NAFTA's Road to Ruin: The Decline of the Mexican Social Compact, Part II

This is the second of two reports on the decline of Mexico’s “social compact”-—that is, the understanding among citizens and the state that they are bound by ties of mutual support and by networks of social solidarity. Part I examined the threat to the social compact posed by the persistence of impunity—the practice of Mexican politicians, elites, and other social actors to place themselves above or outside the law. Part II focuses on neoliberalism, embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as a socio-political program that has cut back on social protections, removed barriers to the flows of transnational capital, and, most importantly, denied the possibility of a social compact in a world of individuals, all “freely” pursuing their own self-interest.

September/October
2008
Volume: 
41
Number: 
5

Taking Note

Christy Thornton
What many now consider an “Argentine model” of soy production has emerged, combining financialization and large-scale monoculture, and it is spreading to other countries in the region.

Open Forum

Paul Cantor
On May 15, Chilean judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes found former colonel Mario Manríquez guilty of the murder 35 years ago of Víctor Jara, the legendary Chilean folksinger, songwriter, actor, director, poet, political activist, and teacher.

Report

Laura Carlsen
The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), launched in 2005 by the NAFTA countries, aims to securitize the “shared economic space” of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This has profound implications for Mexico, whose shaky democracy could regress to presidential authoritarianism, with explicit U.S. support.
Sergio Zermeño
Free trade has devastated the Mexican countryside, as cheap, highly subsidized U.S. grains have flooded the market, underselling domestic producers. The campesinos either migrate or remain, surviving on subsistence consumption and the unprofitable sale of their surpluses.
David Bacon
Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the U.S. Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work.
Silvia Gómez Tagle
Despite Mexico’s much vaunted “transition to democracy,” true citizen participation remains weak and problematic. Much of this can be traced to the effects of neoliberal policy, as Mexican politics has effectively been sequestered by a minority unaccountable to popular demands.
El Fisgón
Oil has sustained the Mexican economy since 1938, when the state oil company, Pemex, was founded following a national expropriation from foreign companies. Now the Calderón government is bent on reprivatizing it in the name of efficiency—and profits on the commission of its sale.
Fred Rosen
Benedicto Martínez, a leader of Mexico’s Authentic Workers Front (FAT), talks to NACLA about the bleak prospects faced by workers in an age of global labor markets and an anti-labor state.

Reviews

Luis H. Francia
American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico During U.S. Colonialism, by Julian Go.
Pablo Morales
The War on Democracy (DVD, 2007), a film by John Pilger.
NACLA
The Book of Salsa by César Miguel Rondón; Tango: Creation of a Cultural Icon, by Jo Baim; and Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific, by Heidi Carolyn Feldman.

Essays

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian
The announced redeployment this summer of the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet, a World War II–era flotilla, to patrol the Caribbean and Latin American coastline represents a major new projection of North American military power in the region. This development, on the cusp of a new U.S. administration, prompts us to ask: Will Washington continue its imperial temptation in Latin America? Will Latin America be a focus of renewed attention after the November presidential election? Will there be changes in U.S. international military deployment in the region?

MALA

Dan Beeton
If the U.S. media have failed to cover the story of political instability in Haiti with the depth it deserves, it is certainly not the first time. In fact, it is the latest episode in a pattern of U.S. reporting on Haiti that has given many of the most important stories only a cursory glance. To get an idea of how and why this happens, I interviewed several U.S. journalists who have reported from Haiti, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.