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[email protected] Oct 21 01:31:47 1995
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 08:46:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: IATP <
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To: Recipients of conference <
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Subject: NAFTA & Inter-Am Monitor 10-20-95
NAFTA & Inter-American Trade Monitor
Produced by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
October 20, 1995
Volume 2, Number 27
________________________________________________
Headlines:
- UNEMPLOYMENT PUSHES WORKERS NORTH
- CONFLICTING VISIONS OF ZEDILLO VISIT
- SEWAGE KILLED BIRDS
- HAZARDOUS WASTE DUMP PLANS ATTACKED
- ANOTHER DOLE ENTERS BANANA WAR
________________________________________________
UNEMPLOYMENT PUSHES WORKERS NORTH
California's fields were once harvested by Chinese and
Japanese immigrants, then by Filipinos and Mexicans and
refugees from the Depression-era Dust Bowl in the United
States Midwest. Each group moved up to better jobs, leaving
farm labor to its successors. According to Don Villarejo, a
professor at the California Institute for Rural Studies in
Davis, California farm owners "are reaching deeper and deeper
into Central and South America to find people willing to do
the work that people who are born here don't want to do."
Now Mixtec and Zapotec Indians from Mexico join a dozen Mayan
tribes from Guatemala as migrant farm workers in California.
Though no accurate counts of the workers exist, a local
health center survey taken two years ago found that 40
percent of the workers interviewed in 19 labor camps spoke 12
indigenous Indian languages rather than Spanish. Some
estimate the number of Mixtec Indian farm workers as 50,000
of California's 800,000 farm laborers. Mixtec workers report
that they are often in the fields from dawn to dusk during
the short raisin grape harvest, taking home as little as $3
an hour. In the Mexican state of Oaxaca, many villages are
supported by farm work in the United States.
The total number of undocumented workers stopped at the
United States-Mexico border has risen sharply in 1995,
reflecting soaring unemployment in Mexico as the result of
last December's peso devaluation. University of Texas
professor Rudy de la Garza describes the alternatives for
Mexican workers: "First, you can become a street vendor.
Second, you can turn to crime. Or, third, you can leave. And
the third alternative makes a lot of sense if you already
have a network of people in the U.S., and those networks
exist all over the U.S."
While a million farm workers obtained amnesty under a 1986
law, Martin estimates that 25 percent of today's migrant
workers are in the country without documentation, with the
proportion of undocumented workers highest among the most
recent arrivals. A recent survey by Philip Martin,
professor of agricultural economics at the University of
California at Davis, found that 82 percent of California's
farm workers are Mexican-born. California farm owners insist
that they need Mexican workers. They worry that threatened
crackdowns on undocumented workers will reduce U.S. fruit and
vegetable production.
In addition to Mexicans, thousands of Nicaraguans,
Salvadorans, and Haitians in the United States now face
deportation. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) says that Haitians, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans no
longer need the special immigration status that they were
granted in the past because the countries are now at peace
under democratically-elected governments.
>From a 10-foot-high welded steel wall near San Diego to
"Operation Hold the Line" in El Paso, the U.S. Border Patrol
uses increased funding, personnel and technology to keep out
would-be immigrants. But they acknowledge that the border is
like a balloon: when squeezed in one place, it bulges in
another. Although the wall has decreased border crossings in
the Imperial Beach section of the border, crossings and
apprehensions further to the east in the San Diego sector
have increased by 14 percent over 1994. Stepped-up border
patrols by the United States supposedly match increased
Mexican enforcement efforts by Grupo Beta, Mexico's U.S.-
trained border police unit. In fact, many Grupo Beta police
protect would-be migrants from criminals and coyotes, while
turning a sympathetic blind eye to their border crossing
forays.
Anti-immigration legislation before the U.S. Senate and House
of Representatives targets both legal and undocumented
immigration, cutting hundreds of thousands of parents,
children, brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens off waiting
lists. Proposed legislation would also give broad police
powers to the Department of Labor and double or triple
employer fines for hiring undocumented workers.
Seth Mydans, "A New Wave of Immigrants on Lowest Rung in
Farming," NEW YORK TIMES, August 24, 1995; Diane Solis, "U.S.
Stops More Mexicans at Border as Their Economic Opportunities
Sink," WALL STREET JOURNAL, August 8, 1995; Andres Viglucci,
"Exempt No More, Now Deported," MIAMI HERALD, August 30,
1995; "Crowded Asylum Process Favors Salvadorans,"
CENTROAMERICA, June, 1995; Yvette Collymore, "To Catch A
Dishwasher," INTERPRESS SERVICE, October 4, 1995; Robert
Collier, "At Border, Mexican Police Unit is the Migrants'
Best Friend," SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, September 25, 1995;
Seth Mydans, "Clampdown at Border Is Hailed as Success," NEW
YORK TIMES, September 28, 1995; Louis Dubose, "El Paso's
Desert Shield," TEXAS OBSERVER, September 29, 1995; Larry
Waterfield, "Illegal Aliens Face Crackdown," THE PACKER, July
29, 1995.
CONFLICTING VISIONS OF ZEDILLO VISIT
Last-minute trade negotiations before Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo's visit to Washington resolved a long-
standing dispute over labeling and inspection of tires made
in Mexico by U.S. manufacturers. Two other disputes
outlasted last-minute pressures for settlement: the long-
standing United Parcel Service demand to use large trucks on
Mexican roads and Mexico's refusal to speed up a reduction in
wine tariffs.
During his visit, President Zedillo pledged to continue his
austerity program and to try an experimental program of
"repatriating" undocumented workers from the United States to
their hometowns, instead of letting them sit on the border to
try another crossing. President Zedillo also agreed to accept
more U.S. helicopters to be used in combating drug
trafficking.
Just before the visit, Zedillo's government had announced
that Mexico soon would pay off $700 million of the $12.5
billion in emergency loans made by the United States to
Mexico earlier this year. The ahead-of-schedule payment is
intended to demonstrate Mexico's success in dealing with its
economic crisis. Mexico will repay the loan by issuing debt
bonds in German marks, demonstrating its renewed ability to
access European bond markets. Mexico has already paid the
U.S. Treasury roughly $470 million in interest. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that Mexico is
meeting its economic and financial targets in February and
will qualify for additional IMF credits in November.
The Mexican Action Network for Free Trade and Equipo Pueblo,
two Mexican non-governmental organizations, pledged to
demonstrate in New York and Washington during the visit,
saying that NAFTA has had hugely negative effects on jobs and
people in Mexico. According to Mexico's Salvador Zubiran
National Nutrition Institute, between 80 and 82 children
under the age of one die each day because of malnutrition,
and 16 percent of the country's children suffer from
malnutrition. In late September, the Mexican Trade and
Industry Secretariat (SECOFI) announced a 10 percent rise in
the price of tortillas and a phase-out of price controls on
tortillas over coming months. The price of tortillas has
risen 47 percent since January.
Diego Cevallos, "Zedillo's U.S. Visit - an Exercise in Image
Polishing," INTERPRESS SERVICE, October 9, 1995; David E.
Sanger, "Upbeat White House Visit for the President of
Mexico," NEW YORK TIMES, October 11, 1995; Helen Thomas,
"Mexico Starts to Pay Back Loan," UPI, October 5, 1995; Kevin
G. Hall, "US, Mexico Settling Trade Rows," JOURNAL OF
COMMERCE, October 6, 1995; "Mexico: Children Starve, Tortilla
Prices Rise, IMF Approves," WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE
AMERICAS, October 1, 1995; Sam Dillon, "U.S. is Drug Suitor;
Plying Mexico With Copters," NEW YORK TIMES, September 23,
1995.
SEWAGE KILLED BIRDS
A NAFTA panel's investigation into the deaths of 40,000
migratory birds last winter found that botulism caused by raw
human sewage, not industrial pollution, killed the birds. The
reservoir waters were probably 100 percent raw sewage from
November through January, when most of the birds died. The
panel also found substantial exposure to heavy metals,
discharged without treatment by 1,000 leather tanneries
upstream from the reserve, but said this was not the main
cause of death. The panel urged that the Silva Reservoir,
195 miles northwest of Mexico City, be kept drained and that
the government spend $50 million on water treatment plants
for the city of Lesn, which is upstream from the reservoir.
Local farmers still depend on the reservoir for irrigation.
According to Julia Carabmas Lillo, Mexico's environment
minister, Mexico has only 660 water treatment plants for 92
million people, and many of those are non-functioning. In
Ciudad Juarez, a canal collects the untreated sewage of 1.5
million people, distributing it in a network of irrigation
channels to the region's cotton and alfalfa farms. A $50
million plan to build two sewage plants for the city could be
funded by a loan from NADBank, the NAFTA agency set up to
lend money for border environmental projects. Because of
Mexico's economic crisis, Ciudad Juarez can't afford the
loan. The economic crisis has also kept Nuevo Laredo from
completing a new $40 million sewage treatment plant and
stalled a $388 million treatment plant planned for Tijuana.
Nor is the problem of water treatment limited to Mexico.
Recent reports from Texas show that developers have built
colonias along the Texas side of the border without providing
water or sewer lines. The 1,400 colonias hold an estimated
340,000 residents, mostly legal immigrants. Colonia
developers used their political connections to fend off
attempts to regulate the developments until this year, when a
new Texas law began to require developers to provide sewer
and water connections and sometimes electricity, gas and
paved roads.
Sam Dillon, "Inquiry Finds Sewage Killed 40,000 Birds," NEW
YORK TIMES, September 29, 1995; Allen R. Myerson, "Sewers and
Clean Water a Must at Border Housing, Texas Says," NEW YORK
TIMES, June 20, 1995; Robert Collier, "Cleanup Along the
Border Still a Dream," SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, September 26,
1995.
HAZARDOUS WASTE DUMP PLANS ATTACKED
Greenpeace Mexico joined more than a hundred community,
social and environmental organizations in an October
demonstration against Metalclad's proposed toxic waste dump
in Guadalcazar in the state of San Luis Potosi. Metalclad, a
U.S. company, purchased the Mexican company Confinamiento
Tecnico de Residuos Industriales (COTERIN) in 1993. COTERIN
had run a clandestine hazardous waste dump in Guadalcazar
since 1989, despite government citations and public
opposition. Metalclad said it would clean up more than
20,000 tons of hazardous waste illegally stored at
Guadalcazar at the time of its purchase of COTERIN only if it
was granted a permit to reopen a dump on the same site.
According to Metalclad executives, approval of the facility
by Mexico's Secretariat of Environment, Natural Resources,
and Fisheries is expected soon, based on company-conducted
studies. Greenpeace charges that the company studies do not
include geohydrological models of underground water patterns
or epidemiological studies previously ordered by the Mexican
Health Minister. The municipal government of Guadalcazar
refused to issue the necessary permits, and criminal
investigations of COTERIN and Mexican government officials
are underway.
U.S. Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
James Jones have written to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo
on behalf of the Illinois-based Metalclad company demanding
the immediate approval of the dump.
Charlie Cray, "Greenpeace, Others Call on Senator Simon to
Withdraw His Support for Toxic Dump in Mexico," GREENPEACE
PRESS RELEASES, October 6,12, 1995; "Greenpeace Petitions
Attorney-General to Investigate Waste Confinement Site
Review," BUREAU OF NATIONAL AFFAIRS, October 2, 1995.
ANOTHER DOLE ENTERS BANANA WAR
U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole
tried to slip sanctions against Colombia and Costa Rica
through the Senate as a rider to his bill establishing a
Senate oversight mechanism for United States involvement in
the World Trade Organization. Dole tried to move the
combined bill through the Senate by "unanimous consent," a
parliamentary maneuver used for non-controversial
legislation, but at least three other senators objected to
Dole's attempt to impose trade sanctions on Colombia and
Costa Rica in retaliation for their participation in the
European Union's banana marketing plan.
In late September, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor
said he will challenge the European Union (EU) banana import
restrictions before the World Trade Organization. Senior EU
officials defend the two-year-old banana import regime, which
favors African, Caribbean and Pacific members of the Lome
Convention at the expense of Latin American bananas. The EU
claims that its policy has not hurt the United States and
that the five major multinational banana traders -- Chiquita,
Dole, Del Monte, Fyffes and Geest -- actually increased their
EU market share from 53 percent to 58 percent from 1991 to
1994. Overall EU banana consumption has also risen.
Dole promised Carl Lindner, owner of Chiquita Brands
International, to pressure the two Latin American countries
in order to get them to pressure the European Union to allow
Chiquita a greater market share. Dole has also tried to add
the trade sanctions provision to the budget reconciliation
bill. Lindner and his family contribute generously to
political campaigns, including $140,000 given to a Republican
Party fund last summer and $525,000 given to both Democratic
and Republican candidates during 1994.
John Maggs, "Back-Room Banana Bill Effort Slips in Senate,"
JOURNAL OF COMMERCE, October 13, 1995; John Maggs, "Dole May
Use Budget Bill to Strip Colombia of Trade Benefits,: JOURNAL
OF COMMERCE, October 5, 1995; Shada Islam, "Lome Banana
Import Regime Has Not Hurt U.S., Says EU," INTERPRESS
SERVICE, October 9, 1995.
RESOURCES/EVENTS
Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform
by Dan La Botz, South End Press, Boston, MA: 1995. 275 pp.
Order from South End Press, 116 Saint Botolph Street, Boston,
MA 02113. Telephone 617/266-0639, fax 617/266-1595. $16.
Situates Zapatista rebellion in the broader context of
Mexican history and society, from Zapata to the Zapatistas
with particular emphasis on the past 15 years.
Broken Promises: Agrarian Reform and the Latin American
Campesino by William C. Thiesenhusen, Westview Press,
Boulder, CO: 1995. 226 pp. Order from Westview Press, 5500
Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301-2847. Telephone 303/444-
3541, fax 303/449-3356. $59.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper.
Historical and analytical review of agrarian reforms in
Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, and El Salvador
shows that most campesinos got no land at all, and that those
who did receive land still faced problems of getting needed
inputs for efficient farming and of inflation and unfavorable
terms of trade.
Fighting for the Soul of Brazil edited by Kevin Danaher and
Michael Shellenberger, Monthly Review Press, New York, NY:
1995. 272 pp. Order from Monthly Review Press, 122 West
127th Street, New York, NY 10001 or Global Exchange, 2017
Mission St., Room 303, San Francisco, CA 94110. Telephone
800/497-1994. $15 + $1.50 s&h. Collection of 38 essays
ranges over economics, politics, ecology, street children,
grassroots views, and the Workers Party. Sources of essays
range from MARYKNOLL NEWSNOTES and MULTINATIONAL MONITOR to
the NEW YORK TIMES.
Governing Capital: International Finance and Mexican Politics
by Sylvia Maxfield, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY:
1990. 198 pp. Order from Cornell University Press, 123
Roberts Place, Ithaca, NY 14850. Scholarly analysis of some
effects of international financial integration on Mexican
political economy includes look at financial regulation,
monetary policy, and exchange rate policy.
____________________________________________
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