Re: NAFTA and the Mexican poor
Victor O. Story (story@kutztown.edu)
Sat, 28 Sep 1996 10:33:40 -0400 (EDT)
There are so many factors at play in Mexico and the USA that affect wages
and unemployment that there is no way to isolate the effects of NAFTA and
judge them. You will not find the sources you want, they do not and
cannot exist. NAFTA and privatization in general, in Mexico and Peru and
Chile and Haiti as well, are politicized and involve so many other
problems it is impossible to decide if NAFTA has caused any improvements
or problems. The general trend is that NAFTA has helped border economies
in the US but not other states, and while many activists and the
Zapatistas decry NAFTA as a sellout to the Yankee pigs, northern Mexicans
desire more Yankee investments. In both countries other factors are more
determinant in terms of wages and employment. Also, NAFTA was not
carried out competently, and privatization in Mexico was an excuse for
Salinas and friends to rip off the country of state owned industries,
etc, that had in the past been ripping the country anyway in the hands
of the PRI. Hence the PRI is just this week returning to its old
nationalist, anti-privatization rhetoric, as if that is a democratic
alternative to NAFTA.
Victor Story
KU
On Sat, 28 Sep 1996, Axel Kersten wrote:
> HI, lasnetters,
>
> I am an ILAS Ph.D student at UT and I need to find out more about the
> actual impact of NAFTA on the indigenous, poor, rural and agricultural
> sectors of Mexico (until now and expected for the future). Can anybody give
> me some valuable hints on that? I am having trouble encountering specific
> (socioeconomic and political) case studies and evaluations.
>
> THANKS
> ******************************
> Axel Kersten
> 1910 Nueces St. #10
> Austin, TX 78705-5564
> ph/Fax: 1 (512) 322-0448
> e-mail: kersten@mail.utexas.edu
> ******************************
>
>