concerns. The raids must be ended immediately as a violation of basic principles of justice. Violators of immigration law should receive due process and the integrity of families should be respected. Local enforcement agents should not be involved in immigration prosecution, since their job is to fight crime in communities. • Reject guest-worker or temporary worker programs, skilled or unskilled. Guest worker programs create twotiered labor pools and encourage the violation of labor rights for immigrant workers. Instead we must expand legal

work opportunities, and work toward legalization of current workers, fullemployment, and livable wage programs. The right to organize must be honored in all workplaces, with companies liable for intents to undermine or deny that right. • Restore a real refugee program that gives credence to refugees facing danger in their home countries. Mexican requests for refugee status in Canada have increased sharply, related to threats from drug cartels, domestic violence, threats of hate crimes against homosexuals, government repression,

and other causes. These are routinely denied in the United States. They should be thoroughly reviewed and judged on their merits.

Entering the Final Phase NAFTA has now entered the last stage of implementation, with the elimination of tariffs on corn, beans, and other sensitive agricultural products. With severely negative impacts predicted for Mexican farmers and an accumulation of social problems in all three countries, this phase obliges us to finally take NAFTA to task for how it has affected the daily lives of North American citizens.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

“El campo mexicano en el laberinto neoliberal,” La Jornada del Campo, October 9, 2007. Laura Carlsen, “North America Doesn´t Exist,” America’s Policy Program Report, July 3, 2008, http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5343. The most important of these was the 1992 reform to Art. 27 of the Constitution that allowed parceling ejidos and indigenous communities and selling individual plots. See Maxwell A. Cameron, The Making of NAFTA: How the Deal Was Done (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). U.S. Commerce Department official David Bohigian, October 20, 2006, as reported in Eric Green, “U.S. Seeks To Balance Trade, Security Concerns on Mexico Border,” America.gov, October 20, 2006, http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2006/October/2006 10201721221xeneerg0.9683802.html. Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott, NAFTA Revisited (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2005). In 1993, the Mexican GDP was $402.2 billion USD, compared to the U.S. GDP of $6.58 trillion. John Cavanagh and Sarah Anderson. Lessons from European Integration for the Americas, (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 2004). See Laura Carlsen, “El mito de la convergencia,” Programa de las Américas, September 15, 2005, http://www.ircamericas.org/esp/629. Blecker, Robert “North American Economies After NAFTA”, International Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 33, #3, Fall 2003. p. 19 from World Bank, World Development Indicators ; and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers in Manufacturing, 2003” and “Supplementary Tables, 1975-2003,” http:// www.bls.gov/fls/home.htm. Statistics from Auditoría Superior de la Federación 2007, cited by Carlos Fernandez Vega, La Jornada. July 10, 2007. Samuel Freije, et al., “Changes in Urban Wage Inequality in Mexico, Before and After NAFTA,” Third Annual Conference of the EuroLatin Network on Integration and Trade, Kiel, Germany, October 21–22, 2005, http://www.iadb.org/intal/aplicaciones/uploads/ponencias/foro_elsnit_2005_02_freijeetal.pdf. General Accountability Office, “U.S: Agencies Need Greater Focus to Support Mexico´s Successful Transition to Liberalized Agricultural Trade under NAFTA,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, Washington, DC. March 2005. http://www.gao.gov/highlights/ d05272high.pdf. See Laura Carlsen, “Building a Future in the Mixteca,” Americas Policy Program, Voices of the Countryside #2, October 12, 2006, http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3593. Dennis Olson, Trade Deals Ignore Agricultural Impacts on Immigration (Minneapolis, MN: Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, 2007), http://www.iatp.org/iatp/publications.cfm?accountID=500&refid=100988. These recommendations are based on my own thoughts and suggestions from a number of sources, including David Bacon, Tom Barry, “Over-Raided, Under Siege” (by the National Network on Immigrant and Refugee Rights), and others. See Mary Bauer, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States (Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007), http://www.splcenter.org/legal/guestreport/index.jsp

NAF T A AN D IMMIG R A T ION

45

Contemplating Solutions to Migration Challenges

Bill Ong Hing Analyzing the relationship between NAFTA and Mexican undocumented labor immigration, Hing presents a comprehensive suite of strategic labor reforms that transform immigration policy into a meaningful tool to address concerns about regional integration on both sides of the border. Hing focuses on long-term demographic and social trends generating U.S. labor shortages and triggering a growing need for unskilled Mexican workers. He explores the European Union open trade–open labor model as a means to create an efficient labor market and meet U.S. labor demands, while reducing migration pressures and maintaining border control. Hing emphasizes the need to couple such open labor policies with development assistance programs that decrease disparities and address structural asymmetries between the U.S. and Mexican economies. He concludes that immigration policy reforms should be designed to respond to actual, demonstrated labor shortages, while maintaining restrictions that protect regional labor markets and providing meaningful and enforceable health, safety, and labor laws.

Introduction Understanding the effects of NAFTA and other aspects of the globalized economy provides us with the foundation to develop a better approach to the flow of Mexican workers to the United States. The failure of current militarized and racialized enforcement strategies to further stem that flow challenges us to step back and address the issue more thoughtfully. In the United States, we tend to hear about the job losses suffered by U.S. workers because of NAFTA, but we do not hear much about Mexican job loss or consider the fact that the United States very well may need immigrant workers—even those who are low skilled and low-wage.

46

In addressing the phenomenon of labor and other migration across the U.S.Mexico border, a need to contemplate new responses is evident. We must begin to consider closely the forces of globalization on this border. In essence, we need to develop a new vision for the border. As we develop that vision, we should remain cognizant of our historical as well as continuing economic and social relationship with Mexico. We would also be well served to consider the social, economic, and political strategic needs in the context of our place in the world regionally, not simply nationalistically. A new vision of the border should embrace the following elements: • Open labor migration akin to that in the European Union (EU) • Substantial investment in Mexico’s economy and infrastructure to enable Mexico to create jobs and maintain its ability to compete on the global economic stage thus aiding its primary trading partners—the United States and Canada. This would also reduce migration pressures. • Immigrant enterprise zones that are exempt from standard immigration quotas • Broadening of the permanent visa system to reflect the real visa demands for labor and family reunification • Revision of harmful policies on trade; crafting of meaningful international labor standards; and work with unions, corporations, and community organizations around the globe to promote better jobs, living standards, and stable communities everywhere. Unless such steps are taken, the pressure for undocumented immigration will persist.

The Need for Immigrant Workers Undocumented immigrants account for

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

about 4.3 percent of the civilian labor force—approximately 6.3 million workers out of a labor force of 146 million.1 Although they can be found in many different sectors of the economy, undocumented workers tend to be overrepresented in certain occupations and industries. They are much more likely to be in broad occupation groups that require little education or do not have licensing requirements.2 Three times as many undocumented immigrants work in agriculture, construction, and extraction as do U.S. citizens.3 In contrast, undocumented immigrants are conspicuously underrepresented in white-collar occupations. While management, business, professions, sales, and administrative support account for half of native citizen workers (52 percent), less than one-quarter of the undocumented workers are in these areas (23 percent).4 The undocumented workforce ought to be viewed in the context that the U.S. labor force will be decreasing in the foreseeable future due to demographic trends. There really is something to the pro-immigrant claim that immigrants are filling important job needs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce cites these data: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the number of people in the labor force ages 25 to 34 is projected to increase by only three million between 2002 and 2012, while those age fifty-five years and older will increase by 18 million. By 2012, those aged forty-five and older will have the fastest growth rate and will be a little more than 50% of the labor force. According to estimates . . . by the United Nations, the fertility rate in the United States is projected to fall below “replacement” level by 2015 to 2020, declining to 1.91 children per

woman (lower than the 2.1 children per woman rate needed to replace the population). By 2010, 77 million baby boomers will retire and, by 2030, one in every five Americans is projected to be a senior citizen. At the same time, we have, fortunately, projected job growth, including in lower-skilled occupations. Most jobs in our economy do not require a college degree. Close to 40% of all jobs require only shortterm on-the-job training. In fact, of the top ten largest job growth occupations between 2002 and 2012, all but two require less than a bachelor’s degree. At the same time, six of the top ten occupations only require short-term on-the-job training. Some of these top ten occupations that only require short-term on-the-job training include: retail salespersons, nursing aides, janitors and cleaners, waiters and waitresses, and combined food preparation and serving workers. However, shortages of essential workers are not limited to the largest growth occupations. In fact, the need for essential workers cut across industry sectors. . . . BLS projected an increase in jobs between 2002 and 2012 for roofers of over 30,000, while at the same time there would be attrition in this occupation of about 40,000—a net deficit of 70,000. The Construction Labor Research Council issued a labor supply outlook . . . where it found that the industry would need 185,000 new workers annually for the next ten years. The National Restaurant Association projects that the restaurant industry

will add more than 1.8 million jobs between 2005 and 2015, an increase of 15%. However, the U.S. labor force is only projected to increase 12% during the next ten years, which will make it more challenging than ever for restaurants to find the workers they need. . . . Our own surveys, not surprisingly, reflect the problems these employers have in finding the workers that they need. . . . Difficulties in finding both entry-level and skilled workers, and developing solutions for this problem, ranked extremely high in importance to those surveyed.5 The Cato Institute concurs: While the fastest-growing occupations in the next decade in percentage terms will require high degrees of skill and education, the largest growth in absolute numbers will be in those categories that require only “short-term on-the-job training” of one month or less. In fact, of the top thirty categories with the largest expected growth between 2000 and 2010, more than half fall into that least-skilled category. . . . Those categories include: combined food preparation and servicing workers, including fast food; waiters and waitresses; retail salespersons; cashiers; security guards; nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants; janitors and cleaners; home health aides; manual laborers and freight, stock, and materials movers; landscaping and groundskeeping workers; and manual packers and packagers. . . . Across the U.S. economy, the Labor Department estimates that the total number of jobs requiring only short-term training will increase from 53.2 million in 2000 to 60.9

Cartoon appeared the day after the migrant-led protests of 2006. Cartoon by Fisgon, courtesy of La Jornada.

million by 2010, a net increase of 7.7 million jobs. Meanwhile, the supply of American workers suitable for such work continues to fall because of an aging workforce and rising education levels. The median age of American workers continues to increase as the large cohort of Baby Boomers approaches retirement age. From 1990 to 2010, the median age of U.S. workers is expected to increase from 36.6 years old to 40.6. Younger and older workers alike are now more educated as the share of adult native-born men without a high school diploma have

CON T EM P LA T ING S OL U T ION S

47

to “harmonizing” labor standards, in terms of wages, workweek, and other labor-cost factors.8 Economic development aid was provided to poorer countries like Spain and Portugal, to enhance broader economic opportunities throughout the region (and lessen pressure to migrate), although meeting labor needs through movement also was contemplated.9 In order to enhance mobility of workers, the European Social Fund provides vocational training and retraining. This facilitates adaptation to business needs in different member countries.10 The idea is that to really integrate the member nations’ economies, the free movement of workers is necessary, and they should have the right to accept employment in any member nation.11 The workers’ families have the right to follow and establish new residence with the workers.12

Strawberry workers in Oxnard, most of whom are indigenous immigrants from the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacan. Photo by David Bacon.

plunged, from 53.6 percent in 1960 to 9.0 in 1998. During that same period, the share with college degrees has gone up from 11.4 percent to 29.8 percent. With the number of low-skilled jobs expected to grow by more than 700,000 a year, and a shrinking pool of Americans willing to fill those jobs, Mexican migrants provide a ready and willing source of labor to fill the growing gap between demand and supply on the lower rungs of the labor ladder.6

Labor Movement in the European Union and Lessons for NAFTA In contrast to the failure of NAFTA to incorporate labor migration in its provisions, the development of the EU has proceeded with the movement of workers clearly in mind. For that reason, looking to the European experience for guidance or even as a model is appealing, especially given the sense that the EU permits open labor, engages in development assistance to poorer nations to reduce migration pressures, and yet maintains border control.7

The EU approach to labor migration has been thoughtful and deliberate. At the outset, leaders and planners knew that as open migration was contemplated a necessary underpinning was the reduction of economic difference between various regions of Europe. Beginning with the 1973 enlargement to include Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, the British pushed for an approach to aid poorer regions. When Greece (1981), Portugal (1986), and Spain (1986) were added, all three countries as well as Ireland received infusions of capital and assistance with institutional planning. This shared-responsibility model was based on “a commitment to the values of internal solidarity and mutual support.”13 The new member countries also enacted social legislation aimed at assisting the unemployed.14

The adhesion-fund approach worked. The gap between the poorer and richer nations narrowed. By the beginning of the new millennium, Ireland’s economy had transformed, and its per capita GDP was above the EU average. Incredibly, IreWithin the EU, a central component of land—a country that for years had been Without a doubt, we need immigrant economic integration is the mobility of a constant source of emigrants—began workers of all stripes. persons. This is done with a commitment attracting immigrants. The feared “mass

48

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

migration of the unemployed” fizzled. People stayed in their own countries because work opportunities were created. Only 2 percent of EU citizens looked for work in other EU countries.15 The United States can learn from the successes of EU investments in candidate countries. Given the need to rethink the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. investment in Mexico must be part of the strategy. To begin, the United States should consider comprehensive funding that covers all areas of Mexico’s economy, as well as its social and political infrastructure. Such investments will ensure Mexican economic growth, as well as political and social stability and progress. The lesson of the EU is that with open trade, limits on the number of migrant workers are a mistake. Open migration of workers creates the most efficient labor market, allowing the flow of workers to properly follow job demand. In this way, workers remain above ground, earning a protected wage and helping both the local and their home country economies. Such an open border policy helps to guarantee workers’ rights and ensure that migrant workers are not doomed to substandard living conditions.

Considering Open Borders (Migration without Borders) Many individuals have raised the idea of open borders for serious consideration. For example, after his landslide victory for the Mexican presidency in 2000, Vicente Fox advocated an open-border concept, acknowledging that Mexico could not offer its workers the same salaries or living standards offered in the United States but arguing that Mexican workers were able to fill much-needed job openings north of the border.16 Political philosophers such as Mark Tushnet, Joseph Carens, and R. George Wright have argued that restricting law-abiding immigrants is antithetical to the notion of an open society.17 As if speaking about the U.S.-Mexico border specifically, Antoine Pecoud

An elderly man play songs from the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 for tips before crowds of migrants waiting for dawn in Altar, Sonora. Photo by John Gibler.

recognizes that migration has become part and parcel of the economy and social life of countries, and that sending and receiving countries often become dependent on migration that is difficult to stop. In spite of that, the conventional wisdom is that an open border is not feasible because massive migration would result. But Pecoud submits that such fear is not grounded on any empirical understanding.18 We actually do not know what would happen if borders were opened, but we do know that the results of immigration policies are hard to predict.19 As the UNHCR has stated: “It may be assumed that, unless he seeks adventure or just wishes to see the world, a person would not normally abandon his home and country without some compelling reason.”20 And as we know from the EU experience, massive migration from poorer countries does not occur.21 Continued undocumented immigration flow and the apparent inability of a government to control the flow can

lead to lack of confidence on the part of the public and even anti-immigrant sentiment. More walls and fences are essentially an admission that the system is not working.22 And, curiously, restrictions on mobility curtail circularity, which can lead to the undocumented residing more permanently. Open borders enable migrants enter but to return as well.23 In his influential article on open borders,24 Kevin Johnson outlines the most salient points in support of a new way of looking at immigration. Under liberal theory, closed borders are antithetical to the rights of non-citizens; liberals ought to be supportive of “relatively unrestricted immigration.”25 The moral grounds to exclude “ordinary, peaceful people, seeking only the opportunity to build decent secure lives” are simply hard to locate.26 Our religious foundations also provide a “moral imperative” to treat immigrants in a humanitarian way.27

CON T EM P LA T ING S OL U T ION S

49

In Johnson’s view, the special relationship between the United States and Mexico suggests a greater moral obligation to Mexican migrants.28 That relationship has led to a culture of migration from Mexico (built on economics and family reunification), and, as such, broad immigration restrictions are impossible to enforce because they run counter to migration pressures.29 Those restrictions have led to policies such as the institution of Operation Gatekeeper and other militarization at the U.S.-Mexico border that has resulted in an untenable death toll among border crossers.30

and Canada were opened. However we should not forget that the life-altering immigration decision is not made easily, and a floodgate should not be the assumed response.35 Most undocumented workers from Mexico want to work in the United States temporarily to finance projects back home, like building a house, purchasing land, buying consumer goods; if given the opportunity, they would work on temporary trips to the United States and retire back home to “enjoy the fruits of their labors in the United States.”36 Demographic changes also suggest some slowing of migration to the United States from Mexico over time. The Mexican birth rate is dropping, the population growth rate is lower, and fewer youngsters are approaching working age.37

generation.42 In essence, the EU was able to reduce the volatility that would prey most heavily on weak economies. The key was to narrow the disparities in income between its rich and poor members.43 Investment was part of the NAFTA debates. President Clinton favored the establishment of a North American Development Bank (NADBank). Resources were limited, however, and when the NADBank became operational, the mandate was limited to loans for environmental border projects.44 Furthermore, NADBank’s mandate is to lend at market rates of interest for “sustainable” projects. Most Mexican communities cannot afford to take on the kind of debt needed to fund projects; there simply is no revenue to repay such loans, and charging higher utility rates to residents to fund is not possible.45 Mexico’s infrastructure needs attention. A national plan for infrastructure and transportation has not been developed.46 Reducing geographical disparities within Mexico would likely decrease pressures to emigrate, and a first priority should be improving the road system from the U.S. border to the central and southern parts of Mexico.47 If that were done, investment could be attracted. The states of Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Michoacan, and Guanajuato, in the central and southern parts of the country, have the highest unemployment rates and are the primary sources of migrants to the border and to the United States.48 Yet, in spite of the growth in trade under NAFTA, significant investment in transportation and infrastructure has not occurred. Before NAFTA, Mexico invested in poorly designed toll roads under the Salinas administration (1988–94), and the roads charged hefty tolls that few were willing to pay. As Mexico’s debt rose, investment in infrastructure was slashed from about 10 percent in the 1980s to less than 2 percent in 1998. So all transportation sectors—roads, rail, air, and ports—face serious challenges.49

Johnson observes that today’s immigration laws contribute to racism in the United States, and their enforcement leads to civil rights harms.31 In contributing to an environment conducive to discriminatory sentiment, the current regime has led to a large pool of Investing in Mexico undocumented workers who are subject Economic development in Mexico is to exploitation by U.S. employers.32 often cited as the real way to stop undocumented migration.38 The idea is There also are national security reasons that economic development would crefor being more flexible in our approach ate more jobs, and the availability of to the border.33 More liberal admissions more jobs would provide less reason for policies across our southern border Mexicans to come to the United States would enhance our country’s security to find work.39 The question is whether because we would know the identities the idea would work, and what it would of those who cross; resources currently take to work. wasted on border militarization could be spent on really ferreting out those As noted in the EU experience, the estabwho may be attempting to enter to do lishment of the European Social Fund apharm to the nation. Robert Pastor, di- peared to moderate significant immigrarector of the Center for North Ameri- tion from poorer countries to wealthier can Studies, also argues that NAFTA nations and may be something to emuhad a national security purpose that late. For example, the fund boosted living should not be neglected. The hope was standards in Spain, Portugal, and Ireland to lesson migration pressures by sup- as they entered the EU.40 President Vicenporting a stable Mexico. Thus he sub- te Fox urged all three NAFTA countries mits that we should act to prevent a (especially the United States) to contrib“serious internal crisis” in Mexico that ute to an analogous North American decould lead to massive migration; thus velopment fund, but the timing was bad, we should help Mexico, for example, coming shortly before September 11, to develop its natural gas and oil indus- 2001.41 Among other things, the funds tries for economic development as well would have been used for highways to as for security purposes.34 bridge the three countries better, for development in rural parts of Mexico, and No one knows for sure what would to boost the Mexican education system in Taking a cue from the EU’s European happen if the borders with Mexico order to uplift opportunities for the next Social Fund, Robert Pastor has made a

50

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

similar proposal. He believes that the three NAFTA countries should establish an investment fund to invest in roads, telecommunications, and postsecondary education in Mexico.50 Recall that the EU invested huge sums in roads and education in new, poorer, member states, narrowing their income gap with the rest of Europe, providing workers an incentive to stay home.51 Mexico lacks the capital to build the infrastructure that is necessary to help narrow the gap with Canada and the United States.52 Pastor argues that if its northern neighbors contributed 10 percent of what the EU spends on aid, with wise investments in infrastructure and education, Mexico could experience growth at a rate twice that of Canada and the United States. “The psychology of North America would change quickly, and the problems of immigration, corruption, and drugs would look different. North America would have found the magic formula to lift developing countries to the industrial world, and that would be the twenty-first-century equivalent of the shot heard round the world.”53 By building up the central part of the country, border congestion could be relieved, and the whole system could be better managed.54 Focusing on the educational system in Mexico is also key. Mexican students fall near the bottom in cross-country comparisons on basic literacy, math, and science.55 While the adult education level in the United States is almost thirteen years, in Mexico, the level is about seven.56 This low education level has severe implications for competitiveness and standard of living for Mexicans, whether they remain in Mexico or migrate to the United States.57 Infusing new energy and investment in education in Mexico can bear fruit. Mexico’s “Progresa” or “Oportunidades” program gives poor families incentives to keep their children in school, providing grants that are the equivalent of about two-thirds of what they would

earn working.58 About 2.5 million rural families received $1 billion through the program in 2000. The percentage of students that go from elementary school to high school has increased by 20 percent under the program.59 Other data indicate that Mexico is taking its responsibility to support education seriously. The average adult education level of seven years is up from three years twenty years ago.60 School enrollment for children (ages six to fourteen) reached 92.1 percent in 2000, compared to 85.8 percent in 1990 and 64.4 percent in 1970.61 Students are required to complete nine years of school and, in general, enrollment has increased more than 80 percent at the primary level.62 One thing that NAFTA has taught us is that if we expect employment growth in Mexico to materialize as a result of trade agreements, investments have to be targeted. We have to seriously determine how to help Mexico’s domestic industries, for example by using domestic parts and supplies in production exports.63 Local industries must be strengthened. In order for any significant effect on migration from Mexico to take place, significant investment in new technologies in small- and medium-sized industries is a must. Some of this can be achieved through tax incentives to spur economic growth in the country’s interior. Fruit and vegetable production development can absorb some of the rural workers that have been displaced. And Mexico’s public infrastructure should be a big priority. While open labor migration must be considered, Mexico’s future also must be kept in mind. Given what we now know about NAFTA as well as the recent political-economic history of Mexico, we definitely need some flexibility at the border. Our special relationship with Mexico justifies that flexibility. However, setting up a system where Mexico loses large numbers of its able-bodied workers cannot be good for Mexico.

Consider the Mexican state of Zacatecas, a major source of labor migration to the United States. Some estimate that about a million dollars in remittances flow into the state each day. Yet local assembly plants had to close for lack of workers.64 An open border could hurt Mexico psychologically as well. Workers could focus more on their plan to leave Mexico, than on how to use their talents in Mexico.65 Mexican migrants are among the country’s most able workers, who leave for better wages—not necessarily because they are unemployed. Their income in the United States is better than what they were making in Mexico but it is unclear if the productivity—measured in part by their remittance—is higher than what it would have been if they had remained in Mexico. That is a hard question to answer, so an open border does not necessarily mean that Mexico benefits.66 By concentrating on investments in Mexico to create more jobs, even if labor movement is opened up, fewer than expected Mexicans would migrate, because incentives for able Mexican workers to remain home will have been created.

Immigrant Enterprise Zones In spite of tensions over immigration that have arisen in some communities, certain areas of the United States regard immigration as an answer to regional economic problems. They understand that immigrant workers have been extremely beneficial to many parts of the country. Thus, efforts are under way in many regions to recruit more immigrants. Iowa is one example. Like states and cities in other regions of the country, a considerable part of Iowa’s population has disappeared over the past two decades. A large portion of its high school graduates leaves the state each year shortly after graduation. But even if Iowa were able to retain every high school senior after graduation, Iowa would still face a 3 percent decline in its adult workforce within five years.

CON T EM P LA T ING S OL U T ION S

51

Iowa also ranks third in the nation for elderly citizens; an average Iowa farmer is fifty-eight years old and the average assembly-line worker at the Maytag Company in Newton, Iowa, is fifty-seven. Iowa’s loss of its young homegrown population comes at a time when the state has enjoyed a vibrant and growing economy the past decade, with annual unemployment of only 2 percent. Iowa’s farms employ fewer workers than ever; its population is aging, at a time when it needs younger workers and the state wants to attract high-tech industries. As Iowa is losing people, it wants immigrants to replace them. A bipartisan state commission, established when Tom Vilsack was governor, is composed of thirtyseven prominent Iowans. Its mandate was to devise a plan to improve the state’s economy by the year 2010. Having set their economic goals, members realized the state did not have the population to meet them. This “2010 Commission” concluded that Iowa’s population needed to increase about 10 percent by 2010. Some of its recommendations: • Make Iowa technologically competitive by developing non-agricultural industries • Establish “diversity welcome centers” to help immigrants locate housing, learn English, and find health care • Designate Iowa an “immigrant enterprise zone” and seek a federal exemption from immigration quotas • Assist Iowa companies to recruit prospective employees from abroad. The city of Philadelphia faces similar challenges. During the past decade, the city lost over 68,000 residents—about 4 percent of its population. This continued a downward trend in the population that began in the late 1950s. As more and more residents depart—primarily middle-income residents looking for better schools and safe neighborhoods—the city faces a further erosion of its already shrinking tax base and potential reductions in its federal dollar allocation.

52

Many Philadelphia leaders believe that the city must act to maintain its residential base and explore ways to attract residents from other regions of the country and from around the world. They believe that this is critical for revitalizing many neighborhoods in addition to increasing local tax revenues. Their plan includes: • Assisting immigrants in finding housing and health services • Working with local colleges and universities in Philadelphia (the city has developed an overall recruitment plan for foreign students to help increase the foreign student population) • Working with the major technological and e-commerce business entities in the city to develop a comprehensive plan to recruit highly educated and skilled workers • Through the school district, working to ensure that the children of immigrants are enrolled in school and are offered language classes and assimilation services, and expanding the curriculum to require all native-born students to study a second language • Through the Office of New Philadelphians, developing a comprehensive plan on how new immigrants can help to contribute to the positive redevelopment of distressed neighborhoods. Not to be outdone across the state, Pittsburgh is also embracing new strategies to attract immigrants. While Philadelphia was losing 4 percent of its population in the 1990s, Pittsburgh’s population fell by 9.5 percent. Local organizations have received foundation grants to help attract immigrants with jobs, encourage foreign students to stay after graduation, and teach the community about diversity. The city hopes to remake its outdated smoky image, in order to attract immigrants to thousands of jobs in new health-care, biotechnology, and computer software industries. Kentucky is a state whose reliance on immigrants appears to be understood in similar terms. Farmers have come to depend on immigrants when native

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

sources of labor find other jobs or remain in school. Initially, migrant workers arrived in Kentucky to cut tobacco on their swing through the country before heading home for the winter. They became invaluable when other workers could not be found. Kentucky’s chief demographer put it a little differently, as he recognizes immigrant labor as a hedge against the graying of Kentucky: “I don’t think we’re going to have an indigenous labor force. Boomers are done having kids. The boomlet is over.”67 Louisville officials also want to attract immigrants. The city’s population fell 5 percent in the 1990s and would have dropped more had it not been for the approximately twenty thousand immigrants and refugees from places like Cuba, Somalia, and Vietnam during the decade. A new city office of international and cultural affairs plans to post a list of interpreters on the Internet for community service providers to use. Efforts to help immigrants establish their own businesses are also underway.

Broaden the Permanent Visa System The U.S. immigration system requires comprehensive reform that serves everyone who lives and works in the United States. The country’s outdated immigration policy is incapable of dealing with twenty-first-century immigration patterns and economic realities. In effect, it undermines the very ideals and values the country was built on and serves neither business nor workers. Each year, approximately five hundred thousand immigrants—the majority without authorization status—are absorbed into the U.S. labor force. These numbers will continue to burgeon until U.S. immigration laws are reformed to adequately address the global economic realities of the twenty-first century. Given the risks, why do migrants from Mexico continue the harrowing trek? The attraction of the United States is obvious. The strong economy pays Mexican workers, for example, eight to nine times

more than what they can earn in Mexico. For many, it is a matter of economic desperation, and some observers think that migrants would continue to come even if we mined the border. In a sense, they do not have a choice. Besides, jobs are plentiful here, because a variety of industries rely on low-wage migrant workers. The migrants may know the risks but figure that the risks are outweighed by the benefits of crossing. Motivations for continued migration call into question the effectiveness of building more walls or expanding Operation Gatekeeper if the goal is to discourage border crossers. Beyond the economic situation in Mexico, a socio-economic phenomenon is at play. The phenomenon involves the long, historical travel patterns between Mexico and the United States, coupled with the interdependency of the two regions. Migration from Mexico is the manifestation of these economic problems and social phenomena. The militarization of the border does nothing to address these. Instead, it traumatizes individuals who are caught up in them.

that the economic incentives are in place for U.S. employers to hire U.S. workers first. Businesses should be required to search widely for workers already in the U.S. and wage rate requirements should be high enough to make jobs attractive to U.S. workers. Access to the program should be frozen in areas with high unemployment, and the employer application fees for hiring new foreign workers under the program should be significant. This approach would satisfy employers’ needs for workers. More importantly, it would prevent the creation of an underclass of workers since immigrants would have full employment rights and access to a permanent future in the U.S. community, economy, and democracy.

Additionally, under the current visa program, families often have to wait five to twenty years to be reunited with their family members. The visa limits and structural delays must be revamped to end the separation of families and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country. At the end of the day, family reunification must remain a high priority to be fair to the workers Instead of short-term “guest worker” vi- that we need and recruit. sas, labor shortages should be filled with workers with full rights, a path to per- Revise Harmful Policies on Trade manent residence, and, if they choose, and Craft Meaningful Labor citizenship. Congress has arbitrarily set Standards the number of employment-based ad- Economic globalization and harmful missions for permanent visas at one hun- U.S. trade policies are at the root of dred forty thousand visas annually. This our failed immigration system. U.S. number falls far short of satisfying the trade policies have consequences for actual need for visas based on the U.S. de- workers around the world. Thirteen mand for labor and family reunification. years of NAFTA have resulted in the loss of millions of U.S. jobs. In MexiThe number of visas available should co, real wages have declined by 20 perrespond to actual, demonstrated labor cent, millions of farmers have been disshortages. The new visa program must located, and millions more consigned ensure that U.S. workers are the first ones to poverty, fueling the labor flight into to be considered for available jobs and the United States.

Lawmakers must choose to revise harmful policies on trade, to craft meaningful international labor standards, and to work with unions, corporations, and community organizations around the globe to promote better jobs, living standards, and stable communities everywhere, otherwise the pressure for undocumented immigration will persist. We can craft trade policies in an era of globalization while respecting the rights and dignity of working people and their families throughout the world. Too often, when companies in search of cheap wages and weak labor laws cannot export jobs, they import workers to create a domestic pool of exploitable labor, effectively importing the labor standards of developing nations into the United States. Immigration reform must provide meaningful and enforceable penalties for companies that violate health, safety, and labor laws, regardless of the status of their workforce. The resources and investigative authority of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should be expanded to allow for the consistent, coordinated, and adequate enforcement of health, safety, and labor laws.

Conclusion The debate over trade and migration needs to be reframed. We need to understand that NAFTA and similar agreements have had tremendous influence on migration pressures from Mexico. We must understand that Mexico requires infrastructure and economic assistance. We need to be open to a new vision of the border and labor migration. In short, we need to stand back, take a careful look at the challenges, and craft solutions that will be beneficial to both the United States and Mexico.

CON T EM P LA T ING S OL U T ION S

53

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

54

Jeffrey S. Passel, Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics (Washington DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2005), http:// pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Serving Our National Economy, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 109th Congress 3–5 (2005) (statement of Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce). Daniel T. Griswold, “Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States,” Cato Institute, Center for Trade Policy Study 19 (October 15, 2002), http:// www.freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-019.pdf. Jason Ackleson, “Achieving ‘Security and Prosperity’: Migration and North American Economic Integration,” Immigration Policy in Focus 4, no. 2, (2006), 1. Jennifer E. Harman, Mexican President Vicente Fox’s Proposal for Expanding NAFTA into a European Union-Style Common Market—Obstacles and Outlook, Law and Business Review of the Americas (2001): 207, 216. Ackleson, 4-5. Bradly J. Condon & J. Brad McBride, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Resolving the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 17 (2003): 251, 291. Christopher J. Cassise, “The European Union v. the United States under the NAFTA: A Comparative Analysis of the Free Movement of Persons within the Regions,” Syracuse Law Review 46, (1996): 1343, 1349. Ibid., 1354. Robert Pastor, Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2001): 29. Pastor, 55, 81. Jeff Faux, The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite List Our Future—And What it will Take to Win it Back (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006): 224. Ginger Thompson, “Mexican Leader Visits U.S. with a Vision to Sell,” New York Times, August 24, 2000. Mark Tushnet, “Immigration Policy in Liberal Political Theory,” Justice in Immigration, ed. Warren F. Schwartz, (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 147, 155; Joseph H. Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” Review Policy, 49 (1987): 251, 270; R. George Wright, “Federal Immigration Law and the Case for Open Entry,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 27 (1994): 1265, 1266. Antoine Pecoud, Migration without Borders: Essays on the Free Movement of People (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007): 1, 4. Ibid., 13.

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 14. In fact, in the United States, stricter border enforcement after 9/11 has reduced circularity, and many undocumented people who would regularly return home no longer feel that they can do so. In many respects, this has increased the undocumented population. Kevin R. Johnson, “Open Borders?” UCLA Law Review 51 (2003): 193. See generally, Kevin R. Johnson, Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Laws (New York: NYU Press, 2007). Johnson, 205 (citing Mark Tushnet). Ibid., 208 (citing Joseph Carens). Ibid., 205–6. Ibid., 230–32. Ibid., 244–52. Ibid., 221–22. Ibid., 216–17. Consider racist sentiment directed at Latinos in the United States and the increased discrimination and hate crimes directed at Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians after 9/11. Ibid., 226–30. Bill Ong Hing, Deporting Our Souls—Values, Morality and Immigration Policy (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 158. Pastor, 189. Johnson, 208 (citing Dowty). Douglas S. Massey, “An Exercise in Self-Deception,” Newsweek, January 19, 2004. “Northward, Ho! Fox and Bush,” Economist, August 31, 2001. Kevin R. Johnson, “Free Trade and Closed Borders: NAFTA and Mexican Immigration to the United States,” U.C. Davis Law Review 27 (1994): 937, 960 (citing Congressman Robert Matsui). Mexico and the Migration Phenomenon, Embassy of Mexico, distributed at MPI Immigration Task Force meeting (Washington, DC, February 28, 2006): 2, 6. Harman, 220. Ibid. Ibid. Pastor, 9. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 137. Ibid. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 136. Thomas L. Friedman, “Out of the Box,” New York Times, April 4, 2004. Pastor, 145. Ibid., 191.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

Ibid., 139. Condon & McBride, 255. Ibid. Ibid., 267. Ibid., 267–68. Ibid. Ibid., 256. Ibid. Pastor, 141. Portugal and Spain, with EU help, established small colleges in rural provinces. These colleges served as magnets that attracted professionals from more advanced regions, and they also radiated their influence into the wider rural community, helping to upgrade their education. Ibid.,141. 63. Sandra Polaski, NAFTA at Year Twelve, Oral Testamony at the United States Senate Subcommittee on International Trade of

64. 65.

66. 67.

the Committee on Finance, Sept. 11, 2006, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, www.carnegieendowment.org/ files/naftaoraltestimony.pdf. Pastor, 125. Ibid. As long as incomes in the United States range from four to thirty times those in Mexico, the incentives to migrate will be compelling. Until that differential can be reduced by about half—and, under very optimistic projections, that could take thirty to forty years—a deliberate decision to relax U.S. immigration laws would have serious adverse consequences for Mexico’s economy. Ibid., 126. Butch John, “Immigration’s Local Impact: Hispanics, Asians Flowing In; Their Growth is Eight Times That of Whole Population,” Louisville Courier, September 6, 2000.

CON T EM P LA T ING S OL U T ION S

55

Migration and Development: Moving Beyond NAFTA

Oscar Chacón and Amy Shannon Framing migrants as key social actors who comprise a transnational constituency with an important role in defining a new approach to regional integration, Shannon and Chacon propose ways in which Mexican immigrants can leverage their experiences and emerging political clout to achieve more sustainable and people-centered North American development. They present an overview of migrants’ diverse roles, detailing their economic, social, and cultural contributions to both receiving and sending countries. Emphasizing the paucity of policymaker consultation with migrant populations, Shannon and Chacon describe the exclusion of migrant perspectives from trade and immigration policy discussions. The policy proposals Shannon and Chacon offer include the establishment of stringent human and labor rights standards, acknowledgement and mitigation of social asymmetries between potential trade partners prior to signing trade agreements, and investment in environmental protection and education to meet the challenges of a globalized world.

Introduction All over the hemisphere, governments are struggling with an uncomfortable reality. Although increased trade has brought economic growth in some sectors, growth has not translated into increased economic opportunities for many of the region’s poor people. To the contrary, many countries in Latin America are experiencing dramatic increases in economic inequality, with the poorest of the poor at the losing end of the equation. A recent World Bank briefing paper suggested that while trade liberalization may drive growth, it tends to concentrate wealth and may have the unintended effect of exacerbating poverty.1 Over the past fourteen years since Mexico, Canada, and the United States signed NAFTA,

56

the promises of regional integration still is high time to break out of the policy ring hollow for most Mexicans and for silos that separate migration from its root many other Americans. cause, which is the lack of sustainable development, and to seek policy solutions During the debate about NAFTA in that recognize the degree to which our the early 1990s, proponents argued that future well-being is already deeply depenthe trade agreement would slow migra- dent on that of our neighbors. We also tion, beef up tri-national environmen- must engage migrants and their families tal protections, and create new jobs for as key social actors who comprise a transall. The experiences of the past decade national constituency in a new approach have proved quite different. In spite of to regional integration. increasingly harsh border restrictions, millions of Mexicans have fled sput- Policy Silos: Migration and its tering rural economies to seek work in Root Causes the United States. The dominant role of The question of human mobility across China in world manufacturing strongly borders is deliberately omitted under the suggests that Mexico is not going to NAFTA model of trade and economic make economic leaps forward through integration, despite the obvious conneclow-cost labor and simple maquila tions between profound economic and manufacturing. The lure of the econo- production shifts and migration. In conmy on the U.S. side of the border, with tradiction our national debate around its strong demand for agricultural work- immigration policy in the United States ers, service employees, meat and poultry consistently ignores the fundamental processors, and other manual labor jobs, question of why people find it necessary is pulling us ever more quickly into an to leave their homelands in the first place. integrated hemispheric labor market, a As politicians debate the relative merits reality not contemplated under NAFTA. of border security and militarization, At the same time, working-class people earned legalization, and enforcement, in the United States have witnessed a little attention is paid to what drives constant erosion of their quality of life. migration from Mexico and around the Millions lack access to health care, send world: deep inequalities, insecurity, and their children to substandard schools, lack of opportunity. and struggle to make a living wage. The social ills of unchecked economic glo- If we are to develop policies that will balization have a strikingly similar ap- lead to long-term sustainable developpearance across the hemisphere. ment in our hemisphere and provide economic opportunities for people in As we look back at nearly fifteen years un- their own communities, we must recder NAFTA, we should ask policy mak- ognize the interconnected nature of facers hard questions about the purported tors that are causing so many people to benefits of export-oriented, growth-at- leave their places of origin in search of all-costs trade agreements. Perhaps more a better life in another country. Current importantly, we should begin to craft patterns of economic globalization and policies that respond to the realities of technology have both increased presour increasingly globalized world and sures to migrate and made it easier to do put people-centered sustainable devel- so. The economic push and pull factors opment at the center of our agenda. It for migration are amplified by increased

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

homogenization of cultural expectations, driven by global media communications conglomerates and fueled by television and the consumer culture of the north. Migration continues to be driven as well by the healthy human impulse to reunite families. Migration will remain a significant factor in the economic, cultural, and political future of our hemisphere for the foreseeable future. Rather than denying it, we should focus on ways to leverage the experiences and emerging political clout of migrants toward a more sustainable and people-focused vision for our hemisphere.

Transnational Community Organizations: Current and Potential Roles Over the past two decades, as immigrants have arrived in the United States from Latin America in record numbers, many new organizations have formed within immigrant communities. These organizations have diverse expressions. Some of them provide community services to newly arrived immigrant communities. Others emerged in the wake of natural disasters to funnel charitable donations to the affected regions. In some cases organizations form from existing or newly developed social connections—groups of migrants get together to play soccer or meet others from their community and end up forming an organization to help out in their old hometown or solve a problem in their new one. In general, first-generation Latino immigrant leaders, who have firsthand experience of the impacts—both good and bad—of the changing global economy, form these civic and community-based groups. Many recently arrived Latino immigrants tend to organize around some aspect of ethnic or national affinity. In the case of immigrants from Mexico, the self-organized immigrant groups often revolve

around a particular town or region of more than a decade of experience in origin. This has led academics to call them infrastructure investment and collecHometown Associations (HTAs), though tive charitable donations in communithey most often call themselves “clubs” ties of origin. In recent years, some mior “committees.” In the case of Central grant organizations have begun to take Americans, the organizations often have a more aggressive role in pressing for a more national or ethnic bent. For exdevelopment policies that create jobs ample, Centro Romero in Chicago, Cenand economic opportunity in their tral American Resource Center in Housplaces of origin. ton, and Centro Presente in Boston all • Providing services in communities of trace their history to a committed group arrival to help immigrants integrate of Salvadoran émigrés who organized to more fully into the social, economic, support the burgeoning refugee commupolitical, and cultural fabric of socinity that began arriving from El Salvador ety. These services include: Englishduring the war in the 1980s. The strong language training, vocational training, sense of local or national identity that computer training, civic participation, propels immigrant organizing does not financial literacy, after-school care, mean that the organizations cannot form youth organizing, health services, and alliances with others when circumstances cultural preservation—dance, music, require it. The National Alliance of Latin theater, etc.. American and Caribbean Communities • Becoming more visible advocates for (NALACC) coordinates national and inpolitical changes in the United States. ternational-level advocacy efforts of more One of the striking aspects of large imthan seventy-five community-based, Latimigrant mobilizations in the spring no-immigrant-led organizations around of 2006 was the degree to which imthe country, on issues ranging from immigrant-led, locally based organizing migration reform to civic engagement drove the process. The larger national and sustainable development. organizations, including labor unions, lagged behind local communities Latino and Caribbean immigrants and in grasping the potential to channel their organizations already play a strong popular unrest into large, visible puband visible role in their countries of orilic actions. In the wake of the 2006 gin, and are beginning to assume a more marches, many immigrant-led organivisible role in the United States. Among zations have continued and deepened other things, immigrants are: their engagement in immigration reform advocacy. • Pumping a lot of money into local • Pressing for political changes in couneconomies in Latin America. Even as tries of origin. Until recently, actions they build their communities here in in this area have tended to coalesce the United States, Latino immigrants around civil rights, including the have continued to care about and right to vote and the right to politisupport their communities in their cal representation. In 2006, Mexican countries of origin. Migrants are only immigrant activists finally won a longtoo aware that the lack of economic standing battle to allow Mexicans livopportunity in the home country is a ing abroad to vote in federal elections. key driver of migration. Some MexiUnfortunately, the Byzantine “votecan hometown associations now have by-mail” process made it difficult for

MIG R A T ION AN D D EVELO P MEN T

57

based organizations that form the NALACC have engaged in a policy dialogue related to promoting long-term, sustainable development. Emerging from this dialogue, the following ideas could be a first step in moving toward a new approach to regional integration and development in our hemisphere.

“Of course we are indignant! It’s one remittance less!” “SRE” is the Spanish acronym for Mexico’s foreign Ministry. Cartoon by Magu, courtesy of La Jornada.

many voters to register but the trend Although dwarfed in comparison to toward absentee voting has pushed the amount of individual remittances down to the state level. received, collective remittances used as donations or for project investment are Beyond Remittances: Immigrants also on the rise, as migrant organizations as a Constituency for Sustainconsolidate and develop more ambitious able, People-centered Develop- agendas aimed at influencing the trajecment Policies tory of their hometowns. However, more Often, discussion of migrants’ roles in and more migrants are seeing their efdevelopment in their countries of origin forts thwarted by the broader economic devolves to a relatively simplistic focus context, including the emphasis on the on remittances. Certainly, the aggregate export-driven development model codinumbers are impressive. But taken one fied in NAFTA. Migrant investors are at a time, these private transfers that have frustrated by the lack of a supportive captured the imaginations of govern- economic policy context for small and ments and multilateral agencies average medium-sized entrepreneurs. Credit, esless than $500 per month per family. pecially in rural areas, is both hard to get and expensive. Technical and marketing According to the Inter-American Devel- assistance is virtually nonexistent. Many opment Bank (IADB), more than $300 migrants have tried to invest in sectors billion will flow into Latin America in the they know, such as agriculture, but find next ten years from family remittances.2 themselves outcompeted by larger-scale, To get a sense of the relative magnitude of subsidized operations in the United these transfers, it is worth noting that total States that are able to use the privileges remittances have come to match or surpass afforded by NAFTA to dump products total foreign direct investment across the on the Mexican market. Many migrantregion, and in some countries, remittances led organizations are asking hard quesfar outpace FDI as a percentage of GDP.3 tions about the best way for migrant According to IADB data, Mexico received investment to create long-term economic about $24 billion in remittances in 2007, opportunities in places of origin.4 eclipsing all sources except petroleum in the generation of foreign exchange. Over the past two years, the community-

58

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

• Recognize the urgent need to modify the trade and development policies that the United States has pursued in Latin America for the past twenty years. Current policies have largely failed to lift the majority of people out of poverty and have deepened economic inequality in the region. Instead of moving forward with more ill-conceived trade agreements, U.S. development assistance policies should strengthen local economies and lay the groundwork for long-term, sustainable development. The collapse of rural economies is one factor driving people to migrate. Given the importance of local agricultural production to the livelihoods of many Latin Americans, we should give priority to building strong local and regional markets and environmental sustainability by revising U.S. subsidies to agricultural production. • The United States must move forward with immigration reform. As long as tens of millions of people live in fear at the margins of society, they will continue to be effectively blocked from being fully productive and civically engaged members of society. A sensible, workable immigration reform must include a path to legal permanent residency, with a prompt and fair citizenship option for those who already live, work, and raise families in the United States. It must also deal with the shocking backlogs, some stretching over a decade, for family reunification petitions. Finally we must come to terms with the reality that more workers from abroad will flow into our economy over time. We need a set of rules that will support the full protection of these workers’ human and labor rights, and allow those who

end up working for several years in the United States the right to apply for legal permanent residency status. • Because all the countries in our hemisphere are now experiencing migration in ever more complicated dynamics, we should work across borders to establish minimum standards of treatment for migrants in sending, receiving, and transit countries. These standards should be based on the principles of respect for human rights and human dignity. Migration should be decriminalized in all countries as a first step toward reducing the extreme vulnerability of migrants to exploitation and abuse. • In addition to reassessing our economic policy approach over the longer term, immediate steps should be taken to address the economic asymmetries that drive migration, including: • A moratorium on new bilateral or multilateral trade agreements without taking into account the significant asymmetries between the U.S. economy and the economies of potential partner countries, and building in appropriate compensatory mechanisms, as well as protections for labor and the environment. Immigrant-led associations can and should be a part of a national dialogue to rethink the way in which trade relations should be reA group of recently deported migrants line up to be searched by police before being admitdefined and implemented. ted into a private shelter that provides a free meal, blanket and serves as a contractor for • Enabling poor families to build assets local maquiladoras. Photo by John Gibler. by increasing access to appropriate financial services for immigrants without access to banking services in the United States and for their families in pealing as a potentially renewable enyoung people for the demands of the countries of origin. This will require ergy source, large-scale agribusiness twenty-first century. Our schools are investment in innovative, appropriate monoculture for biofuel may turn out failing to meet the needs of a globalfinancial technology such as binationto be just as (or more) damaging to the ized world. Our education system is ally linked credit and other commuplanet from a global warming perspecfailing both immigrants and nativenity financial institutions. tive. The damage to local food systems born students, particularly within • We must engage our neighbors in shared by large-scale conversion to fuel crops racial minorities. Key skill sets that strategy for dealing with environmental should also be a cause for alarm. Alour country should be nurturing, challenges, including climate change, though NAFTA set up a tri-national such as multi-lingual capabilities and water management, and pollution. facility for addressing environmental multi-cultural competencies are beThere will be no silver bullets to magiissues, the entity has been perpetually ing squandered as a result. We live in cally solve these problems. The recent underfunded and lacks a meaningful a de facto regional labor market. We flurry of interest in biofuels should enforcement mechanism. should be working together with our serve as a cautionary tale. While ap- • Invest in education that will prepare neighbors, including Canada, Mexico,

MIG R A T ION AN D D EVELO P MEN T

59

and countries in Central America and the Caribbean, on vital issues such as workforce development strategies for equitable and sustainable economic growth with universal benefits.

Final Thoughts The trade and development policies embodied in NAFTA have failed to lift the majority of people out of poverty and have deepened economic inequality in many countries. Proponents of “free trade” as the antidote to poverty may have had the best of intentions but it just hasn’t worked. Unfortunately, many corporations have seized the opportunity to exploit trade agreements as they lead a

“race to the bottom” in wages, labor protections and environmental protections, all while extracting record-breaking profit margins that become ever more concentrated in fewer pockets in the United States and abroad. A policy framework for lasting changes must prioritize sustainable, local economic development, placing a priority on building small- and medium-sized enterprises and creating opportunities for meaningful, dignified work. The collapse of rural economies is one key factor driving people to migrate, so we must pay attention to developing healthy rural economies. It will also be crucial to strengthen

local cultures and peoples’ sense of pride about their own identity. The meaning of successful ways of life should be pluralistic, rather than Hollywood-manufactured. Ultimately we must strive to significantly decrease the profound social and economic asymmetries between peoples in rich nations in North America and Europe on one hand, and peoples in developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America on the other. If people do not see any hope for their children in their places of origin, migration will continue to be the only option for many families around the world.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

60

“Does More International Trade Openness Increase World Poverty?” World Bank Briefing Paper, http://www1.worldbank.org/economicpolicy/globalization/documents/AssessingGlobalizationP2.pdf. ”Sending Money Home,” Inter-American Development Bank, http://www.iadb.org/mif/remesas_map.cfm?language=English&parid=5& item1d=2 Foreign Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2004, United Nations ECLAC, 2005. For more detail on migrant-led dialogue on sustainable development, see Raúl Delgado Wise and Héctor Rodríguez Ramírez , “The Emergence of Collective Migrants and Their Role in Mexico’s Local and Regional Development,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 22, no. 3 (2001), http://www.migracionydesarrollo.org; Rodolfo García Zamora, “Migración Internacional y Desarrollo Local: Una Propuesta Binacional para el Desarrollo Regional del Sur de Zacatecas,” Red Internacional de Migración y Dessarollo, http://www. migracionydesarrollo.org; Amy Shannon, “Investing in Hope: Transnational Communities as Social and Political Entrepreneurs,” Enlaces América, http://www.enlacesamerica.org/articles0303/newsletters/edition10Fall2005/InvestingInHope.htm

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Calexico, California, USA. June 2004. This canal hugs the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Photo by Mizue Aizeki.

MIG R A T ION AN D D EVELO P MEN T

61

Political Violence and Migration in the Lower Triqui Region María Dolores París Pombo The author offers a ground-level perspective on the forces reshaping the lives of the indigenous Triqui nation and propelling their migration from Oaxaca to northwestern Mexico and the United States. Owning fertile lands but standing at the bottom of the social and political system has made the Triqui the target of systematic attempts by authoritarian state officials and their allies to deprive them of their livelihoods, often violently. Economic hardship, imposed by the vagaries of commodity prices under globalization, made the Triqui easy prey for agribusiness labor contractors, who first hooked them to work in northwestern Mexico. Since then, the Triqui have dispersed throughout North America, working as agricultural laborers following the crop cycle, and learning to organize transnationally to defend their rights and their traditions. However the same process of adaptation poses new challenges for an ancient culture, and the outcome still hangs in the balance.

Introduction The Lower Triqui region lies on the western part of the state of Oaxaca, at the intersection of the Upper and Lower Mixteca Sierras. Fifty years ago, the region’s main town, San Juan Copala, stopped being a county seat and become an agency of Santiago Juxtlahuaca. International migration in this region is relatively recent. Thirty years ago, migratory work was a domestic and seasonal undertaking that served to complement monetary incomes from the sale of coffee, bananas, and the beautiful garments woven by Triqui women on waist-held looms. Back then, agribusiness bosses from the state of Sinaloa, wishing to reap higher profits in their new export horticulture plantations, started hiring workers directly in the poorest and most isolated parts of the Mixteca, eventually fostering family and communal migration to northwestern Mexico. Later, migrant networks

62

substituted the “labor hooking” system. Political violence and insecurity in their original lands pushed the Triqui to stay in the northwest and to migrate across the border in search of better living conditions. Thus Triqui migration is shaded by political exile and at the same time responds to the development model instituted in Mexico a quarter of a century ago. In addition to drops in the price of commercial crops, such as coffee, and the total absence of rural development policies, migration is fed by generalized violence stemming from territorial disputes and the struggle for political control of the region.

Disputed Territory Surrounded by forests, traversed by small rivers, and fed by abundant rain, the Lower Triqui lands are fertile. A palette of green colors the landscape. Yams, herbs, and wild roots grow on the hillsides and are part of the daily diet of the population. Until the 1970s, the Triqui lived by planting maize for self-consumption, by picking wild roots, and by growing fruit trees, including mangoes, mameyes, oranges, and guava, in small family landholdings. The production and sale of traditional garments and the commercial sale of coffee and bananas sufficed to earn enough income to buy industrialized products and to pay for school supplies or celebrations. Coffee was grown in small plots, with primitive techniques and a much lower productivity than that of the Putla valley coffee growers.1 However, local intermediaries and hoarders considered coffee a source of great wealth, since they bought cheap, often in advance or in exchange for hard liquor and guns, and sold at higher prices in regional markets. In order to control grain production and keep their margins high, these merchants disrupted the creation of alternative markets or coffee mills, often violently.2

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

The land’s fertility and bounty have been a permanent source of conflict. Triqui lands have been repeatedly invaded or fought over by mestizo ranchers and Mixtecs from nearby towns. Despite the struggle to enforce their property rights, between 1970 and 1990 the Triqui lost 33 percent of their land, while their population grew 49 percent.3 As a result, smallholdings were divided even more and massive emigration ensued. Starting in the 1980s, continuous confrontations between caciques and popular organizations spurred emigration. In particular, corrupt popular leaders, the authoritarian and repressive state government, its mestizo rancher allies, and indigenous caciques allied with the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and the Triqui Unification and Struggle Movement (MULT) fanned political conflicts. From the creation of the MULT in 1981 to the close of the century, eight hundred Triqui succumbed to political violence.4 These deaths are fundamentally related to the institutional vacuum: absent are not only the agrarian authorities but also the judiciary, which compounds impunity. Lastly, since the 1990s, the creation of paramilitary groups tied to party and governmental interests made shootings, ambushes, murders, vendettas, and armed conflicts ordinary occurrences. Vendettas and murders are also common among members of the same organization, as they seek to control the resources and power of the movement. Since the 2003 creation of the Partido de Unidad Popular (PUP) under the auspices of then-governor José Murat, the rise of internal dissent in the movement helped violence flare up. In 2006, the movement splintered and the MULT-Independiente came into being. This organization participated

Commemoration of First Year under Autonomous Municipal Rule, San Juan Copala, Oaxaca. Photo by Luis Alberto Cruz. with two other ones, until recently tied to the PRI—Unidad de Bienestar Social de la Región Triqui (UBISORT) and Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC)—in the creation of the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala in 2007. The MULT-I participated in the massive protests led by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) that rocked the state of Oaxaca in 2006. The new municipality is governed under the “Traditional Usages and Customs” rules and includes seventeen of the thirty-six communities in the region. Dur-

ing its first year, it has been under attack by the state government, police forces, and paramilitary groups tied to the PRI and the PUP. The autonomous authorities have tried to break their isolation by establishing links to civic organizations and academic institutions in other states in Mexico, in the United States, and in Guatemala. Triqui migrants have been instrumental in weaving these ties. They have also supported the building of roads, infrastructure projects, and services through remittances. Nevertheless the daily insecurity and political tension in the Lower Triqui region keeps pushing tens of families north.

The Creation of “Multilocal” Families and Communities In the last few years, school completion rates have increased considerably in Copala.5 Yet, unlike the situation two decades back, it is the girls who finish high school and go on to college.6 In contrast, most boys leave for the North as soon as they finish junior high. Every year, hundreds of teenagers embark on the undocumented, dangerous journey to the United States. Anticipation to “jump the line” stirs the anxiety and emotion of a rite of passage: walking for hours in the Arizona desert, following the coyote, hiding from the migra, avoiding vicious bugs and cacti, waiting for the raitero to

P OLI T ICAL VIOLENCE AN D MIG R A T ION

63

show up, and finally making it to a job that their relatives have found or promised to find for them in California, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, Florida, New Jersey, or New York.

aca and Mexico City. Threats to their lives and the burning down of their homes in Copala forced many families that worked the tomato harvest in Culiacán Valley to stay in Sinaloa. Some of them looked for work in California, where salaries are ten Without a doubt, migration is a disruptive times those in Mexico.10 process that has radically changed gender and intergenerational relations among Triqui laborers’ experience in Baja Calithe Triqui. Presently, 30 percent of the fornia was fundamental in extending the region’s original population lives in other migratory networks to the United States. states in Mexico7 and over 10 percent live Proximity to the border, which helped in the United States.8 The majority lives cut transportation costs, and their ties almost permanently in the northwestern to fellow laborers who had crossed the states of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja Cali- border previously and to subcontractors fornia. Many have crossed the border to and supervisors who had interests in the work the fields in West Coast states. The United States, opened up multiple opprevalence of family and communal mi- portunities for young males, and later gratory patterns accounts for the fact that whole families, to risk the trip to the nearly as many Triqui women as Triqui United States and look for better-paid men live in northwestern Mexico.9 In jobs. The creation of the northwestern California and Oregon, most Triqui mi- circuit also supported the emergence of grant laborers are young men who follow a migratory culture based on the consolithe fruit and vegetable harvest and live in dation of multilocal communities linked subhuman conditions in trailers and bar- by family ties, information flows, and racks. These laborers return home during solidarity. Additionally, the Triqui in the the winter, to reunite with their families north continued their long tradition of in northern Mexico. political organization and resistance.11 The Triqui started migrating to northwestern Mexico in the 1960s. The main destination was Sinaloa but with the development of export horticulture in Baja California and Sonora many agricultural laborers started migrating cyclically to all of those three states. Initially, they were “hooked” by labor subcontractors, who paid for their transportation from their hometowns to the fields in the north. Because salaries were low, ever more family members joined the flow. Shortly thereafter, migratory networks, based on family, neighborhood, or regional ties, formed and partially substituted the subcontracting arrangements. Laborers then had to cover their own and their families’ transportation costs. Being hard up for extra resources led many to seek other jobs at the destinations to extend their stays and to save some money. In the 1980s, political violence forced hundreds of families off the land in Copala neighborhoods, who then settled down in Santiago Juxtlahuaca, Putla, Oax-

64

population. Many families can be found, at the same time, in the Copala area, in the other towns in the region (Putla, Juxtlahuaca and Oaxaca), in Mexico City and its environs, in the agricultural regions and cities of northwestern Mexico, and in several states in the United States. In response to oppression, exploitation, and discrimination by other ethnic and national groups, Triqui communities often encapsulate or self-segregate. “Daughter” communities—like those in Camalú or Colonia Triqui, both in Baja California—maintain a close and continuously renovated relationship with the mother community in Copala, through phone calls that ferry news about weddings, births, deaths, anecdotes, and gossip. Bilingual radio, which broadcasts daily updates of families in Oaxaca and the United States, is very popular in northwestern Mexico. In Fresno, California, the Radio Bilingüe station occasionally broadcasts in Triqui. Youths make daily use of e-mail and online chat rooms to keep in touch with friends and family thousands of miles away.

Triqui migration is also characterized by the great mobility of single males, of heads of household (both male and female), and occasionally of whole families, all of whom follow the crop cycle. For children, this means the continuous interruption of the school cycle. Whole families are affected by this instability, suffering growing problems in family integration and extended separation of parents and offspring. The absence of males makes it difficult for female heads of household to make sure teenage daughters attend high school in Copala or Santiaga Juxtlahuaca. Male youths learn to enjoy the trip north, getting used to the liberties the journey entails, to earning dollars, to purchasing electronic gadgets and wearing brand-name clothing, and to meeting other youths of different ethnic groups or to joining gangs. For them it is increasingly difficult to accept paternal authority in an extended family The quick rise of migration has spurred environment or to take on family or an enormous dispersion of the Triqui communal commitments. Despite the long absences of family members, the permanent flow of information has allowed a sense of continuity to flourish between the communities in Oaxaca and their offshoots at different destinations on both sides of the border. Communities become detached of their original territory, but reconstitute themselves at the destinations through networks, everyday interactions, and cultural or political participation. Thus the concept of belonging to the Triqui nation is in flux, since many adults were born in northwestern Mexico and many of their offspring were born in the United States. Some of the adults born in Culiacán or Ensenada speak only Triqui or very little Spanish. Meanwhile Triqui children born in California or who arrived there very young do not learn their mother tongue, but rather a combination of Spanish and English.12

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Monetizing Traditions In addition to the politics that overshadow the Triqui exile, their culture has adopted important changes related to migration through the networks they have built over thirty years and the everincreasing cost of keeping their traditions alive. Indeed, serving as civic and religious officials, organizing celebrations, and arranging marriages have become very costly undertakings which can only be met by spending family savings earned over years of salaried work in the fields. As migration redefines community belonging and participation, money plays an ever more important role in keeping traditions alive. Religious celebrations involve days-long feasts, which bring together people from the whole region, not only from Copala.13 Mayordomos, the officials in charge of the events, take on all sorts of expenses, ranging from paying for the cattle to be slaughtered, to providing alcoholic beverages and arranging firework displays. Despite the distance, many indigenous migrants remain linked to their communities through economic contributions, return trips during celebrations, and civic or religious duties. At the same time, many Triqui are often forced to emigrate to meet the debts that come with carrying on these traditions. Agustín, a sixtyyear-old man from Santa Cruz Río Verde, tells his story: Back [in] 1982, I was municipal agent for the town. I spent a lot of money. I go to Huajuapan, I go to Oaxaca and spend lots of money. I borrow from people. I am chosen municipal agent and serve one year. Next year, I stop being agent, but where do I find money? I owe a lot. I talk to everybody and say “I go to Culiacán, I go to where I can find work, and I pay.” Everybody says, “No, no, don’t go, you work well, don’t worry.” But I want to pay back money. When I stop being municipal agent, I went to Culiacán. I owe

Aurelia Dominguez, an indigenous Triqui farm worker from San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, picks cherry tomatoes on a farm just outside of Fairfield. Photo by David Bacon.

P OLI T ICAL VIOLENCE AN D MIG R A T ION

65

money, I talk to people, I came to Sinaloa. There I picked tomatoes. I remained many years. Some fields I work for a year, others for four months, changed work, Ensenada, Camalú—I remained there with my kids working.14 Other commitments also force whole families to emigrate in search of money. In order to get married, young men need to come up with substantial savings. This has propelled large numbers of youths to seek work in California’s fields, for extended periods of time, before they can come back and “ask for the bride.” Despite constant contact with other cultures, the Triqui respect and reproduce their traditions jealously. As has been the case for generations, wedding arrangements hew close to tradition. Accompanied by an elder relative, a man interested in a woman visits her parents’ home to ask for her hand in marriage. Negotiations ensue regarding “the bride’s price,” and, once settled, the groom’s family pays with beer, tortillas, tlayudas, chickens, a goat or a cow, and money. The fundamental change that has taken place with migration is “inflation” of the tradition. While marriage arrangements used to reinforce solidarity and soften rivalries between families in the community, they now represent an extremely costly commercial exchange. During a site visit in January 2008 I witnessed a long conversation at the Rodriguez family house. The central topic was the price for a bride who had recently married in Putla. The women gingerly commented about the eighty thousand pesos the groom’s family had paid. Ana, the nineteen-year -old daughter of the

66

family, listened to the conversation, evidently upset by it, and determinedly assured she would never marry for money. If years ago young women respectfully acquiesced to their parents’ marriage arrangements, today the strong patriarchal rule is constantly under attack by the new generations’ nonconformity and discontent, particularly by young women who have emigrated to the North or who have finished high school or college. Thus Ana finished high school in Santiago Juxtlahuaca and later got her parents’ permission and support to study architecture at the Universidad Tecnológica de Juchitán. Her father, uncles, and brothers work in New Jersey, while her mother and aunts live in Santiago Juxtlahuaca, where they produce Triqui textiles. Indeed, it is unlikely that Ana will keep Triqui marriage traditions. She has also lost the exceptional Triqui weaving skills, which passed from mothers to daughters until recently. However, her family is proud of her scholastic achievements.

Conclusions Triqui lands have been at the center of intense political disputes fanned by attempts to control regional markets and to gain access to the more fertile areas. Due to the generalized violence and the continuous violation of human rights, the Triqui are living a modernday exodus. Domestic and international migration has dispersed the Lower Triqui communities through central and northwestern Mexico and the United States. This dispersion has not diluted ethnic identities but rather has reorganized them geographically, through the colonization and reappropriation of institutional and social spaces of cities and town to the

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

north. Triqui identity has thus gained spatial plasticity. Migrant populations have retained their cultural heritage to create extensions of their home communities; they re-signify the destinations with their own culture. As in Copala, the women weave huipiles, bags, coats, and cloth napkins, thousands of miles from home. Whether in Sonora, Baja California, or California, migrants use Triqui herbs and healing rituals, and celebrate weddings, baptisms, and other religious events. At the same time, the notion of belonging to the Triqui nation is quickly changing. Migration is disaggregating local cultures, disintegrating families, and uprooting cultural referents, especially among the youth. In Oaxaca and elsewhere, Triqui youths increasingly identify with northern symbols and consumption models. Gender relations have also undergone radical transformations. Migration, schooling, and exposure to mass media all are contributing factors. Men frequently express distress at the weakening of traditional forms of control over women. Greater mobility and growing female autonomy intensify feelings of infidelity and heighten domestic violence. We can observe both the monetarization of tradition and the disarticulation of patriarchal culture. On the one hand, migrants’ relative wealth feeds conspicuous consumption during celebrations, mayordomos’ growing expenditures, and the “inflation” of traditional weddings. On the other hand, young women and men are forced to reinvent their traditions, seeking and finding new ways to go into relationships and express commitment to family unity and communal identity.

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

According to Pedro Lewin, in the 1990s producers in the Copala region harvested, at most, 400 kilos per hectare, while those near Putla harvested 800 kilos per hectare, on average. See Pedro Lewin, “La gente de la lengua completa (yi ni nanj ni’ inj). El grupo etnolingüístico triqui,” in Alicia M. Barabas and Miguel A. Bartolomé, editors, Configuraciones Étnicas en Oaxaca: Perspectivas Etnográficas para las Aautonomías (México: CONACULTA-INAH e Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1999). In early 1990, Oaxaca governor Heladio Ramirez and the Movimiento por la Unión y la Lucha Triqui (MULT) negotiated building a coffee mill and organizing producer cooperatives to ensure fair commercialization of the beans in the Triqui region. Paulino Martínez Delia and his nephew Bonifacio, leaders of MULT, promoted the project among Copala’s residents; on January 23, 1990, they were shot dead by hired gunmen. As is too often the case, justice was never served. See Francisco López Bárcenas, Muerte sin Fin: Crónicas de Represión en la Región Mixteca Oaxaqueña (México: Serie Derechos Indígenas, Centro de Orientación y Asesoría a Pueblos Indígenas/ Ce’Acatl, 2002). Lewin, “La gente de la lengua completa,” 238. Lewin, “La gente de la lengua completa.” According to the 2005 General Population Count, only six boys and five girls between six and fourteen years of age did not attend school. Analphabetism in Copala is much higher among women (61.5 percent) than among men (32.5 percent). The figures are similar for surrounding communities. However, today over 95 percent of girls and boys between six and fourteen years of age attend school. Conteo General de Población y Vivienda, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2005. According to the 2005 Population and Household Survey, out of 32,559 Triqui residing in México, 9,767 live outside of Oaxaca. The main destination within Mexico is Baja California, where 3,435 Triqui live. According to fieldwork done since 2002 and the estimates of organizations like the United Farm Workers, the Proyecto de Ciudadanía de la Costa Central, and the Frente Indígenas de Organizaciones Binacionales, 600 Triqui live in the Salinas Valley; nearly 1,000 live in the Central Valley, and tens of Triqui families live in Santa María, California, and in Oregon. Some Triqui males migrate regularly to the East Coast, specifically to New York and New Jersey. There are also Triqui in Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. For example, 1,747 Triqui women and 1,688 men live in Baja California, and 875 Triquis women and 899 men live in Sinaloa. Salaries in northwestern Mexico are paid on a per kilo basis. On average, laborers earn 50 pesos per day, approximately $5. In contrast, in California, laborers earn between $6 and $7.5 per hour. In Culiacán, Triquí, and Mixtec, migrant laborers created agricultural worker unions to fight for better contracts and working conditions. In Baja California, they founded the Triqui Nation Organization, which fights for better living conditions in Ensenada and San Quintin. In California, many Triqui who live and work in the fields of the Central Valley created the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, in collaboration with other Oaxacan ethnic groups. Even adults adopt common terms used in the labor niche dominated by Hispanics, such as el field, la troca (the truck), and el raite (the ride). In Copala, there are eighteen celebrations spread throughout the year. The most important are Carnival, San Juan, San Jose and Santa Cruz, Easter, and All Saints Day. See Agustín García Alcaraz, Tinujei: Los Triquis de Copala, 2nd ed. (Mexico: Ciesas, 1997): 160–67. Interview with Agustín, Greenfield, April 15, 2003. Agustín, his wife, and two kids went to Culiacan in the 1980s. Two more children were born there. Despite having been born in Culiacan, Hortensia, their youngest daughter, barely speaks Spanish.

P OLI T ICAL VIOLENCE AN D MIG R A T ION

67

Against the Current: Looking for Alternatives to Migration in the Mexican Countryside John Gibler Profiling a small-scale and successful fair trade, organic coffee cooperative in Salvador Urbina, Chiapas, Gibler reports on local efforts to create alternatives to forced economic migration. Gibler interviews migration experts, state officials, and local residents in Zacatecas state to probe the forces that compel people to leave their communities. He also interviews Gracia Goya, the project manager for transnational programs with Hispanics in Philanthropy, and Juan Manuel Sandoval, who coordinates the Permanent Seminar on Chicano and Border Studies in Mexico City, to engage both supportive and critical perspectives on the very possibility of local alternatives to forced economic migration. David Roman had been mowing lawns in Miami for two years when he took the call from his father back in Salvador Urbina, Chiapas, a small town thirty minutes from the Guatemalan border. Roman’s father had an offer that a migrant rarely hears from back home: a job. Growing an acre or two of coffee on the lush hillsides of southern Chiapas, the job offered a fraction of the pay he earned in Miami, but one benefit that David Roman valued above all. “Really I missed my family,” he said. “Sure you can talk on the phone and keep up to date, but it is not the same as being near each other, being able to reach out and hug them when you want to.” And so David Roman made the trip that most undocumented migrants make only after being dumped on the border in Nogales, with whatever they had in their pockets when detained, their shoelaces stripped from their shoes so that they won’t make a run for it before crossing from Arizona back into Mexico. Against the current, he left Miami for Salvador Urbina.

68

With a population of about 7,000, Salvador Urbina is a cluster of tin-roofed houses with open-air kitchens and simple concrete walls that stretch up and down the thick green hillside on either side of a two-lane road running from Tapachula to El Aguila. Coffee trees are everywhere here, filling the surrounding hillsides, interspersed with banana, mandarin, South American apricot (mamey) and rambutan trees providing shade for the coffee and ready snacks for those tending the coffee. Only a handful of small corn and bean fields remain. Locals say that German immigrants first brought coffee to the region, buying up vast tracts of land for cattle ranching and coffee farming and forcing the locals into virtual slavery. The German who reigned here—none remembered his name— would pay twelve-hour workdays with a single token that could only be used in the German’s store.

coffee company that guaranteed prices for small farmers. In 1989, President Carlos Salinas dismantled Inmecafé as part of his campaign of privatizations and deregulation leading up to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Soon the farmers of Salvador Urbina found that they had little control over the prices of their crop and were forced to sell to the coyotes, or intermediaries, who gather coffee from small farmers across the country and sell to the large multinational buyers, such as Nestlé. And then came the crash in coffee prices in the 1990s that created a wave of emigration from Salvador Urbina, mainly to other parts of Mexico like Puebla, Nayarit and Sonora, but also across the border to the United States.

By 2002, the coyotes paid about 350 pesos ($35) a quintal (a sack of coffee weighing 57.5 kilograms, or 126.5 pounds), or about 28 cents a pound. An In the 1940s, inspired by Lázaro Cárde- average small farmer in Salvador Urbina nas’s promises of land reform, a group of made about $520 a year from their cofmen decided to chase the German off the fee, the town’s only cash crop. land and form an ejido, or communal, agricultural land holding. “The value of coffee didn’t crash, the cost of a cup of coffee didn’t fall,” said Don Santiago, an eighty-year-old cof- Ari Cifuentes, a fifty-five-year-old coffee farmer who still works his parcel fee farmer in Salvador Urbina, “but the from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. everyday, prices crashed because the huge coffee remembers how the men confused the corporations were hoarding to drive the German’s wife, who wore long pants, prices down.” for the German himself and shot her in the leg as she stepped out one morning. Ari Cifuentes and several of his brothThe German and his family packed up ers went on the road, working on a dam and left. construction site in Nayarit before taking jobs in the maquiladora industry The coffee farmers then founded the in the border town of Agua Prieta, Sotown and ejido of Salvador Urbina and nora. Daniel, one of his younger brothfor the first time they controlled the ers, working in a maquiladora making land they worked. The farmers in Salva- seatbelts and later farm equipment for dor Urbina joined the Mexican Coffee John Deere, met and shared a bit of his Institute, or Inmecafé, the state-owned story with his local minister, Rev. Mark

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Freshly paved, but empty, streets in El Cargadero, Zacatecas Photo by John Gibler. Adams, a Presbyterian with the border In 2002 a group of coffee farmers from ministry Frontera de Cristo. Salvador Urbina joined together with family members who had migrated to Reverend Adams asked why so many Agua Prieta, Sonora, and the Frontera de people from Mexico’s southernmost state Cristo ministry, and founded Just Cofwere working in border maquiladoras fee, a worker-owned cooperative that and crossing over to the United States. produces, roasts, grinds, and distributes Daniel Cifuentes’ answer was simple: their own organic coffee. everyone in Salvador Urbina grows coffee, and coffee prices crashed. A cup “Our goal is to develop a Chiapan owned of specialty coffee in Phoenix may cost company providing viable economic incenthree dollars but farmers did not even tives for young and old to remain on family earn thirty cents a pound, he told him. lands,” says the cooperative’s Web site. Adams asked why this was. The coyotes, Cifuentes told him. Then the idea for Ari Cifuentes, now the cooperative’s Just Coffee hit them. president, echoed this goal. “We wanted

to find a way to stay on our land and grow coffee, to not have to migrate,” he said, crouched down by a recently planted Arabica coffee tree. Five years on, the cooperative has grown to include thirty grower members, and it sells well over fifty thousand pounds of coffee a year. In early August 2008 they had completely sold out of last year’s crop. The co-op also employs six workers, two in Salvador Urbina and four in Agua Prieta. “It is a good job and there is always work to do,” said twenty-two-year-old Felix Perez, busy roasting the few pounds

AGAIN S T T HE C U R R EN T

69

in. “This makes it very difficult for the entirely on basic goods such as food, farmers to invest and expand,” Cifuentes clothing and housing, not on commusaid. nity development or local production, while the workers sending the money But their small-scale success has inspired back produce incredible wealth—in coffee farmers in El Aguila, the next town terms of development and production— down the road, to also pull together thir- in the United States. ty members to form a cooperative and join in with Just Coffee. And the coffee “Theories of migration always show the itself is not their only export: Ari and his interests of the North,” said Raul Delbrother have traveled to Nicaragua and gado Wise, the director of Development Haiti to share their experience building Studies at the University of Zacatecas. the Just Coffee cooperative with small “We need to create different categories to farmers also struggling under the influ- make visible what is happening behind.” ence of the coyotes. For example, Delgado Wise and a team of researchers are using statistics from the The Factory of Migrants United States Department of Labor to Mexico economically expels more of its calculate Mexicans’ contributions to the own people than any other country in U.S. economy. the world. An estimated half a million Mexicans cross undocumented into the “Migrants born in Mexico contribute United States looking for work every 8 percent of the U.S.’s Gross Domestic year. Remittances, the money that Mexi- Product, about $900 billion, which is can immigrants in the United States send more than Mexico’s entire GDP,” Delto family members back in Mexico, rival gado Wise said. “That should give you the oil industry and illegal drug traffick- an idea of the scope of what we’re talking ing as the single largest sources of cash in about, the cost to Mexico of migration, Mexico’s economy. of depending on remittances.”

“—‘Sir, it’s time to reap what you sowed.’ —‘But I didn’t sow anything.’ —‘Of course you did. Hunger and misery.’” Cartoon by Fisgon, courtesy of La Jornada. of coffee for local distribution. Felix had worked for two years in various factories in Tijuana before returning to Salvador Urbina and taking the job at Just Coffee. Cifuentes said that their main problem right now was that payments came back slowly to the farmers. Since they distribute their own coffee in Arizona and they have little capital to speak of, they must repay the farmers for their crop bit by bit as the coffee sells and the money comes

70

“Mexico is mortgaging its future with migration and remittances,” said Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, professor at the Graduate School of Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas and author of Migration, Remittances and Local Development. “Look at the statistics: in the ten states with the longest migration histories, 65 percent of municipalities have a negative population growth. This means that in the future these communities will not be able to reproduce, neither economically nor socially, because the demographics of migration have condemned them to disappear.”

Delgado Wise criticizes those in the United States who fail to analyze such statistical information. “The information is a burden for the United States,” he said. “They do not analyze, for example, how much Mexico loses, the subsidy that Mexico provides to the United States through Mexican labor, both skilled and unskilled.”

“We need to see really how much it is costing Mexico, how much Mexico is losing. Now is the time to put the numbers on the table,” he said, adding that public opinion concerning the immigration debate in the United States “is Garcia Zamora and his colleagues at the always sustained by distorted visions University of Zacatecas argue that the that lack any foundation in empirical apparent wealth of remittances, the an- evidence.” nual flow of some $30 billion back into Mexico, obscures the twin economic Delgado Wise, Garcia Zamora, and facts of mass migration: families spend other researchers at the University of the money sent back to Mexico almost Zacatecas publish a scholarly journal,

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Felix Perez, 22, returned to Salvador Urbina and took a job with Just Coffee after two years working in factories in Tijuana. Photo by John Gibler.

Migration and Development, and are deeply involved in organizing what Delgado Wise calls “an alternative think tank to the World Bank” to be called the Consortium for Critical Development Studies. They have produced reams of books, essays, and reports arguing that to understand the massive wave of migration from Mexico to the United States, one must critically analyze the model of U.S.-Mexico economic integration that began in the 1980s and reached its maximum expression with NAFTA, which came into effect on January 1, 1994.

NAFTA, they argue, saying that the will go to work in the maquiladoras or agreement restructured Mexico’s econo- enter the United States as undocumentmy to provide for the labor needs of the ed laborers. U.S.’s own industrial restructuring.

A Culture of Migration?

“In Mexico,” Garcia Zamora said, “we Many in the Mexican government see have exported the factory of migrants.” no problem with the NAFTA model nor the mass Mexican emigration it has Both Garcia Zamora and Delgado Wise produced; they dismiss critics such as argue that the supposed increases in Delgado Wise and Garcia Zamora as “faMexican manufacturing exports are a talists.” Cliserio Pinero, the spokesperruse: the increases all come from the son for the Zacatecas state Department maquiladora sector where Mexico only of Planning and Development, shooed adds labor to assemble imported parts away political criticisms of the impacts into exported commodities. The real ex- of migration on the countryside, saying, port factories are the Mexican families “We have a migration culture; we see it Very little was genuinely “free” about raising the young men and women who as something cultural.”

AGAIN S T T HE C U R R EN T

71

“Mexico has an excess of laborers. We complement each other.” Mario Garcia is the local municipal delegate in El Cargadero in charge of mainRobledo administers the Zacatecas state taining road conditions and the heavy government’s “three-for-one” program, machinery needed for making repairs; he where the municipal, state, and federal is also a small farmer growing corn and governments match each dollar supplied beans. All but one of his ten brothers by migrants’ organizations for local de- and sisters migrated to the United States. velopment projects. He went to California for five months to work himself, but decided to come back. Apart from local “three-for-one” projects which range from paving streets to build- “In Mexico, if you work a couple of ing new churches, the state government’s shifts, you can live okay,” he said, “withdevelopment plan, Robledo said, is to out so many luxuries and freeways, but make the NAFTA model run even more you can live a more peaceful life.” smoothly by literally paving new roads north to the border. But he is finding that the peace comes hard these days. “If you had fifty million dollars in the budget for development, would you use “This is a community abandoned by that to increase production in the coun- migration,” he said. “I have always retryside or to build an interstate high- lated migration to the government; the way?” Robledo asked. “It is a political government should work to keep people and economic decision.” in the country, to find jobs, to better living conditions. They say that people The government has decided on the have a better quality of life in the Unithighways but few in Zacatecas’ aban- ed States, but it is a quality of life that doned countryside agree that this is the is half slavery, where people can’t come right choice. back and continue to build in their own communities.” In the small town of El Cargadero, discussed as a model of successful devel- The problem, he said, is to be found in opment based on remittances and the the empty fields and the vicious cycle of “three-for-one” program, paved streets abandonment created by NAFTA. and freshly painted houses greet visitors but few people do. Eighty-five percent “We need to analyze more closely free of the population has moved to the trade,” he said, “because free trade might United States. be benefiting everybody but Mexico. There might be a few new millionaires, Don Santiago, 80, a member of the Just Coffee coop“Look how it is now, nothing,” said Jose but there are a lot more people who got erative, works his land everyday from 6 am to 11 am. Ortiz Martinez, behind the counter of shafted; it is not even. Before NAFTA In the photo he is drying individual coffee beans that a store with empty shelves, selling only we produced tons of peaches, and the ripened early in the season. Photo by John Gibler. a few packs of cigarettes, chewing gum, national markets all shouted out for and bottles of soda. “Sometimes hours go peaches from Zacatecas. But with NAFby without a single person walking out TA, U.S. companies started exporting in the street to buy some chewing gum. peaches from Chile and Brazil and the Fernando Robledo, the director of the Before we grew a lot of avocadoes here; prices fell. We couldn’t sell our peaches governmental Zacatecas State Migra- now there is nothing left, just a bunch of anymore and people starting leaving to tion Institute, also rejected the criti- old folks here in town.” look for work in the U.S.” cisms of Delgado Wise and Garcia Zamora, fully embracing the politics of There was one taco stand but it closed “The countryside is broken,” he continmigration: “The United States econo- down last year and its owner went to look ued. “The rural economy needs to be remy demands cheap labor,” he said. for work in California. activated. Zacatecas is very dry, but can

72

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

produce many fruits and beans. Here the opposite of what happened in California is taking place: rich agricultural land is being turned into desert by lack of investment and support and because the people aren’t here. The workers who make things happen are all in the United States and here we are left in abandon. It is a huge problem.” I ask him what alternatives could be implemented in the United States and in Mexico to address the broken countryside. “The solution here would be for the Mexican government to build strategies to put the brakes on this, so that the countryside can produce again,” he said. But the Zacatecas state government, rather than putting on the brakes, is stepping on the gas. Robledo said that Zacatecas’s top development priorities were constructing highways north toward the border and building greenhouses for export crops in the countryside. “We are changing the production system in the countryside, building greenhouses and changing crops,” Robledo said. Gracia Goya, the project manager for transnational programs with Hispanics in Philanthropy, disagrees with that approach. She said that Hispanics in Philanthropy is seeking local productive projects for funding and to thus help communities create, from the grassroots up, alternatives to emigration. “We do not want to change the vocations people have in their communities,” Goya said. “We need to respect these and strengthen them. These people know how to work the land and raise livestock; what they are looking for is support in doing what they already know how to do well.” Hispanics in Philanthropy started working in Mexico funding productive projects linked to migration in

Ari Cifuentes, 55, is the president of the Just Coffee cooperative. In the photo he is tending to a recently planted Arabica coffee tree. Photo by John Gibler.

AGAIN S T T HE C U R R EN T

73

2006. They received seventeen proposals that year and chose only one; the others did not meet the strict production requirements. “We realized that Mexican organizations, and especially in Guanajuato, do not have that much experience in productive projects,” Goya said. In 2007, Hispanics in Philanthropy began funding a goat cheese cooperative in Guanajuato state, in conjunction with the local nongovernmental organization, CHOICE (Centro Humanitario para las Obras y el Intercambio Cultural y Educativo). They awarded CHOICE and the cooperative a grant for $220,000 over three years. Goya said that Hispanics in Philanthropy is not interested in three-for-one type infrastructure projects; all projects must create a good or a service, they must be productive. She said that the government’s three-for-one initiatives largely displaced the task of development onto the poorest. “They are worthy projects,” she said, “but we see a problem there in that the focus is on taking on the functions of the Mexican state. We do not want to substitute the functions of the state in any way. These projects create some comforts, but they do not stimulate production, stimulate the economy. What we want to do is help generate change from the grassroots.”

The Alternative Yet not even all the critics of NAFTA

74

and the economic forces that propel people to emigrate agree that such grassroots alternatives can be effective. Juan Manuel Sandoval, a Mexican academic and activist working on migration and border issues, said that no real alternatives exist without first jettisoning NAFTA. “If some local productive project works, whom does it benefit? Very few people,” Sandoval said. “There are no real local community-level alternatives. There aren’t any such alternatives because the external pressures are so strong they impede them.” Sandoval, who coordinates the Permanent Seminar on Chicano and Border Studies in Mexico City and is a member of the board of directors of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (USA), said that people in the Mexican countryside cannot compete with the transnational corporations. “So what can they do?” he asked. “They have to move. They can go work in a maquiladora, but that is no alternative. There are no possible local or community-level alternatives while such intense pressures from the large corporations continue to exist. It is impossible to visualize a panorama for communities, cities, [or] the entire country while neoliberal politics remain dominant. What is needed is a change in the economic regime.” Every year some half a million Mexicans keep crossing the border to look for work in the United States, Sandoval said, adding that eight out of every ten

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

actually had a job in Mexico. They left Mexico, he said, because the jobs they had offered poverty wages and no benefits or pension plans. I briefly described the experience of Just Coffee and asked his opinion. “Yes, it is possible that a community, exclusively through its own effort, may attain minimal living conditions,” he said. “But those who seek isolated, local alternatives have not yet grasped the relation between migration and so-called free trade. There is no real alternative without a change of the economic and political regime.” When I arrived in Salvador Urbina, Chiapas, a coyote’s van had just left for the border with twelve young men off to seek work in the United States. David Roman, who joined Just Coffee two years ago—accepting the cooperative’s rules for producing organic, shadegrown coffee and the promise to deliver fifteen quintales, or just under two thousand pounds of Arabica coffee a year—is still waiting for last year’s payments. He works year round, produces over four thousand pounds of coffee and makes $2,400 a year, or $200 a month. But he is back with his family, he said, working his own land. “There is a lot of work still to be done,” he said, “but it is good to be back home.”

Further Reading Gibler, John. “Mexico’s Ghost Towns.” In These Times, June 2008. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3693/ Red Internacional Migracion y Desarrollo (an excellent electronic archive in Spanish and English): http://www.migracionydesarrollo.org. Regan, Margaret. “Roasting Revolution.” Tucson Weekly, February 8, 2007. http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Yum/Content?oid=oid%3A92309 Sandoval, Juan Manuel, “Mexican Labor Migration and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): 1994-2006.” Paper presented during the “Push and Pull: Immigration and Free Trade” national speaking tour organized by Global Exchange, April 15 through May 2, 2007, http:// www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/speakers/SandovalNAFTA.pdf. Wise, Raul Delgado. “Migration and Imperialism: The Mexican Workforce in the Context of NAFTA,” Latin American Perspectives 33, no. 2 (March 2006), 33–45. Zamora, Rodolfo Garcia. Migración, Remesas, y Desarrollo Local. Zacatecas: Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, 2003.

In Cerrito de Agua, Zacatecas, freshly painted concrete houses—most of them empty, their owners working in the U.S.— stand in contrast to the town’s unpaved, though also empty, streets. Photo by John Gibler.

AGAIN S T T HE C U R R EN T

75

A Mexican Labor Perspective on the Issues Facing Mexican Workers in the United States Bertha Lujan Uscanga with Daniel La Botz Acknowledging the complex economic and social interdependence of North American countries, Lujan and Labotz explore how progressive U.S. labor and immigration policies can affect and benefit workers across the continent. The authors detail the deleterious effects of globalization and freetrade policies on national labor movements, expound on the need for upward harmonization of labor standards, and advocate for a policy approach that capitalizes on the NAFTA framework to develop systemic solutions to the immigration crisis. Focusing on the influence of U.S. policies, Lujan and Labotz call on Congress to enact an Employee Free Choice Act, establish a tri-national legislative working group to chart and evaluate labor policy reform in the NAFTA region, improve regulation of foreign-operating U.S. corporations, uphold UN labor union standards, and develop a continental open-labor-migration policy.

Introduction What legislation can U.S. Congress pass to improve the lives of Mexican workers? This may seem like a strange question. We usually think of the Mexican Congress helping Mexican workers and the U.S. Congress helping U.S. workers. But today our situations have become so interdependent that we must look to both political powers to do their part to improve the lives of all of us. Mexico and the United States, together with Canada, have become linked together in a complex economic, social, and political system that has distorted all three countries’ development and harmed working people in each of them. All of us are experiencing increasing concentrations of wealth in the hands of individuals and corporations, while the majority of working people have seen their standard of living decline. In Mexico, the fall in living standards results from the lack

76

of jobs and the deep decline in workers’ wages’ purchasing power. The inequitable distribution of wealth falls hardest on working people, the poor, the elderly, women, and children. Millions in Canada, Mexico, and the United States live in poverty from which they see no hope of escaping.

instead focus our efforts on getting legislative bodies to develop policy changes and laws that would begin to alter our political-economic system to the benefit of all workers. The U.S. Congress can do much to improve the situation of Mexican working people and Mexican migrants.

How can we begin to change the direction of the continent’s political economy in such a way as to better the lives of working people? We cannot do so from Mexico alone, for much of our economy, society, and politics has come to depend upon the United States. Since signing NAFTA, Mexico has become increasingly integrated into the economic sphere of the United States. We depend on loans from U.S. banks and have an indebtedness of $140 billion, mostly to them. We are integrated into the U.S. system of industrial production, providing resources and raw materials—most importantly oil—to their economy. We produce components for U.S. manufactured goods, such as electrical and auto parts. And we are an export platform for U.S. corporations in industries such as automobile manufacturing. We have also become an increasingly important market for U.S. wholesalers and retailers, as witnessed by the spectacular growth of Wal-Mart— now our largest single employer. Those of us in Mexico therefore have a deep interest in and a great concern about development in the United States.

NAFTA as a Touchstone

Recent discussions of the U.S.-Mexico relationship have focused on immigration controls, border enforcement, building a wall between our two countries, and even the militarization of our common frontier. These measures are not only extremely expensive, but they also generate a lot of ill will and attack symptoms rather than proposing solutions. We should

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

At the center of the tri-national relationship is NAFTA, which has had a profound and negative impact on working people since 1994. In Mexico, NAFTA led first to the bankruptcy of many thousands of small businesses and in some cases of entire industries, throwing tens of thousands out of work, and later to the collapse of thousands of small farms, adding over a million and a half more to the ranks of the unemployed. Many Mexican farmers or peasants, no longer able to make a living in the countryside, have joined the search for jobs in Mexico’s cities or left for the United States to seek work. Some Mexican migrants enter the United States as H2A or H2B visa workers. Many more cross the border without papers, exposing them to the worst forms of labor exploitation. At the same time, conservative forces in the United States have held immigrants responsible for the country’s economic ills and whipped up nationalism and racial animosity. Government authorities have carried out raids to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, often breaking up families. What policy proposals could be submitted to the U.S. Congress that would change the situation in Mexico, the United States, and Canada in such a way as to help these Mexican workers, and at the same time to help workers in the other countries as well?

Although NAFTA contributes to these problems, it can also be used as a touchstone for thinking about issues of trade, workers’ rights and interests, and social justice. NAFTA provisions require that all three partner countries maintain high labor standards and strive to improve those standards. As we turn to examine labor issues, we should keep in mind that our countries have pledged to maintain and improve standards governing workers rights. We sometimes call this the harmonization of labor standards based on international humanitarian principles such as those of the United Nations.1 When looking for labor standards, those in the United States should consider that Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 states that Mexican workers are entitled to a job at a living wage, to the right to organize a union, and the right to strike. While those rights are more often than not abused and neglected, they set a high and desirable standard. The U.S. Constitution does not give workers the right to a job, a living wage, labor union organization, collective bargaining, or the right to strike. In 1998 the U.S. Labor Party, made up of many U.S. labor unions, called for a 28th Amendment to the Constitution which would guarantee workers the right to a job at a living wage. The governments of North America should all protect workers’ rights to a job at a living wage, with the understanding that if private employers cannot produce enough jobs, then the government becomes the employer of last resort. In 2007, the idea of a continental living wage was raised and a campaign for such a wage is now being launched.2 This campaign bases itself on the many living-wage laws and ordinances that have been adopted by cities throughout the United States and on the Mexican Constitution’s living-

Tough Game. Cartoon by Fisgon, courtesy of La Jornada. wage language. The U.S. Congress should also consider this important issue: how to provide a living wage for workers in the United States but also for workers throughout North America. Guaranteed jobs and living wages would represent upward harmonization for all workers in North America.

National Sovereignty The danger today is that our countries are being harmonized by other means, driven by the desire of corporations and governments to exert more control over resources, markets, and labor. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) builds on the worst features of NAFTA and threatens to bring harmonization by expanding the power of multinational corporations and political and military control.

One policy that grew out of the SPP— the Merida Initiative—furthers a long history of U.S. involvement in the politics, economy, and society of Mexico. This involvement has often made it difficult, if not impossible, for us to control our own economy and better our lives. Today the United States spends many millions of dollars to influence the internal political, police, and military affairs of Mexico, pushing its own agenda and priorities, and making it impossible for Mexicans to control their own destinies. U.S. anti-drug police have been in Mexico since 1963, and within the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) since 1973; in 2007 they had eight offices in Mexico.3 U.S. military aid to Mexico was budgeted at $1.1 million for English language, counterterrorism, and counter-narcotics training and $2.5 million

A MEXICAN LABO R P E R S P EC T IVE

77

Mexico has historically had a mixed economy made up of the state sector, social property leased in perpetuity (ejidos), worker cooperatives, and the private sector. Such a mixed economy within the context of a regulated market, another historical characteristic of our economy, is desirable for Mexico’s future economic health. In order to create enough jobs for its citizens and see that workers earn a living wage, Mexico must control its strategic resources, industries, and own domestic market. The ability of the Mexican people to control their own economy, and the ability of Canadians and U.S. citizens to control theirs, was swept away by the economic developments of the 1980s that culminated in the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. During the period from 1964 to the 1970s, U.S. corporations moved their factories from the Great Lakes reImmigrant Latino workers from the Woodfin Suites hotel and their supporters rally outside the gion of the Midwest and established hotel. Hotel managers fired 20 workers, accusing them of lacking legal permission to work, and alleging that they don’t have valid Social Security numbers. Workers say the hotel is retaliating against them as maquiladoras, electronics plants and auto-parts plants located on the borthem for trying to enforce the city’s new living wage ordinance. Photo by David Bacon. der. Canadian and U.S. workers lost jobs; for counterterrorism equipment to the and high levels of out-migration—exists Mexicans gained jobs, but at below-subMexican military in 2006.4 The pro- within a broader political, economic, and sistence wages of $4.50 per day. posed SPP with Mexico calls for $41.4 social context. If they were able to earn a million in military aid.5 The Merida decent living in their own country, most For Mexico, NAFTA meant a governInitiative, as it was first announced in Mexican workers would choose to stay in ment auction of over one thousand stateMarch 2007, would give $400 million Mexico rather than migrating abroad in owned companies, which were sold to in police and military assistance in the search of work at higher wages. The first private investors from Mexico, Canada, first year. The total amount foreseen be- priority then is to create jobs and raise the United States, and Europe. We lost ing delivered to Mexico is $1.4 billion.6 wages in Mexico. But if Mexico is to do our publicly owned telephone company We believe that this approach will dam- this, it must have sovereignty—that is, and railroads. Carlos Slim, who has beage Mexico, since it makes it hard for us the ability to control its internal affairs come the wealthiest man in Mexico to control our own affairs. These mea- free of U.S. intervention. and one of the wealthiest in the world, sures are counterproductive from a U.S. bought the telephone company, together point of view as well, since they do not The Mexican Economy with Southwest Bell. The railroads were get at the political and economic roots Control of our affairs means control of sold to Union Pacific and Kansas City of our common problems. We need so- our resources and markets. While we Railroad. So now U.S. corporations concial harmonization, not corporate and recognize that the world has become trol our vital and strategic industries. military harmonization. globally integrated and we cannot return to a period of economic national- Today President Felipe Calderón and It is necessary to discuss sovereignty and ism, we do believe that Mexico should the National Action Party (PAN), joined militarization in a paper about bringing be able to exert greater control over its by the Institutional Revolutionary Party labor issues to the U.S. Congress because own economic development within the (PRI), propose a second set of economic if U.S. corporations or the military con- global context. At the same time, we reforms aimed at privatizing the energy trol our country, we cannot improve our should pursue globalization by and for sector—the petroleum industry and workers’ lives. The Mexican labor prob- working people, a globalization from electric power generation. These reforms lem—that is, the lack of jobs, low wages, the bottom up. would eliminate the last vestiges of the

78

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Mexican people’s ability to manage their own economy and determine their own fate. The Broad Progressive Front (FAP), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the legitimate government of Mexico of Andrés Manuel López Obrador are leading the fight to stop the passage of these reforms. If Mexico is to provide for the economic well-being of its society, the Mexican government and its state companies (paraestales) must be able to control the nation’s strategic resources—above all, its power generation and petroleum industries. Petróleos Mexicanos, the Central Mexican Light and Power Company, and the Mexican Electrical Commission should be free from external pressures for privatization. These industries are essential to the well-being of Mexico and the Mexican people, to the financial health of the state, and to the workers employed by them. The privatization of these companies will damage the economic health of Mexico, lead to the mass layoff of Mexican workers, and destroy the historic gains of Mexican workers in the areas of wages, benefits, and working conditions. The U.S. government should respect what remains of Mexico’s mixed economy, and legislative means should be found to deter U.S. corporations from intervening in the Mexican economy, with an eye to promoting privatization for their own gain. If Mexico is to provide more jobs at decent wages for its citizens, then Mexico must have greater control over its international economic relationships. NAFTA has been extremely damaging to the Mexican workers, peasants and the economy as a whole.7 Mexico and its partners must be able to negotiate or renegotiate treaties such as NAFTA. Mexico must be able to manage foreign investment, foreign trade, and other aspects of international economic relationships. The U.S. government should join with Mexico in renegotiating NAFTA,

this time not as a free-trade agreement but rather as a fair-trade agreement aimed at improving the economic lives of the working people of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The agricultural sections of NAFTA, as Mexican peasants and small- and medium-sized producers have demanded, should be renegotiated to offer protection from subsidized U.S. agricultural products and to eliminate or equalize subsidy supports. All future trade agreements should include labor rights elements as central topics, not as side agreements, as was the case with the recently adopted Panama Free Trade Agreement.8

The principal labor federation in the United States also split, as some unions left the AFL-CIO to join the new Change to Win. The UNT and the FAT have, in past years, engaged in cooperation with unions in both of these federations, as well as with some that belong to neither, such as the United Electrical Workers (UE). Both U.S. labor federations, as well as independent unions such as the UE, have moved over the last decade to represent and fight for all workers, including those who come—with or without documents— from Mexico, other Latin American countries, or other parts of the world. We applaud them for doing so. Still, we The Impact of Neoliberalism and see a need for greater cooperation beGlobalization on Labor Unions tween unions in Canada, Mexico, and The neoliberal economic transformation the United States on common probof the economy on a world scale—the lems, especially around the issue of miopening of markets; deregulation and grant worker protection. privatization; cuts in education, health, and social welfare—has had a powerful We should encourage worker-to-worker impact on unions everywhere. Around meetings such as those organized by the the world and on every continent, tri- FAT, the UE, and the CNS Quebec. partite social pacts between government, When workers sit down and talk with employers, and unions have been broken. each other, they overcome stereotypes, Throughout Latin America, governments learn about the realities of each others’ have reformed labor legislation, strength- lives, and find they have much in comening the hands of employers and weak- mon. We should encourage cross-border ening unions and workers. Governments leadership meetings over common conand employers launched an assault on cerns within the same industries, corpolabor unions and contracts protecting rations and contracts with the goal of workers. Faced with new challenges, the building union power internationally dominant labor federations split in many to successfully combat the corporations countries. and win improvements in workers’ lives. And we should be meeting togethIn Mexico, all of these things have hap- er to discuss the immigration issue. We pened. Labor unions and contracts have should encourage U.S. federations and been weakened, pay has not kept up, independent unions to seek a common and conditions have declined. But at platform on the question of immigrant the same time, state control over unions workers’ rights. Unions should work has also broken down. For decades, the for a program that gives the broadest Institutional Revolutionary Party con- protection to immigrants now in the trolled the Congress of Labor (CT) and United States or Canada and makes it the Confederation of Mexican Workers possible for them to live and work in (CTM). Today we also have a ten-year- those countries legally. The labor moveold independent labor federation called ment should also oppose guest-worker the National Union of Workers (UNT) programs that exploit immigrants. We in which the Authentic Labor Front should work together to create fair(FAT), the union to which I belong, trade agreements that protect and enplays an important role. hance migrant workers’ rights.

A MEXICAN LABO R P E R S P EC T IVE

79

Trade Agreements and Labor Rights

the Employee Free Choice Act, it would fer, and regulate profit repatriation to albe a benefit to workers in all three coun- low foreign countries to benefit too. Many of us in Mexico hoped that the end tries, since it would represent a lifting of of the PRI would mean that indepen- the continental standard. Workers’ Rights dent and democratic unions in Mexico The most important institution in the would flourish. But after being elected, We should also ask the inter-parliamen- defense of workers’ rights and the strugPresident Vicente Fox (PAN) continued tary working groups of Canada, Mexico, gle for their interests is the labor union. to make political deals with the corrupt and the United States, that bring togeth- Workers must have the right to labor labor establishment. Employers, lawyers, er legislators from all three countries to unions of their own choosing, to bargain and gangsters still have control of some discuss common issues, to take up the collectively, and to strike. All genuine unions. Today many Mexican workers matter of workers’ rights violations. We labor unions must be truly independent still have sindicatos fantasmas (ghost should ask them to create a binational or from government or employer control. unions), whose very existence is un- tri-national congressional commission or Labor unions should be free to affiliate known to them, and contratos de protec- task force on workers’ rights. Such a com- with political parties as they choose but ción (protection contracts) that provide mission might hold hearings on these is- should not be forced into affiliation with workers with only the legal minimums to sues in the countries involved, and make political parties. which they are entitled without a union. recommendations to both countries or U.S. and other foreign corporations, as to international bodies. We should see all The United Nations declarations and well as Mexican employers, often bring such developments as opportunities to the International Labor Organization in such unions and contracts through organize workers to fight for their rights, (ILO) conventions establish a floor for an agreement with a gangster union of- to take the idea of workers’ rights to the international labor standards. The most ficial or corrupt lawyer before a plant public, and to promote a vision of a so- important of these is ILO Convention even opens. Those phony unions and ciety in which everyone enjoys not only 87, guaranteeing the right of freedom of their worthless protection contracts keep rights, but also a decent standard of liv- association—that is, workers’ right to orwages low for workers and profits high ing in a healthy environment. ganize unions. Over one hundred counfor corporations. The presence of those tries have signed ILO Convention 87, gangster unions also keeps workers from The U.S. Congress should also regulate but the United States is not one of them. joining or organizing a democratic union U.S. corporations operating in other So far the United States has signed only of their own choice. countries, for the good of U.S. workers about 10 percent of the 160 active ILO as well as workers in Canada, Mexico, conventions. The U.S. Congress should As mentioned above, NAFTA’s side and other countries. Why should U.S. agree to sign the ILO conventions, the agreement on labor provides that all of corporations, held to certain standards in international standard for the protection our labor standards should be raised to the United States, be able to treat work- of workers’ rights.10 the highest level for the benefit of work- ers and communities in other countries ers in all three countries. We do see cases poorly? Why should U.S. corporations The situation of workers in the United of such upward harmonization—for ex- be able to discriminate against the politi- States—native-born workers, workers ample, in the recent decision by the Ca- cally powerless and poor in other coun- with visas, and undocumented worknadian Supreme Court to recognize that tries, often in the search for cheap wages, ers—is deplorable. A recent study found collective bargaining forms a fundamen- a practice that is also detrimental to U.S. that guest workers in the U.S. were in tal part of the freedom of association.9 In workers? The U.S. Congress should pass a situation “close to slavery.”11 A recent the United States there is hope that, if a laws that hold these corporations to the Human Rights Watch report found that Democratic Party majority results from highest U.S. and international standards U.S. labor laws had ceased to protect the 2008 elections, the U.S. Congress everywhere. The U.S. Congress should workers, whether native-born or immiwould pass the Employee Free Choice also regulate corporate foreign investment grant.12 The U.S. Congress should pass Act. In Mexico, although the govern- and tax foreign corporate earnings, using and revise U.S. labor law so that workers ment has said that it is committed to these as tools to shape foreign investment actually have the right to unionize, barpromoting secret-ballot union-represen- for the benefit of U.S. and foreign work- gain collectively, and strike. tation elections and public registries of ing families. The U.S. Congress should labor unions and contract, it has failed require that corporations investing in Once the U.S. has adopted the ILO conto fulfill this promise. To the contrary, it Mexico pay a living wage, protect the ventions and revised its own labor laws, is promoting a reform to the Federal La- environment, respect international labor the U.S. Congress should insist that bor Law that is entirely pro-business and standards, permit workers to unionize, Mexico also bring its labor laws up to the anti-union. If the U.S. Congress passes develop programs for technology trans- international standard, and that it honor

80

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

its own Constitution Article 123, Federal Labor Law, and ILO conventions. These measures would protect workers in both the United States and Mexico. The U.S. Congress should work with Mexico and Canada to guarantee the highest standards of workers throughout the continent based on best standards found throughout the world. We should see continental labor law reform for workers in all three countries. In Canada, Mexico, and the United States, union national constitutions, local by-laws, and all contracts should be a matter of public record and available to governments, employers, workers, and the public.

Immigrant Workers and their Welfare An estimated 485,000 Mexican workers migrate to work in the United States each year, of whom perhaps sixty thousand have work visas. The existing U.S. immigration policies and policies governing migrant workers do not function in the interest of the United States, Mexico, employers, or workers. The U.S. Congress should work with Canada and Mexico toward a policy of open labor migration that parallels the movement of capital and commodities (see Hing in this volume). The U.S. Congress should work with Mexico and Canada to create employment laws that prevent employers from evading responsibility for their workers through subcontracting. The problem of the use of labor contractors is especially pernicious in the area of agriculture in the United States where agribusiness relies on contractors to provide workers, thereby avoiding responsibility for their transportation, housing, wages, benefits or conditions. The system of agricultural contract labor should be eliminated. The U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments should work to facilitate programs to help workers find jobs of their own choosing where employers take full responsibility for workers as employees (although government contract labor,

San Francisco, May 1st, 2008. On May Day immigrants and their supporters marched through the streets of San Francisco. Marchers protested a growing wave of raids and deportations, and efforts by the Federal government to force employers to fire workers for lack of immigration visas... Photo by David Bacon. guest worker, or bracero programs are not desirable). Migrant workers face serious social problems in the United States, particularly problems of occupational safety and health. Studies have found that foreign-born workers, most of them Latinos, have higher rates of fatalities and injuries.13 The U.S. Congress, working with Mexico, Canada, the World Health Organization, and Pan-American Health Organization, should develop environmental and occupational health legislation that establishes the same standards and entails the same enforcement in all three countries, based on the highest standards of protection for workers. Employers in all three countries should be taxed to pay for this program. Migrant workers also face other health problems, for example, chronic diseases. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recognized the need for coordinated programs to

deal with tuberculosis as an international U.S.-Mexico health issue.14 There have also been calls for greater cooperation to deal with other infectious diseases.15 The U.S. Congress, working with the CDC and its counterparts in Canada and Mexico, should continue to develop common workers’ health programs with coordination across the border, improving upon existing programs dealing with tuberculosis, hepatitis, and AIDS. Employers in all three countries should be taxed to pay for this program.

Families, Women and Children The families of migrants, especially women and children, should receive special consideration. Canada, Mexico, and the United States should work to create programs that support migrant workers and their children across borders. The U.S. Congress, working with Mexico and Canada, should set up a migratory workers’ children education and social welfare program to ensure continuity of

A MEXICAN LABO R P E R S P EC T IVE

81

education and the well-being of workers’ children in all three countries. Employers in all three countries should be taxed to pay for this program. The U.S. Congress should work with Mexico and Canada in developing a program for the protection and support of women workers in all three countries and those who migrate between countries. The program should protect women from human trafficking, offer social support to women who are also heads of

82

households, provide maternity leave, and create child-care centers. The aim should be to make women workers’ lives safer, more secure, and freer. Employers should pay for the program.

Conclusion U.S., Mexican, and Canadian labor unions, social movements, and nongovernmental organizations should collaborate to build pressure to change policies in all three countries. We need to work together to build an international politi-

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

cal movement that puts the rights and the needs of working people first, before corporate profits and political motivations. The future of the continent ultimately depends on working people constructing a movement that can create another sort of society, one in which workers’ power and self-management and participatory democracy combine to create a society predicated upon economic equality and social justice.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights all contain sections defending workers or union rights. See “A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights,” Human Rights Web, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/undocs.html. Richard Roman and Edur Velasco, “Mexican Workers Call for a Continental Workers’ Campaign for Living Wages and Social Justice,” Bilaterals.org, May 20, 2007, http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=8355. Office of the Inspector General, “The Drug Enforcement Administrations Internal Operations (Redacted)” Audit Report, February 7–19, 2007, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/DEA/a0719/app2.htm. The aid was cut off when the United States imposed sanctions on Mexico in October 2005 after Mexico became a signatory to the Hague-based ICC, which had been set up in 2002. Laura Carlsen, “Plan Mexico,” Foreign Policy in Focus, October 20, 2007, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4684. Natalia Gómez, “Otorgará Iniciativa Mérida 500 mdd a México en Primer Año,” El Universal, October 22, 2007, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/456623.html#. International Federation for Human Rights, “Report: International Fact Finding Mission: Mexico, The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): Effects on Human Rights, Violations of Labour Rights,” International Federation for Human Rights, April 2006; Alberto Arroyo et al, “Lessons from NAFTA: the High Cost of ‘Free Trade’,” Hemispheric Social Alliance, June 2003. “U.S., Panama Sign Free Trade Pact Just in Time,” Reuters, June 28, 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/ idUSN2730746720070628. Glen Chochia, “Landmark Ruling Guarantees Canadian Workers Collective Bargaining Rights,” Labor Notes, http://www.labornotes. org/node/1267. International Labor Organization (ILO) Web site posts the conventions and signers: http://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm Southern Poverty Law Center, Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the United States, http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLCguestworker.pdf Lance Compa, Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000). Compa is also the author of a study of workers’ rights in Mexico: Lance Compa, Justice for All: The Struggle for Workers’ Rights in Mexico (New York: AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, 2003). Katherine Loh and Scott Richardson, “Foreign-born Workers: Trends in Fatal Occupational Injuries, 1996–2001,” Monthly Labor Review, June 2006, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/06/art3full.pdf; X. Dong and J. W. Platner, “Occupational Fatalities of Hispanic Construction Workers,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 45 (2004), 45–54. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Preventing and Controlling Tuberculosis along the U.S.-Mexico Border,” Work Group Report, MMWR, January 19, 2001, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5001a1.htm. Michele Weinberg, et al., “The U.S.-Mexico Border Infectious Disease Surveillance Project: Establishing Bi-national Border Surveillance,” Emerging Infection Diseases 9 (2003), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/Eid/vol9no1/02-0047.htm.

A MEXICAN LABO R P E R S P EC T IVE

83

The Unexpected Consequences of Deepening Integration: NAFTA, Immigration, and Labor Gabriela D. Lemus Lemus examines the relationship between globalization and NAFTA, and their unintended social and political consequences. First, she discusses the negative effects of free trade on the U.S. labor market, particularly on manufacturing jobs. Next, she turns to Mexico, noting how poverty and emigration have increased since NAFTA started, and how the income gap between Mexico and its trade partners have widened. Turning to the continuing process of integration, Lemus warns against allowing it to continue without democratic oversight by citizens and legislatures. Turning to alternatives, Lemus advocates the creation of truly global unions, to counteract the power of transnational corporations. The author ends by making recommendations to restore the role of the state in economic development, restore legislative oversight, improve accountability to the citizenry for further integration, and protect labor and migrants’ rights.

This chapter will examine the relationship between globalization, current trade policy models as delineated by NAFTA, and the unintended political and social consequences these have created. In the case of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, deepening integration promises to transform NAFTA into a mechanism that goes well beyond the original intent through the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).1 The primary focus of this analysis is the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States within the context of NAFTA, while its primary purpose is twofold: first, to provide some prescriptive analysis to contextualize the challenges created by the neoliberal frameworks that have become the prevailing measure for engaging in free-trade agreements, along with the growing power of TNCs and capital; and second, to provide guidelines to build a sustainable global network of NGOs, local leaders, and unions Introduction to counter these efforts so as to create a The problems related to NAFTA en- united progressive international vision compass a complex world economy that restores dignity to workers and asdominated by transnational corpora- sures democracy to citizens. tions (TNCs) and transnational capital that can rival and often supersede When NAFTA was negotiated it was acgovernment authority, although they companied by big expectations and big customarily work hand-in-hand. Invari- promises. The negotiators assured that ably, globalization proponents’ efforts NAFTA would reduce poverty in the reto universalize neoliberal reforms and gion, lessen income disparities and asymdrive new markets place workers in the metries between Mexico and the United global North in direct competition with States, and create more and better jobs workers in the global South. This cre- for everyone; the biggest promise was the ates a structure of asymmetrical econo- reduction of migration. Today, almost mies that is hard to overcome without fifteen years after the implementation new and creative efforts that can address of the treaty, we know that most people the very asymmetries and the advan- in the region have not seen any of these tages given to capital currently in place. benefits. But there is one area in particuThe benefits of such structures are un- lar in which NAFTA failed drastically: evenly distributed, and the working migration. Since the implementation of class in rich and developing nations has NAFTA in 1994, almost five hundred the least access to the benefits of these thousand Mexicans on average have global policies. crossed into the United States without

84

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

authorization each year.2 The total number of immigrants from Mexico grew by 65 percent compared to the previous decade.3 NAFTA was supposed to solve many of Mexico’s development challenges and alleviate immigration. At best the results have been mixed, with some states in the North experiencing growth, while the South has suffered. The lack of investment in infrastructure and in human capital has equally inhibited growth and development in Mexico overall. The result is a weak and increasingly poor labor force that is struggling for a foothold in the global economy.

The United States since the Passage of NAFTA As a global leader, the United States is in a much different position than Mexico. The U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, yet it has become increasingly inhospitable for middle class Americans in the last decade. In the United States, between 2000 and 2007 alone, the country lost 21 percent of its manufacturing jobs – the sort of high-paying blue collar jobs that provide retirement and healthcare.4 More than forty thousand manufacturing plants have shut down in the United States since 2000, causing the U.S. manufacturing base to slip down dramatically, from almost 30 percent of the nation’s GDP in 1950, to 12 percent in 2005.5 Part of the challenge the United States faces is the stunning loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs and its inability in the last decade to sustain a steady rhythm in raising median income and thus to sustain intergenerational mobility. The United States also faces difficulties in its ability to retain its position as a leading innovator in terms of research and technology in relationship to the loss of its manufacturing base. Income distribution

has steadily degenerated as well. Between 1980 and 2005, 82 percent of personal income gains went to the top 1 percent of the population. While overall productivity increased by 71% percent, the income of the top 1 percent increased by 156 percent. In contrast, median income compensation rose by only 19 percent for the rest of the population.6 Since the passage of NAFTA, the trade deficit in the United States has also steadily risen, although in large part because of a combination of other factors that will not be discussed in depth in this analysis, except to say that for every extra $1 billion of the trade deficit, ten thousand jobs are lost.7 Growing trade deficits are responsible for 34–58 percent of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment.8 How much these challenges are directly related to NAFTA is hard to say but overall we do know that the United States has lost a little over 3.3 million manufacturing jobs since 1998.9 Even in states that depend heavily on exports to Mexico, job loss has been critical. In September 2007 alone, the United States lost eighteen thousand additional manufacturing jobs, putting employment in the sector below fourteen million for the first time since 1950.10

Now we are in a bind because of the delicate situation NAFTA and other mistaken economic policies have created. The trade deficit exceeded $700 billion in 2007 and international borrowing has increased to $5.6 trillion since 1994.11 This endangers U.S. economic independence, especially when the price of energy also continues to rise. Only by rapidly growing domestic manufacturing output can this unsustainable situation be reduced. Making a firm goal to eliminate the U.S. trade deficit by 2016 would mean the creation of millions of new manufacturing jobs, which would help almost all states in the union because of the significance of manufacturing’s position as a share of the GDP in the U.S. economy.12 If the United States continues on a trajectory of deepening integration with Mexico, Canada, and the rest of the hemisphere via trade agreements, it is imperative that it begin to turn around the downward spiral of manufacturing job loss or risk powerful dislocations in its own regional economies. The balance between U.S. exports, manufacturing jobs, and the concomitant impact on Mexico’s economy and society is inadequately addressed by NAFTA as a development instrument. This situation becomes

Cartoon by Rocha, courtesy of La Jornada.

T HE U NEX P EC T E D CON S EQ U ENCE S

85

Mexico would catch up. While many in the United States, including some within then-President Clinton’s own circle of advisors, argued that NAFTA would be painfully unbalanced without the addition of strong and innovative labor and wage provisions, these concerns were ultimately cast aside and have never been revisited.14

Local farmers, devastated by competition from U.S. industrial agriculture, scrape by in San Martin Peras, Oaxaca. Photo by David Cilia. particularly relevant when the issue of challenge. Despite NAFTA’s ability to inimmigration is added to the equation. crease exports from Mexico to the United States and Canada, small- and mediumTrade, Poverty, and Immigration sized businesses have been closing at a NAFTA opened a Pandora’s box— rapid rate. These businesses used to proit brought together Canada, Mexico, duce for the national market. They can and the United States with no appar- no longer afford to do so. The number ent thought about the social and politi- of jobs created through foreign investcal consequences. President Salinas de ment is grossly insufficient to absorb this Gortari stated very clearly that Mexico redundant pool of labor, and the original “would export goods, not people.” gains in real wages made in these indusHow wrong he was. Since the 1990s, tries made the corporations more willing emigration from Mexico has increased to relocate to lower-wage countries. substantially. It is estimated that there are approximately 12 million unau- Originally the asymmetries in the econthorized workers in the United States omies of the United States and Mexico today – a vast majority from Mexico.13 were not addressed during the negotiations. Given the foreign investor guarDespite denials by the World Bank and antees that were supposed to draw new other NAFTA apologists, there is an ir- foreign direct investment, the trade refutable connection between a liberal agreement was supposed to bring abuntrade policy, poverty, and immigration dant prosperity to Mexico as a result of in Mexico. Trade liberalization policies the jobs it would help create. The balcombined with weak economic devel- ancing act between the two countries opment policies since the implementa- was supposed to happen naturally. It tion of NAFTA have contributed to the was widely assumed that there was no growing poverty of Mexican laborers. need to compensate for the enormous Businesses in Mexico are facing a serious disparities between the two economies.

86

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Now, over a decade later, the people earning the minimum wage in Mexico – many of them in factories producing under NAFTA rules for the U.S. market – cannot sustain themselves. In the first decade of NAFTA the value of the Mexican minimum wage dropped 23 percent. Today one quarter of Mexicans cannot buy basic foods, and Mexico has nineteen million more people living in poverty than twenty years prior.15 Today, the GDP of the United States is eighteen times greater than that of Mexico and wages of U.S. workers on average are six times greater than those of Mexican workers.16 Migration has become an outlet for Mexico and U.S. businesses as a result.

Integration without Democracy = Chaos When only a handful of individuals make the decisions for the majority and then simultaneously fail to prepare the majority for the inevitable changes that will be brought about by those decisions, the possibility for extreme reactions grows larger. This has certainly been the case with NAFTA, and the impacts on immigration. Now, instead of learning a lesson and opening up trade policy to more scrutiny, the United States government – primarily, so far, the Bush administration – has proceeded with further plans to deepen NAFTA with an even less democratic process – the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). This will inevitably create conflict. The same can be said in Mexico and Canada. Today, with the U.S. trade deficit in such a tenuous position, all of the North American market is at risk. The

arguments made by the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a free trade-booster group of multinational corporations, suddenly may appear more viable to some17—at least they have a plan. However it is no longer possible to engage in business as usual. After a decade of failure of the current combination of undemocratic decision-making and free-market fundamentalism, there is no reason to believe that more of the same will have any significantly different outcome. There is a serious need to rethink and remodel current economic interactions. To paraphrase Jeff Faux, we must pull back from the current pursuit of corporate-dominated globalization in order to correct the current regional economy. In the case of the SPP, not only have “individuals”—the citizenry—been deliberately left out of the decision-making processes, the U.S. Congress has not even been engaged. The leaders of the NAFTA countries are abrogating the mandates they have been handed by taking the politically expedient route of secrecy in their discussions with large transnational corporations to deepen integration. They facilitate the terms of the latter without any counterweights to support harmed sectors (labor) that are strategic to all three countries. It is not surprising, then, that they are not addressing the critical issues of labor rights and the movement of peoples. In so doing, they avoid difficult and contentious social and political discussions, and make it impossible that any changes to NAFTA will successfully address the concerns of the vast majority of working people in the United States, much less in all three countries. In their secrecy, they forget the lesson from NAFTA: policies that are adopted for shortterm political convenience inadvertently self-destruct. Increasingly, the decision makers leading us toward deepening integration will have to deal with the grievances of the people against their policies. Better to do so in a proactive manner than one that is

Local farmers, devastated by competition from U.S. industrial agriculture, scrape by in San Martin Peras, Oaxaca. Photo by David Cilia.

reactive. So, what can be done to restore balance to the economic development process of deepening integration, while ensuring that discourse be created to shape our collective future?

Global Unions: Challenging the Neoliberal Status Quo The international trade union movement provides one of the possible options available to counteract the negative effects of globalization on the working class. It has the history, infrastructure, and organization to propose a new way forward to redress the problem by restoring the human element to today’s standard economic practices. In an era of globalization and global corporate lobbying, the transnational labor movement is critical. Today developing nations compete to attract investment by promising low wages without union representation, something that affects workers in both developed and developing nations. Globalization has changed how business is practiced, from domestic

markets to international markets where investors view a world without borders. These capital investors and shareholders have little loyalty to the local markets in which they operate and apparently have even less interest in or commitment to the sustainable development of that market. Improving the solidarity of workers across national borders has become a priority. Over the last couple of decades, corporate globalization has proven counterproductive to the well-being of workers—in effect, it allows for exploitation because of the focus on shareholder profits and worksite mobility. When the value of a human being is downgraded to that of a commodity within the global context, the best vehicle to empower workers to fight for universal worker rights is better cross-border organization and solidarity of unions. Yet never before has the connection between governments and global institutions (WTO, IMF, and the World Bank) been so strong and interests so

T HE U NEX P EC T E D CON S EQ U ENCE S

87

clearly tied to transnational corporations. There is sufficient evidence demonstrating that these are not the best policies for most workers in the world. There is a need for new international policies that allow most of the population to share the benefits.

most unions have primarily acted within national boundaries, with only sporadic connections to workers from other nations. That must change. The reach of the movement must transcend national borders and become global. Workers’ struggles are a global problem that can be tackled by globalizing unions and exAmerican Federation of Labor and Con- panding on the solidarity efforts that are gress of Industrial Organization Secre- currently taking place. tary Treasurer Richard Trumka charged: “Global companies begat global prob- In the case of Mexico and its record of lems for worker—global problems begat systematic violations of labor rights, the the need for global unions—and if global government has touted sovereignty and unions want to truly match the might intervention over national issues as an and power of global corporations, we excuse to prevent foreign unions from have to undertake global research and working in solidarity with Mexican global campaigns.”18 workers. In the context of NAFTA, this is unjust. Despite efforts in the past, global corporate forces have been much more suc- In the United States, twelve million uncessful and better organized than labor, documented workers exist as an underand obviously have much greater funds class exploited by U.S. and transnational to invest in the promotion of their own corporations. The pressures of globalizainterests. The effect has been a serious tion force companies to focus on reducnegative impact on the economic, social, ing costs and not investing in domestic and political rights of workers all over the growth. These pressures simultaneously world. decrease wages and engender job loss in both Mexico and the United States, Neoliberal policies with a strong focus and have led to a decade of rapid import on market fundamentalism have proven growth of both goods and workers. themselves unsustainable and unworkable for most people. Such policies were Labor unions and organizations that supposed to reduce poverty. In real- seek to protect and empower workers ity, over the last decade of the twentieth must become as ubiquitous and mobile century, the number of people living in as TNCs, going to where the need exists poverty in the world increased by almost and protecting workers on a global scale, one hundred million; over the same pe- regardless of the country where they reloriod, the average income in the world cate. We must join forces to prevent and increased by 2.5 percent annually. The stop the inhumane exploitation of workbenefits of such policies were not being ers worldwide, and demand and help to equitably distributed but rather accumu- establish the de-facto observance of unilated in the hands of very few.19 versal labor rights throughout the globe. The movement therefore must seek to maximize the prosperity for the maximum number of people and globalize labor rights, human rights, and environmental standards. Unions have the capacity to serve as a multinational force that can set the agenda to ensure certain minimum standards for workers all around the world. Until recently,

88

The 2006 Global Companies–Global Unions–Global Research–Global Campaigns conference in New York was an effort to strengthen labor capacity for cross-border campaigns. One of the conference’s accomplishments was the agreement to generate “high quality research on labor’s efforts to date at running crossborder campaigns with transnational

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

firms.” Fifty-one proposals were accepted at the conference.20 This conference can serve as the foundation for the needed intellectual framework to better understand how to navigate global forces in order to have a stronger and better organized international union movement.

Recommendations • Restore the role of the state in economic development. Globalization and trade policies as engaged in today affect small- and medium-sized businesses adversely. Because of the way that NAFTA was set up originally, all three countries have weakened their ability to engage in economic policies that support job creation. Public policy should place the lives and livelihoods of its citizens first, and the citizens should make explicit the priorities of the implicit social contract between themselves and their respective governments. • Restore oversight to the legislative bodies in all three countries. Support legislative policies that redress the gaps in the ability to negotiate agreements and restore the legislatures’ role in oversight. The different legislative bodies should be encouraged to pursue varying types of analyses with the goal of creating positive policy that can restore the local to the global. Legislators need to reengage in the dynamics taking place around issues like the creation of regional markets and trade policies that affect them in their hometowns. They are the ones who must answer to constituents when there are significant job losses. • Engender healthy public discourse to the SPP process and facilitate the building of transnational civil society dialogue and coalition building. Deepening integration between NAFTA partners requires a restoration of public discourse to ensure that citizens of all three countries have an opportunity to understand and halt any policy that harms the public good. Members of the legislatures, labor, civil and human rights organizations,

other NGOs, academics, and public intellectuals should be involved in the discussions related to the SPP. • Immigration, labor rights, and environmental protections need to be at the core of the discussion. By not taking into account immigration, labor standards, and the environment in the subsequent discussion on how we are going to manage the North American regional economy, we miss out on a very rich debate whereby security and prosperity can indeed be attained because of real partnerships and goodwill. Innovation in technology and a shift in focus of production toward a green economy can, for example, create new and better jobs while addressing climate change. A general, minimum standard of labor rights of all workers without exception across all three borders would lead to a more level playing field and, one hopes, have the effect of lessening exploitation. Labor has a powerful role to play in balancing the conditions established by transnational corporations. Discussions of regional markets by their very nature should include the social, political, and economic contexts because as integration deepens traditional decision-making structures will be put into flux. Neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, now largely considered the status quo, have begun to lose their luster. The time is right for a new plan of action. NAFTA is not going away but there are important lessons to be learned. The trade agreement needs to be reexamined, reevaluated, and renegotiated in certain areas, particularly as pertains to agriculture and labor rights. The SPP is an example of how renegotiations happen all the time, only the public is largely unaware that it is happening. It is the responsibility of the citizens and the labor movement to set the tone and the agenda for the future of the region— without fear.

Cartoon by Rocha, courtesy of La Jornada.

T HE U NEX P EC T E D CON S EQ U ENCE S

89

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

90

Since 2005, the prime minister of Canada and the presidents of Mexico and the United States have been meeting on a fairly regular basis to discuss the deepening integration of all three countries following the same policies. In the popular vernacular, the SPP is referred to as NAFTA Plus. Global Exchange, Rethinking the Immigration Debate: Addressing the Root Causes of Mexican Migration, http://www.globalexchange.org/ countries/americas/mexico/TM2pager.pdf. Global Exchange, U.S.-Mexico Trade and Migration Fact Sheet, http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/factsheet.pdf. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 2008 Current Employment Statistics Survey, 2008, http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Employment-Statistics-BLS4apr08.htm. Michael Mandel, “How Low Can Manufacturing Go?,” BusinessWeek, November 23, 2007, http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/ economicsunbound/archives/2005/11/how_low_can_man.html. Susan Helper, “Renewing U.S. Manufacturing: Promoting a High-Road Strategy,” EPI Briefing Paper #212 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2008). Marcy Kaptur, Comments at the conference “Linking Agriculture, Development, and Migration: A Critical Look at NAFTA Past, Present and Future,” March 5, 2008. Jacob Hill, “Evaluation of the Impact of NAFTA on Manufacturing,” Scoop Independent News, August 9, 2007. Susan Helper, “Renewing U.S. Manufacturing Promoting a High Road Strategy,” EPI Briefing Paper (Economic Policy Institute, 2008). Christian E. Weller, “Ignore at Your Own Peril: The Manufacturing Crisis in Perspective,” Center for American Progress, February 6, 2004, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/02/b27975.html. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, April 2008.” U.S. Department of Commerce, June 10, 2008, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf. Robert E. Scott, “The Importance of Manufacturing: Key to Recovery in the States and the Nation,” EPI Briefing Paper #211 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2008). Global Exchange, U.S.-Mexico Trade and Migration Fact Sheet, http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/factsheet.pdf. John R. MacAurthur, The Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). Global Exchange. Rethinking the Immigration Debate: Addressing the Root Causes of Mexican Migration, http://www.globalexchange.org/ countries/americas/mexico/TM2pager.pdf. Andrew Selee, More than Neighbors: An Overview of Mexico and U.S.-Mexico Relations, (Woodrow Wilson Center, 2008), iii. The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) is made up of thirty presidents and CEOs of major corporations, ten from each country respectively. Kate Bronfenbrenner, ed., Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaign (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press and Cornell University Press, 2007). Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). Bronfenbrenner.

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

T HE U NEX P EC T E D CON S EQ U ENCE S

91

contributors David Bacon is a senior fellow at the Oakland Insti-

Jeff Faux is the founder and distinguished fellow of the

tute, which provided support for this analysis. He is a writer, photojournalist, and former labor organizer. The issues raised in this article are discussed at greater depth in Illegal People – How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, September 2008).

Economic Policy Institute. He is the author of The Global Class War, and has written and lectured extensively on the economic and social consequences of globalization.

Armando Bartra is a distinguished Mexican scholar and public intellectual. He is a professor of sociology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, the founder of the Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo Rural Maya, and the editor of the La Jornada del Campo supplement of one of Mexico’s most respected and widely read dailies.

Laura Carlsen is the director of the Center for International Policy’s Mexico City-based Americas Program. She is one of the leading critics of the NAFTA-based development model in Mexico and Latin America, and has written extensively on Mexican society and politics.

Gustavo Esteva is a renowned social activist and public intellectual based in the city of Oaxaca. He is a leading critic of the economic uprooting of indigenous communities across Mexico, founder of the Oaxacan Universidad de la Tierra, and former adviser to the Zapatista movement in Chiapas.

Ted Lewis directs Global Exchange’s Human Rights Programs. He writes regularly on the linkages between economic policy and human rights.

Bertha Luján is Mexico’s best-known independent labor organizer and former director of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, a large, democratic labor union. She is the chief labor advisor to the “parallel government” organization of 2006 presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

92

T HE R IGH T T O S T AY HOME

Gabriela Lemus is executive director at the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and former director of Policy and Legislation at the League of United Latin American Citizens. She has broad experience advocating for Latino workers and families on issues related to globalization, trade, immigration, and border militarization.

Bill Ong Hing is a professor of law at the University of California at Davis. Throughout his career, he has successfully pursued social justice by combining community work, litigation, and scholarship. He is the founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Oscar Chacón is the executive director of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities. Amy Shannon previously served as the director of Enlaces America and currently works as a consultant on development and environmental issues.

María Dolores París is Professor of Social Relations at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Her research on Mexican migration to the United States focuses on human rights, gender, and ethnicity.

John Gibler is a Global Exchange Media fellow who writes from Mexico. He is the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, forthcoming from City Lights.

Dan La Botz teaches history and Latin American studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of several books on Mexican labor unions, social movements and politics, and edits Mexican Labor News and Analysis, an on-line publication of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) and the Authentic Labor Front (FAT).