Mexican Workers Since NAFTA

When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, it was not only meant to put Mexico on the fast track to economic recovery and development, but to quickly reverse the severely declining fortunes of a large part of the Mexican population, extending from middle-class professionals to extremely poor campesinos. It was hoped that employment opportunities would grow in number, in quality and in remuneration. In the words of Mexico’s then-President Carlos Salinas, the Agreement was supposed to create jobs instead of migrants. It hasn’t worked out that way. Since 1994, workers in Mexico have faced stagnant real wages and a dramatic decline in employment opportunities. For many Mexicans, holding a decent, steady job has become either a distant memory or a hopeful dream. This Report explores how, for both sides, NAFTA has become a powerful touchstone in all free-trade debates and in struggles for labor rights in the America.

July/August
2005
Volume: 
39
Number: 
1

Taking Note

Teo Ballvé
In many ways, the answer is yes. Venezuela has become a regional spokesperson for opposition to Washington. It has attempted to unite progressive forces throughout the hemisphere in the construction of a regional alliance that would challenge the prevailing vision of U.S.-dominated inter-American “cooperation.”

Intro

NACLA
When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, it was not only meant to put Mexico on the fast track to economic recovery and development, but to quickly reverse the severely declining fortunes of a large part of the Mexican population, extending from middle-class professionals to extremely poor campesinos.

Open Forum

Alejandro Beldaña
According to the New York Times, the Bush Administration is implementing a “concerted effort” to block the return of the “left-wing” Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party to power in Nicaragua.
Rosemary Barbera
It was fitting that the funeral of Gladys Marín Millie was held March 8, 2005, International Women’s Day. Marín, who died of cancer on March 6, was the president of the Communist Party of Chile (PC) and an ardent defender of human rights. She was the youngest person ever elected to the Chilean Congress, the first woman to run for the country’s presidency and the only female leader of a Chilean political party.

Updates

Tim Rogers
In less than two decades since the bloody, U.S.-sponsored wars ended in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Central America has undergone an extreme makeover of reality-TV proportions.
Benjamin Witte
Somewhere amid the chaos that erupted January 11 along a stretch of the Pan-American Highway in Guatemala a protestor lost his life. The victim was later identified as Raúl Castro. He was 37.

Report

Leigh Binford
The Mexican government confronted the economic crisis of the 1980s with policies of economic liberalization and export-driven industrialization. The government combined these policies with a drive to alter the contours of the labor market by loosening the rules governing hiring and firing, salaries and industrial relations.
James T. Kimer
With varying degrees of success over the past half-century, U.S. and Mexican governments have attempted to manage the flow of Mexican nationals to the United States. These attempts have alternately contributed to a hardening and a softening of the relationship between the two countries.
Dan LaBotz & Robin Alexander
During the seven long decades of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) rule, unions formed an important part of the party’s corporate system of patronage and clientelism. These “official” unions played a pivotal role in the political system, turning out their members to vote for the PRI’s candidates.
David Bacon
I. Industria Fronteriza
Dan LaBotz & Robin Alexander
What would the law do exactly? While written in apparently innocuous language, it would create a series of impediments to workers’ self-organization, unionization, bargaining and strikes.
Carlos Salas
For the past two decades, and especially since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, a highly contested economic model that gives pride of place to foreign investors and external markets has governed the decisions of policy-makers in Mexico.
Dan LaBotz & Robin Alexander
Labor law reform has become a high- profile issue in Mexico. Newspaper columnists and television pundits debate it, politicians in the Congress argue over it and hundreds of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest and resist it.

Tracking the Economy

Today, workers in the u.s. high tech sector are experiencing the failures of U.S. trade policy firsthand. In spite of this experience, high tech companies, with Microsoft playing a prominent role, are lobbying members of Congress to vote for the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), claiming the agreement will boost U.S. high tech exports and thus U.S. jobs.

In Brief

Fred Rosen
For a year, from may 2004 to may 2005, an arcane process called desafuero dominated the news and all political conversation in Mexico City—and just a few degrees less so in the rest of the country. In Mexico, a desafuero is the removal of a public official’s privileged immunity (fuero).

¡YA! Youth Activism

Teo Ballvé
“What we are witnessing here is a phenomenon of the ongoing transformation of the role played by youths in Mexican society,” says 28-year-old Ernesto Armendáriz, “because traditionally, young people are stigmatized in Mexico as a sector that is politically immobile or a sector that is politically apathetic.”