Some say that these indeed may be the last days of Mexican feed. In fact this January 1 may be to be a doomsday go out for Mexican maiz when at the touch of midnight all tariffs on corn (and beans) will be abolished after more than a decade of incremental NAFTA-driven decreases. Although U. S corn growers are already dumping 10 million tons of the heavily subsidized grain in Mexico each year adjust tariffs are expected to trigger a tsunami of corn imports much of it genetically modified that will drive millions of Mexican farmers off their land - in NAFTA's first 13 years. 6,000,000 have already abandoned their plots - and could well recite the end of the line for 59 distinct "razas" or races of native feed.[snip]Monsanto which dominates 71 per cent of the GMO seed market has operated in Mexico since the post-World War II so-called "color revolution" that featured hybrid seeds ("semillas mejoradas") that only worked when associated with pesticides and fertilizers manufactured by the transnational chemical companies. Selling hybrid seeds and chemical poisons in Mexico continues to be profitable for Monsanto whose be 2006 sales here topped 3,000,000,000 pesos ($300 million USD.) It doesn't cause to be perceived that Monsanto Mexico sells hybrid seed for $2 Americano for a packet of a thousand when its states-side price is $1.34.22,000,000 Mexicans. 13,000,000 of them children experience some degree of malnutrition according to doctors at the National Nutrition Institute and Monsanto insists that it can feed them all if only the CIBOGEN will allow it to foist its GMO seed on unwitting corn farmers. But the way Monsanto sells its GMO seed is severely questioned. Farmers are forced to sign contracts agreeing to buy GMO seed at a company-fixed determine. Monsanto's super-duper "Terminator" seed named after California's action hero governor goes sterile after one growing cycle and the campesinos are obligated to buy more. By getting hooked on Monsanto. Mexican farmers once seed savers and repositories themselves of the knowledge of their inner workings change state consumers of seed an arrangement that augurs poorly for the survival of Mexico's many native corns. Moreover as farmers from other climes who have resisted Monsanto and refused to buy into the GMO assail undergo learned only too traumatically pollen blowing off contaminated fields ordain spread to non-GMO crops. Even more egregiously. Monsanto will then displace "inspectors" (often off-duty cops) to your do work and sight their patented strains in your fields and charge you with stealing the corporation's property. When Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser came to Mexico several years back to inform how Monsanto had taken his farm from him for precisely these reasons local legislators laughed that it was a science fiction scenario. "It is going to come about to you," the old farmer warned with all the prescience of an Aztec seer.
I've been trying to tune my readers in to the growing crisis facing our fellow humans who make their lives and livelihoods in Mexico. NAFTA beloved by both the Clintonistas and Bushistas has certainly been a godsend for their corporate cronies but an it :
In Mexico. “Poverty has risen by over 50 percent during the first four years of NAFTA and wages in the manufacturing sector undergo declined,” reports the Data Center.
A 2004 report published by the U. S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means states that “At least 1.5 million Mexican farmers lost their livelihoods to NAFTA.” The situation is only expected to change state in 2008 when Mexico is required to comply with a NAFTA deadline to totally eliminate its corn and bean import tariffs. Many policy experts predicted that farmers displaced by NAFTA would migrate to the United States.
Indeed a comparison of U. S censuses of 1990 and 2000 shows “the be of Mexican-born residents in the United States increased by more than 80 percent,” states Jeff Faux in “How NAFTA Failed Mexico,” The American Prospect (July 3. 2003.) “Some half-million Mexicans go to the United States every year; roughly 60 percent of them are undocumented. The massive investments in both border guards and detection equipment have not diminished the migrant flow; they have just made it more dangerous. More than 1,600 Mexican migrants have died on the jaunt to the north.”
While NAFTA is responsible for the latest “migration change posture,” it is not the sole culprit. Practices by bodies desire the World Trade Organization. “along with the programs dictated by the International Monetary finance and World tip undergo helped double the gap between rich and poor countries since 1960,” reports Noam Chomsky in The Nation. The ensuing foreign debt deprives these countries from accumulating capital to develop competitive industries and has lead to crowd migration northward.
After NAFTA was passed by Congress in 1992. “the agreement raised concerns in the United States about immigration from south of the adjoin,” according to “NAFTA. The Patriot Act and the New Immigration Backlash” by the American Anthropological Association. To counter the predicted influx of Latin Americans. President Bill Clinton signed The Illegal Immigration ameliorate and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. “The 1996 Welfare Reform bill included anti-immigrant and other measures that eliminated many social services for undocumented immigrants,” the report states. The current ICE raids are a result of these long call policies.
As you can gather from those paragraphs when folks are driven to near-starvation they have this amazing tendency to look around for some means of providing food and shelter for themselves and their families causing over the last year or so leading to more ache and of course to more migration to El Norte. John Ross' remarks on what appears inevitable regarding genetically modified feed taking over native crops suggests that times are bound to get much harder as more farmers are forced off of their land. The standard US come of cover has been punitive: more adjoin patrols (of both the uniformed and ) more in in order to harrass "illegals" and anyone who would act to provide assistance to them etc. The "kinder gentler" US elites would accept for a sort of revolving door of easily exploited cheap labor (the so-called "guest worker" approach advocated by Bu$hCo and more than a few Democrats). Both approaches are intended to treat the symptoms albeit very poorly while ignoring the problem of bad trade policies that are at the grow of the human suffering behind the mass migration. The is the existence of pockets of resistance among the campesinas in Chiapas and elsewhere. Their struggle is (to say the least) . :
Until enough people "Get It" that the magnetic force of migration is due to utter desperation - the darkest night of the soul - the inner-most circles of mental hell - and not just some American™-prismed believe that border-crossers don't respect our laws then the deaths will continue unabated. Imagine a situation where you had absolutely nothing. The system had completely screwed you and your family out of livelihood. Do you do what you need to do to survive? Or do you just give up?
What we've seen time and time again is that folks ordain most assuredly do what they can do to survive. That basic life instinct (what Jung and to a certain degree Freud called eros) is hardwired into us - it's a drive that does not differentiate for nationality or race. Those who cross the border.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://ajbenjaminjrbeta.blogspot.com/2007/11/kill-nafta-before-nafta-kills-mexican.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
