Tag: NAFTA

Save Money, Live Better?

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Wal-MartWal-Mart announced yesterday plans to open 300 new units in Mexico this year.  That’s almost one every day. Since the first one opened in 1991, Wal-Mart has steadily been taking over the Mexican economy.  Thanks, in part, to NAFTA stipulations, it now even has its own claim in the stock market.  The multinational corporation has expanded their operations and bought out competing companies.  Their holds in the country now include:

  • Wal-Mart Supercenters
  • SAM’S Club
  • Bodega Aurrera (grocery supercenter)
  • Superama (grocery supercenter)
  • Suburbia (high-end supercenter)
  • Vips (restaurant)
  • Banco de Wal-Mart (banking firm)

 

Wal-Mart participates in charity work as well.  In 2009, Wal-Mart

 

Currently Wal-Mart has over 174,000 employees and plans to create 7,000 permanent jobs with the store openings this year.  They will invest an unprecedented 12.5 billion pesos in the operations, up 28% from last year. 

 

But who will actually “save money, live better?”

 

According to WakeUpWalmart.com for every two jobs Wal-Mart creates, three are lost.  This is due largely to the fact that the transnational company puts smaller, local stores out of business.  Not only that, the locations Wal-Mart chooses to build are often prime agriculture fields.  When I traveled to Mexico last summer I saw entire villages plowed over by the opening of one of these mega-stores, displacing hundreds and hundreds of people.

 

For a company whose social responsibility pillars enumerate goals such as “promote sustainable feeding of less fortunate communities in Mexico” and “promote competitiveness,” are they practicing what they preach?

NAFTA Spells Oppression

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Earlier this month, Mexican officials announced they expect the economy to grow by 3.4% in 2010.  Despite this projected growth, much of the country is ravaged by poverty and inequality.  Mexico has one of the most disparate wealth distributions in the entire world.  NAFTA is largely to blame.    

When President Bill Clinton implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement I don’t think he knew its implications for Mexico’s poorest citizens.  At least, I hope he didn’t.

Signed into law in 1992, NAFTA is a tripartite agreement between Mexico, Canada, and the United States stipulating the equal flow of goods between the countries.  Although well-intended, the sudden influx of drastically discounted goods into Mexico crippled farmers and indigenous populations who have survived off the profits of their land for centuries. 

NAFTA quickly put the majority of rural farmers out of business.

Mexican farmer selling corn in the marketplace.
Mexican farmer selling corn in the marketplace.

Corn subsidies only exacerbated the problem of selling products in the local market.  Seed prices are up 20%.  In February of 2008, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers rallied in the streets of Mexico City, the nation’s capital to protest the corn subsidy. 

Corn is not the only crop that has gone to pot since NAFTA began, literally. 

According to an article in La Jornada, the relationship between the signing of the bill and drug trafficking has become tighter.  In places such as Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Veracruz, the growth of marijuana and poppy seed has increased with unprecedented intensity.  1/3 of all arable and permanent croplands in Mexico are used to grow illicit substances.  (I will explain more about the War on Drugs in later posts.)

While it is true the Mexican economy as a whole has made slight gains in the years since NAFTA, the campeñeros are bearing the brunt of this preferential agreement between the United States and Mexico.