Mexico

NAFTA Renegotiation More Important Now Than Ever

November 22, 2017 Celeste Drake, aflcio.org Resist! Assassination, Mexico, NAFTA, Trade, Workers

By Celeste Drake for AFL-CIO - The need to fundamentally improve the labor provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement took on a new urgency over the weekend, as a group of armed civilians, calling themselves the “Tonalapa Community Police,” (Policía Comunitaria de Tonalapa) attacked striking workers, killing two, at the Media Luna mine in Guerrero, Mexico. The murders occurred just five hours south of Mexico City, where representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico are in the midst of their fifth round of talks about rewriting NAFTA. The aggressors, meanwhile, were released after being briefly detained by an army squadron. The striking workers, who want to be represented by the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Related Workers of the Mexican Republic (Los Mineros) and are demanding the removal of the employer-dominated "labor" federation CTM (Confederación de Trabajadores de México), identified local CTM leaders as among those responsible for the attack. The practice of false unions siding with the employer over workers is a common feature of Mexico’s failed labor relations model. Employer-dominated "labor" federations are antithetical to the idea of democratic worker-led unions whose goal is to help workers build better lives.

Indigenous Woman Registers To Run For Mexican Presidency

October 10, 2017 Staff, www.reuters.com Create! Elections, Indigenous Peoples, Mexico

By Staff of Reuters - MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An indigenous woman backed by Mexico’s rebel Zapatista movement registered on Saturday to run as an independent candidate in next year’s presidential election, adding to a growing list of hopefuls bucking established political parties. Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez is the spokeswoman for the National Indigenous Congress, the political arm of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and in May was picked to be the group’s 2018 presidential candidate. Local media reported that after Patricio Martinez registered with the National Electoral Institute (INE), she pledged not to accept any funding from the government to run her campaign. Mexico’s major political parties have struggled to gain support in recent years, and voter surveys show all presidential hopefuls struggling to win support from as much as a third of the electorate. The front-runner in most polls is former Mexico City mayor and two-time presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist with nationalistic leanings. The ruling centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who is barred by law from seeking a second term, has yet to pick a candidate. Already, more than 10 first-time independent candidates have registered to run. Three of those contenders failed to meet initial requirements, according to the INE.

A US Charity Is Helping Big Business Take Indigenous Peoples’ Water In Mexico

October 9, 2017 Tamara Pearson, www.opendemocracy.net Resist! Mexico, Privatization, Water

By Tamara Pearson for OpenDemocracy - The town of Puebla is a miniature version of the world's inhumane water inequalities. Here, people living in the wealthy part of town get all the water they need, and Coca Cola gets first dibs on the best water in the state. Meanwhile, the rest us get running water for half an hour a week, or none at all. US religious charity Living Water claims it is trying to help the poor, but in reality it is only increasing such inequality by supporting further privatization of the water system. Right-wing senator Ted Cruz, VP of Goldman Sachs Heidi Cruz, and the owner of Halex Oil Corporation Mike Hale all make up the leadership of Living Water, which has also collaborated with Coca Cola on projects around Latin America. Living Water has some 132 projects here in Puebla state, and with the support of a state law that allows for private investment in water, has been encouraging big businesses to “solve” the water supply problems in poor rural areas. “Living Water went into indigenous towns like Ocotepec saying things like “Jesus says water is for everyone”. At first, people trusted them, but then they realized the charity has connections to Femsa (Coca Cola) and they protested. There were arrests, and the police stopped the protests,” Fernando told me.

California To Sue Trump Administration Over U.S.-Mexico Border Wall

September 22, 2017 Patrick McGreevy and Jazmine Ulloa, www.latimes.com Resist! Border, California, Lawsuit, Mexico, Trump Administration

By Patrick McGreevy and Jazmine Ulloa for Los Angeles Times - California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra plans to announce a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of the state that will challenge President Trump’s proposal to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, a project Becerra has called “medieval.” Becerra is scheduled to travel to Border Field State Park near San Diego to announce that a lawsuit is being filed in federal court over construction of border wall projects in San Diego and Imperial counties. The lawsuit, which includes the California Coastal Commission as a plaintiff, states its purpose is "to protect the State of California’s residents, natural resources, economic interests, procedural rights, and sovereignty from violations of the United States Constitution" and federal law. It adds that the wall would have a chilling effect on tourism to the United States from Mexico. The state's lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration has failed to comply with federal and state environmental laws and relied on federal statutes that don't authorize the proposed projects. The brief alleges the federal government violated the U.S. Constitution's separation-of-powers doctrine "by vesting in the Executive Branch the power to waive state and local laws, including state criminal law.".

Thousands Of Mexicans March To Scrap NAFTA

August 18, 2017 Daina Beth Solomon, www.reuters.com Resist! Mexico, NAFTA, Protests, Trade Deal

By Daina Beth Solomon for Reuters - MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - While Mexican government negotiators fought tooth and nail to save the North American Free Trade Agreement during talks in Washington, thousands of Mexican farmers and workers took to the streets on Wednesday demanding the deal be scrapped. Carrying banners that read "No to the FTA," and decorated with images of the distinctive hairstyles of U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto, the protesters said the 1994 deal had devastated Mexican farms. "We are against the treaty and the renegotiation because it has not benefited the country," said university union spokesman Carlos Galindo, reflecting views widely held in the early years of the trade pact. In a sign of that mistrust, on Jan. 1 1994 the Zapatista guerrilla army launched an armed uprising opposing free trade to mark the first day of NAFTA. The fervor has faded and most Mexicans, including leading leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who will run for president next year, now broadly support a deal which has led to job growth, especially in the auto manufacturing sector.

Thousands Of Mexicans Hold Protest Against NAFTA

August 11, 2017 Staff, www.bilaterals.org Resist! Farmworkers, Mexico, NAFTA, Protests, Trade Deal

By Staff of Bilaterals - Mexican farmers and workers have staged a mass rally in the capital to voice their opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as NAFTA, with the United States and Canada. The protesters, who numbered up to 10,000 people, took to the streets in Mexico City on Monday, saying the trilateral trade deal was ruining Mexican farmers’ and workers’ livelihoods. The protesters said that they wanted the government to leave the agriculture sector out of the new NAFTA free trade agreement, accusing Mexico City of failing to support the peasant farmers. President Enrique Peña Nieto, the protesters said, has broken the promises he had made to the farmers and workers in regard to land and labor reforms The protest comes as NAFTA re-negotiations are scheduled to take place from August 16 to 20 in Washington. Reports suggest around two million Mexican farmers have lost their land under the current NAFTA conditions. US-imported products make up nearly half of all of the food consumed in Mexico. During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump vowed to either renegotiate or scrap the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump described NAFTA as the worst trade deal the US had ever signed. He blamed the three-nation deal for the outsourcing of thousands of American jobs to Mexico and China.

CIA Working With Mexico & Colombia To Overthrow Venezuela

July 26, 2017 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Resist! CIA, Colombia, Mexico, Regime Change, United States, Venezuela

By Staff of Tele Sur - The comments come after CIA Director Mike Pompeo confirmed the United States is advising Mexico and Colombia on developments in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has demanded the governments of Colombia and Mexico respond to allegations that they are working with the CIA to overthrow the Venezuelan government. In a televised interview, Maduro said, “The director of the CIA has said, ‘The CIA and the U.S. government work in direct collaboration with the Mexican government and the Colombian government to overthrow the constitutional government in Venezuela and to intervene in our beloved Venezuela.’" “I demand the government of Mexico and the government of Colombia to properly clarify the declarations from the CIA and I will make political and diplomatic decisions accordingly before this audacity,” he added. The comments come after CIA Director Mike Pompeo confirmed the United States is advising Mexico and Colombia on developments in Venezuela.

Letter to the Editor Campaign: NAFTA IS NOT FOR US

July 20, 2017 Daniel Cooper Bermudez, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Canada, Economic Justice, Environment, Mexico, NAFTA, Trade Justice, United States

The Trump administration's NAFTA negotiation objectives show more clearly than ever that this agreement will not be made for us or by us. The thousands of comments submitted by the trade justice movement have been ignored as the objectives resemble the language and sentiment of the original NAFTA and defeated TPP goals. We cannot let corporations and their political representatives decide our fate. Our communities need to know that this NAFTA IS NOT FOR US. Join our letter to the editor campaign, our resistance to NAFTA must go viral!

One Mexican Town Revolts Against Violence And Corruption

July 12, 2017 Patrick J. McDonnell, www.latimes.com Create! Corruption, Mexico, Violence

By Patrick J. McDonnell for Los Angeles TImes - Checkpoints staffed by men with assault rifles, camouflage and body armor greet visitors at the three major entrances to this town. The guards are not soldiers, police officers, drug enforcers or vigilantes. They are members of homegrown patrols that have helped keep Cheran a bastion of tranquillity within one of Mexico’s most violent regions. The town of 20,000 sits in the northwest corner of Michoacan, a state where authorities say at least 599 people were killed between January and May, an increase of almost 40% compared with the same period last year. Cheran hasn’t had a slaying or other serious crime since early 2011. That was the year that residents, most of them indigenous and poor, waged an insurrection and declared self-rule in hopes of ridding themselves of the ills that plague so much of Mexico: raging violence, corrupt politicians, a toothless justice system and gangs that have expanded from drug smuggling to extortion, kidnapping and illegal logging. Six years in, against all odds, Cheran’s experiment appears to be working. “We couldn’t trust the authorities or police any more,” said Josefina Estrada, a petite grandmother who is among the women who spearheaded the revolt.

Zapatista Indigenous Presidential Candidate’s Vision For Mexico

July 10, 2017 Benjamin Dangl, www.towardfreedom.com Create! Elections, Mexico, presidential elections, Zapatistas

By Benjamin Dangl for Toward Freedom - The Zapatistas and National Indigenous Congress (CNI) held an assembly in May in which they chose María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, a Nahua indigenous healer, as their spokesperson and presidential candidate for the 2018 elections in Mexico. Patricio’s candidacy and radical vision for Mexico challenges conventional politics and marks a new phase for the Zapatista and indigenous struggle in the country. The 57-year-old traditional Nahua indigenous doctor and mother of three from western Mexico is the first indigenous woman to run for the presidency in Mexico. Patricio joined the struggles related to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1996, when she was involved in the formation of the CNI, a network of indigenous communities in the country. She began helping out sick members of her community with herbal remedies when she was 20-years-old. Her skills as a healer were passed down to her from elders in the community, and are based on a close relationship with the local ecosystem. “Back then, there was a shortage of doctors and medicine and the health department had no answers,” Patricio told the Guardian. “But we have so many plants and so much knowledge from our elders. My grandmother would give us special teas to cure stress, coughs or diarrhea, and they worked. So I thought: why not give herbal remedies to those who can’t afford medicine?”

Mexico Legalizes Medical Marijuana

June 22, 2017 Lisa Rough, www.leafly.com Create! Marijuana Legalization, Medical Marijuana, Mexico

By Lisa Rough for Leafly - A decree issued by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto today confirmed that Mexico has legalized cannabis for medicinal use after overwhelming support from Mexico’s Lower House of Congress. Peña Nieto was once a vehement opponent of cannabis legalization, but has since called for a re-examination of global drug policy after a nationwide public debate on legalization in early 2016. “So far, the solutions [to control drugs and crime] implemented by the international community have been frankly insufficient,” Peña Nieto told the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions in April 2016. “We must move beyond prohibition to effective prevention.” Last year, Peña Nieto even went so far as to introduce a measure that would allow Mexican citizens to possess up to an ounce of cannabis without repercussions, but the bill stalled in Congress. The medical marijuana bill sailed through the Senate with ease in December 2016, and Mexico’s lower house in parliament passed the bill in April with a vote of 347-7 in favor of approval. Mexico’s Secretary of Health, Dr. José Narro Robles, voiced his support for the measure, saying, “I welcome the approval of the therapeutic use of cannabis in Mexico.”

The Most Important Day In The Last 10,000 Years

June 15, 2017 Quincy Saul, www.counterpunch.org Create! Mexico, Zapatistas

By Quincy Saul for Counter Punch - And so there we were, at the University of the Earth, outside San Cristobal de las Casas, in a valley between the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, to watch the birth of a new government. We were there as participant-observers – a position which may appear paradoxical for those who missed the presentations on quantum physics at the Zapatista science conference last year – with the responsibility to bear witness and carry it home. For three days at the end of May, delegates and representatives from the Yucatan to Baja California gathered and formed an Indigenous Governing Council. Over 50 languages were registered. The council includes 71 members, the majority of whom are women. In the closing ceremony, on behalf of their ancestors and future generations, they swore an oath to give their lives to dignified rebellion and the defense of Mother Earth. Resurgent Mexico has made world history yet again. On the first day of the Congress, we watched as representatives and delegates from dozens of indigenous nations waited patiently in the sun for hours to enter the building where the opening ceremony was held.

Corporate Siege and Trade in the 2018 Elections

April 25, 2017 Daniel Cooper Bermudez for Popular Resistance Educate! Canada, Elections, Environment, EPA, Labor, Mexico, NAFTA, Trade, usa

Trade policy is amounting to be an increasinly contentious topic as the Trump administration has clearly showed its intentions to keep major TPP provisions in NAFTA. Corporations are working with the Department of Commerce to eliminate the few but significant labor and environmental protections the government enforces while members of Congress begin to campaign around trade. 2018 promises to put trade policy at the forefront as presidential elections in Mexico and mid-terms in the United States could determine the fate of North American trade agreements to come.

The NAFTA Machine is in Motion

April 19, 2017 Daniel Cooper Bermudez, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Canada, Imperialism, Justice, Mexico, NAFTA, Trade

By Daniel Cooper Bermudez for Popular Resistance. This month, the Trump adminsitration sent out an eight-page draft letter to the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means committees outlining the administration's objectives for NAFTA renegotiations. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has expressed wanting to send out the official letter to Congress, which upon approval would initiate the 90-day consultation period required before beginning negotations. Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto already began Mexico's own 90-day consultation period in early February. That means the NAFTA negotiations could start in early July.

Oil Drillers Face An Angry Mob In Mexico’s Guerrilla Country

April 4, 2017 Adam Williams, www.bloomberg.com Resist! Drilling, Mexico, Oil

By Adam Williams for Bloomberg - When an angry mob torched City Hall in the southern Mexican town of Tecpatan last month, it sent a warning flare across a country already thrown into turmoil by Donald Trump. The outrage was over oil, specifically the government’s plan to auction off a swath of land around their farming community to private drillers. The locals say they weren’t informed that a date—July 12—had been set. When they found out, they set fire to the two-story town hall, which now sits charred and abandoned, its windows smashed and the iron gate chained shut. The clock on its tower stopped at 10:55. In some ways, the unrest set clocks all the way back to the 1990s, when Zapatista rebels were roaming the region and declaring war on Nafta. But the fact that today’s target is the government’s energy policy could spell trouble ahead. President Enrique Pena Nieto is trying to revive Mexico’s struggling oil industry by bringing in foreign capital—that’s why the land around Tecpatan is up for grabs. The frontrunner in next year’s presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is vowing to roll back the changes.

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