This week we will transition from history into contemporary and multidisciplinary issues around politics, economics, and transnational powers. Some of these issues have been a result of history. For example, NAFTA went to efect in 1994 as a development of neoliberal president Carlos Salinas. Even physically, the way the border looks has been a result of political events and actions, such as Operation Gatekeeper. Politics and economics are largely interrelated with society and migratory patterns, and from southern mexico, to the the northern border, effects are noticeable. We will discuss why people migrate in the first place, a major factor being the economy and the rise of free trade and biotechnology. The communities that we will be visiting during our trip are representations of these political and economic processes whose inhabitants rely on maquiladoras for work and are for the most part newcomers from around Mexico.
Your reading for this week is Happily Ever Nafta, a collection of four articles of commentary on the North American Free Trade Agreement. After this reading, what are your thoughts on NAFTA and in what ways has the border region been shaped by this trade agreement? You can answer this question or COMMENT with any other sort of response, about a paragraph in length. Another idea is looking for current articles on the progress of NAFTA. Where are we today? What is the future of NAFTA? This article might be beneficial to understanding NAFTA's background and provide a simple introduction to the assigned reading, in case you are new to NAFTA.
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I thought it was interesting that there was such a discrepancy between the types of success the two sets of authors were discussing. In one of my classes we'are discussing neoliberalism, which can be defined in a lot of ways, but I'm using it to talk about the way Western societies, America specifically have adopted a culture of capitalism that forms the way we talk about health, and success, and happiness. This is very apparent here where Cavanaugh and Anderson are discussing how NAFTA has impacted the people as individual workers as their primary evaluation of the success of the program. Serra and Espinosa define success in terms of larger economic benefits: "yes, increased international competition may have helped fuel the dramatic rise in labor productivity rates during the 1990s, particularly in Mexico and the United States." They quote Anderson and Cavanaugh, claiming that these concessions to some positive outcomes of NAFTA are the whole story. International competition and increased labor productivity were the only goals to NAFTA. This exemplifies a neoliberalist perspective: the productivity of the market is more important than the effects of the market on the everyday lives of the people who cause it to run. This attitude is about more than simply emphasizing free trade and economic prosperity as the ultimate goal, it also seeks to blame its failure to achieve these goals on the shortcomings of the individual, or the inferiority of the culture as Serra and Espinosa address in their rebuttal: "the serious inequality of Mexico's income distribution remains a secular problem, fundamentally explained by deep educational and cultural factors rather than by specific trade regimes." The problem must be those pesky social problems that NAFTA never claimed to handle, and not structural injustices that promote the globalization of the cheap work force. According the Serra and Espinosa, the success of NAFTA can be attributed to the increase of prosperity in the countries involved in this treaty, without critical examination of the overall health and prosperity of all class levels of individual countries.
While both sets of authors take a rather one-sided approach in critiquing NAFTA's shortcomings, I will address Serra and Espinosa's failure to recognize the social aspects of this treaty. NAFTA's role in improving trade and investment for the three countries involved are notable accomplishments, but the success of a country cannot be judged by its economic sector alone.
With regard to independent labor unions and the right to organize, Cavanaugh and Anderson argue that NAFTA betrays this principle and point to the example of a June 2000 police suppression of a peaceful demonstration. Serra and Espinosa reply that NAFTA was "always intended to protect workers' right." But therein lies the flaw in their argument - the discrepancy between NAFTA's intentions and the actual results of its trade liberalization policies. Although a law can purport to protect to maintain an equal relationship between two trading nations, the enforcement of such a law depends on the power balance between the countries. In this case, the United States clearly has a much more vested interest in denying workers' the right to organize in order to keep wages low.
In addition, Serra and Espinosa's continual use of the word "serious" to describe their research pointedly demeans Cavanaugh and Anderson's focus on activism in the environmental and social justice fields. As a student who has been deeply committed to grassroots organizing and youth empowerment, I do not understand why such activism is considered second-tier to work in economic and business enterprises. NAFTA was founded to support social goals, boost wages, and improve trade negotiations. If the treaty has failed in one of these areas, then surely it has failed to accomplish its overall goal. Neither set of authors can afford to ignore the many dimensions of NAFTA, nor can Serra and Espinosa afford to keep pretending the NAFTA equally benefits the nations covered under the treaty.
When NAFTA was drafted and signed in the 1990s, critics on both sides of the issue questioned the successfulness of the treaty. Promoters assured that NAFTA would create thousands of new jobs, raise wages and the standard of living, and improve transnational relations by establishing stronger, connected foreign policy agendas benefiting all three countries. Opponents of the treaty, however, argued that NAFTA would destroy thousands of good U.S. jobs, lower wages, and threaten health and environmental standards. With so many lingering doubts about the treaty, I must ask, why and how did NAFTA come to fruition?
Now, nearly two decades later, we can clearly see the damaging effects NAFTA has left behind for the millions of people in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In my opinion, NAFTA is a poorly crafted piece of legislation that promises "free trade" benefits, but in reality, like the many legislative acts that have passed prior to NAFTA and ones that will continued to pass after NAFTA, though under different pretenses, is a result of ideological and political motivations by "those" people. These political elites in Washington D.C., Mexico City, Ottawa, or any other country, like Michael Dear mentioned, are so far removed from what is actually going on in their respective countries that they lack the knowledge to fully understand the repercussions of NAFTA or even our current immigration and border crisis.
After reading the article “Happily Ever Nafta?” I have become more knowledgeable of the reasons Mexico decided to join NAFTA. Mexico being a third World country, sought to become an industrialize country, and become competent as the US and Canada. Overall it has appear that NAFTA has improved Mexico, because of the dramatic rise in labor productivity rates during the 1990s. Thus, Cavanagh and Anderson, state that NAFTA has created a displacement of people, community, and has affected the environment. For example, the displacement of women brought women from the North of Mexico to seek jobs in the border cities. These Northern women had the illusion of earning higher wages. However, they quickly become frightened of the maltreatment they receive by working long hours and physical abused received from their supervisors and thugs . The border region has developed thousand of maquiladoras that have caused high rates of crime. Most people believe that the government from both the US and Mexico organize the numerous crimes on the border cities.
My Own Reaction:
To be honest, I didn't know much about NAFTA before reading these articles. Nevertheless, what really stood out to me about NAFTA is that it is aimed at keeping the people on the top and the people at the bottom even lower. Everyone knows that the United States of America depends on capitalism. However, the exploitation that the greed of corporation for money causes on workers in foreign countries, as well as US workers, is hidden from us.
As the second article points out, Mexico's fdi has increased from $3.7 billion to $10 billion, which makes the NAFTA seems successful. However, All the pain and hurt that goes on is hidden behind the big numbers. Upon reading the first article, I felt really guilty because at some point I may have bought a Hallmark gift bag. When I bought that bag, little did I know that behind the nicely decorated store, women were being suppress and hurt.
The NAFTA has also created a large threat to the environment. I personally think that behind Serra & Espinosa's claim that "public investment has been declining" is false, and I agree with Cavanagh & Anderson when they say that "the true risk is that protectionist measures might be adopted to punish polluters." Although these articles provided information on the environment, I feel that it is a topic that wasn't covered to its fullest extent and I would like to learn more.
....Happily Ever After? It seems not, at least not for the people at the bottom.
In the debate over whether or not NAFTA has achieved its goals, one thing is clear: the environmental woes have only increased. Both Serra and Espinoza,Cavanaugh and Anderson attest that funds have not been allocated to the reduction of pollution despite a twofold growth. The environmental consequences of Maquiladoras should be taken into greater consideration by Mexico as well as the United States. Residents of both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border face environmental hazards related to the implementations of NAFTA's industrial investment.
The health of laborers and Mexican citizens should be a priority of investors and the Mexican government alike. In a moral standpoint, denying laborers safety in the work place is a health violation and a violation of basic human rights. For instance,toxic dumping occurs without reprimand, as there are no regulations or enforcement whatsoever. The toxic dumping endangers workers and in this failure to care for employees by effectively ommitting labor rights and environmental standards, NAFTA has not achieved its social goals. GDP has increased as well as investment and trade, but the investment in human life and the people of Mexico has not. What does it matter if investment, trade, and GDP increases but worker wages do not? The overall intention of NAFTA in Mexico was to improve the living standard and quality of life for its people--NAFTA is no success.
I think these articles exemplify the difficulty of analyzing complex pieces of legislation such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. It is hard to even find a basis upon which to discuss the effects of NAFTA because of the countless ways of interpreting data, the innumerable variables present that make it difficult to isolate its true impact, and the fact that some argue that GDP is a viable indicator of progress whereas others analyze NAFTA against how it impacts the standard of living of those affected, which is not essentially reflected in the GDP. On one end, it seems futile to say that NAFTA is a failure without fully considering its objectives (capitalist-driven as they might have been), but on the other hand, it is fruitless to argue that the current state of Mexico is better than it might have been had the agreement not been drafted because there is no possibility of truly assessing that at this point.
I still have a lot to learn about NAFTA, and I am not yet in a position to argue in favor of it or in opposition to it. After reading the assigned articles, I’m left with more questions than answers, a good place to be I suppose.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about NAFTA but I found that reading the articles was really interesting because it seemed like the authors disagreed with each other on some critical points. For example one of them said that NAFTA resulted in big environmental problems while a second article said that NAFTA had nothing to do with the environmental problems and attributed it to something else.
One of the most interesting piece I gathered out of this reading is that though NAFTA had intentions to increase trade and increase economic prosperity, it seemed to analyze things to globally instead of focusing on individual people. Local farmers were faced with many challenges after NAFTA was enacted and it seemed like NAFTA didn't do much to help individual farmers out.
I can see that people have different view points on how effective NAFTA actually is and the few articles that we read show this.
I am hoping to learn more about NAFTA and I think it is good to see the different view points people have.
I think the articles debate style showed the baselevel ideaologies that clash in this debate. On one side is those concerned about the social/environmental effects on a local and micro sclae, on the other side are those considering the economic effects on a macro scale. Those concnerned about economy must convince the others that the social/envi effects are illegitament or minimal compared to the economic benifit. Those concerned about social/envi must convince people that individual stuggles and environmental damage are of more concern than investment and the economy. We see this type of debate across political issues. However, economic effects are easliy measured and benifit those with power/influence, while social/eniv effects can be more subjective and do not directly effect those in power (and therefore require activism).
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