Greg Grandin: How to be a good neighbor to Mexico
[Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, is the author of "Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism."]
THE Aztecs used to believe that history is not linear but circular, with great events repeating themselves on a regular basis. That certainly seems to be the case with Mexico, which has a revolution once every hundred years.
In 1810, peasants thrown off their land by plantation owners led a violent five-year rebellion that paved the way for Mexico's independence from Spain. In 1910, an instance of electoral fraud ignited an agrarian revolution, which in turn kicked off a decade-long civil war in which millions of Mexicans died.
Nearly a century later, Mexico's current electoral crisis likewise is propelled by rural unrest — this time largely brought about by the anger of agricultural workers displaced by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the center-left presidential candidate who is contesting the declared victory of Felipe Calderón in last Sunday's election, draws much of his support from this increasingly restive population of rural poor.
Before Nafta, Mexico was self-sufficient in corn and bean production. Today, one out of three Mexican tortillas is made with cheap corn meal from the United States. In 1993, more than 10 million Mexicans made their living off the land. Today, even as Mexico's population has grown, that number has plummeted to about seven million.
Mexican farmers simply can't compete with capital-intensive United States agribusiness, which continues to enjoy generous government subsidies. Moreover, Mexican commodity importers receive low-interest loans to buy crops from the United States. Every year, nearly three million tons of harvested Mexican corn is left to rot because it is too expensive to sell.
Mexicans have reason to worry that this is not all the trouble Nafta has in store. In 2008, the agreement's final provision is set to go into effect, eliminating the last tariffs on United States corn and beans and ending the subsidies Mexico gives to its peasant farmers — all the while leaving untouched the far larger subsidies Washington doles out to its own agricultural sector. During his campaign, Mr. López Obrador pledged to renegotiate this provision, but J. B. Penn, the United States undersecretary of agriculture, last month pre-emptively responded by saying that "we have no interest in renegotiating any parts of the agreement."...
Read entire article at NYT
THE Aztecs used to believe that history is not linear but circular, with great events repeating themselves on a regular basis. That certainly seems to be the case with Mexico, which has a revolution once every hundred years.
In 1810, peasants thrown off their land by plantation owners led a violent five-year rebellion that paved the way for Mexico's independence from Spain. In 1910, an instance of electoral fraud ignited an agrarian revolution, which in turn kicked off a decade-long civil war in which millions of Mexicans died.
Nearly a century later, Mexico's current electoral crisis likewise is propelled by rural unrest — this time largely brought about by the anger of agricultural workers displaced by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the center-left presidential candidate who is contesting the declared victory of Felipe Calderón in last Sunday's election, draws much of his support from this increasingly restive population of rural poor.
Before Nafta, Mexico was self-sufficient in corn and bean production. Today, one out of three Mexican tortillas is made with cheap corn meal from the United States. In 1993, more than 10 million Mexicans made their living off the land. Today, even as Mexico's population has grown, that number has plummeted to about seven million.
Mexican farmers simply can't compete with capital-intensive United States agribusiness, which continues to enjoy generous government subsidies. Moreover, Mexican commodity importers receive low-interest loans to buy crops from the United States. Every year, nearly three million tons of harvested Mexican corn is left to rot because it is too expensive to sell.
Mexicans have reason to worry that this is not all the trouble Nafta has in store. In 2008, the agreement's final provision is set to go into effect, eliminating the last tariffs on United States corn and beans and ending the subsidies Mexico gives to its peasant farmers — all the while leaving untouched the far larger subsidies Washington doles out to its own agricultural sector. During his campaign, Mr. López Obrador pledged to renegotiate this provision, but J. B. Penn, the United States undersecretary of agriculture, last month pre-emptively responded by saying that "we have no interest in renegotiating any parts of the agreement."...