Warning: TERRA MOTO ALERT!
this article is under construction… content and formatting will likely shift over the next week.
Recently, the internet has been buzzing with lurid stories of death, destruction, prison breaks, and widespread corruption in Mexico, all seemingly related to the drug trade. Is anybody out there ready for a paradigm shift, or at least a little different perspective? (and a bit of satire & irony)
Is it reasonable to claim that Mexico’s problems and US complicities are limited to only drug-related Narco-Traficante & immigration driven issues?
What effects have NAFTA and and past GATT “agreements” had on the everyday lives of ordinary Mexican and in addition to the impacts that have fallen on small Mexican farms? Is it possible that the 7 million or so former farmers moved North after being crushed by US Govt. farm subsidies & US taxpayer NAFTA subsidies that reduced the value of Mexican corn by 64% (1985-1999) due to artificial (US govt. driven) and 70% by 2004, and dumped US corn surpluses onto Mexican markets, flooding those markets, and shifting the balance of food trade to the point that Mexico is now a net importer of food, bringing in over 40% of her food from the US? Is it a coincidence that Mexican agriculture accounted for only 3.9% of GDP in 2006, down from 7% in 1980, and 25% in 1970?
https://www.cia.gov/…ok/geos/mx.html#Econ , http://dgcnesyp.inegi.gob.mx/bdiesi/bdie.html & http://www.iie.com/…ew/332/05iie3349.pdf
Other Citations for facts listed: http://useconomy.about.com/…p/NAFTA_Problems.htm, http://books.google.com/…ge&q&f=false & http://useconomy.about.com/…cancun/mythtrade.htm , http://www.fas.usda.gov/…factsheets/NAFTA.asp & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Mexico.
Have there really have been few effects from US taxpayers agreeing to 3 decades of Congressional subsidizing the forced dumping of American corn onto Mexican markets, as shown by studies demonstrating years of US Govt. agricultural policies that made corn “cost an average of $3.41 a bushel to produce in the U.S. and sold on the international market for $2.28 a bushel.” ? Is there possibly some cause-and-effect going-on between the creation of illegal immigrants from Mexican family farms bankrupted by NAFTA, who then move north to the USA to seek work? Could NAFTA’s & GATT’s effects reduce Mexican agricultural output from 25% of GDP to under 4% of Mexican GDP – and where did those farmers move to? Is there any relationship between the intentional manipulation of Mexican corn prices by the US Govt using billions of US taxpayer dollars ($4 billion in a typical year) and some Mexican farmers switching from money-losing corn production, instead to profitable marijuana production.
Are there possibly other US influences on Mexico’s economic, drug smuggling, and illegal immigration problems? If the USA is complicit in some of the problems, could the USA also provide some solutions that would be beneficial to both countries? If the USA stopped $4 billion in annual taxpayer NAFTA subsidies to dump NAFTA mandated $3.75 per bushel of US corn at a $2.20 NAFTA enforced price onto Mexican markets, couldn’t that change in US Govt. policy ultimately put $4 billion dollars back into poor Mexican farmer’s pockets, by paying them a fair price for their corn? Would $4 billion in new farm revenues from free-market priced corn sales affect poor Mexican farmers’ decisions to immigrate to the USA? Why not pay Mexican farmers fair free market prices for their corn, allowing them to sell their corn at the same prices as their USDA subsidized brethren to the North?
Are there other areas where US actions have contributed to Mexico’s problems, and the US Media’s reports of Mexico becoming a “failed state”? Did Wall Street’s creative investment banking schemes clearly play a role in the health of the Mexican state and the health of the Mexican economy, after a decade of US Govt approved highly risky investment schemes like: 30:1 margin lending, naked short selling that created over 30 million shares of virtual stock shares (see collapse of Bear Stern and Lehman Brothers), Wall Street’s intentional bundling and peddling of $60 billion in junk/toxic mortgages, and credit default swaps that allowed “investors’ to put (bet) borrowed money on wagers that Hurricane Katrina would destroy homes and cause mortgage holders to default? (Yes, Virginia, you other New Yorkers et al could borrow and bet millions of dollars via taking out insurance policies on other people’s homes that were in the path of Katrina, where if Katrina smashed some poor guy’s home and workplace, so he couldn’t make his mortgage payments, you could get a pay-out on an insurance policy that you took out on his home without his permission – under the crystal-clear name of: credit default swap – paid for by US taxpayers’ bailout of AIG and Goldman Sachs).
Did any of these admirable US Government approved and Govt. Regulated investment policies have anything to do with the economic crises that have rocked the world, with only $3 trillion in related Government losses and $17 trillion in losses to ordinary US families. (Where the US Treasury quietly announced the $17 trillion in US personal family asset losses last May http://thehill.com/…easury-official-says – and we should thank the US media for making us aware of all of these items, so, we can make rational future choices.)
Could the US Govt. approved and regulated policies that allowed, enabled, and effectively created a world-wide financial crisis, have significant effects on Mexico and her citizens? Do US citizens & taxpayers have no culpability in these matters, because US voters have no responsibility for what their government has done for the last 3 decades? Are these situations hopelessly out of control, or could US voters demand change in their Govt’s policies?
Is it clear and unambiguous that all of Mexico’s problems are clearly due solely to SOB (South of the Border) issues, and the USA has no culpability in anything that happens outside her borders? Must all solutions come from Mexico, or does the US have the power to correct the parts that originate North of the Border?
Sources for the above citations: http://en.wikipedia.org/…/Credit_default_swap , http://www.euractiv.com/…ign-debt-news-325532 , http://www.bnet.com/…personal-wealth/5624
There have been repeated claims in US’s big media outlets that the 28,000 deaths and other problems attributed to Narco-Traficante activities should be our only focus when considering US Govt. and US cultural impacts on México, which seems to imply that it is not worth considering USA’s contributions to the problems faced by the other 125 million Mexicans who remain in the after-effects of “the failed Mexican state” and Mexico’s bloody war on drugs. Finally, is it reasonable to assume that the US Govt’s Mérida Initiative also plays no role in the current situation in México?
Has the US public gotten what they paid for, and could old adages apply?:
“Cria cuervos que te sacaran los ojos.”
“We feed / nurture / create the crows that pick-out our eyes.” may still have have a place in our modern world.
Time to take my tongue out of my cheek,
continue being happy,
and know that it truly will somehow all-work-out, due to the resilient and resourceful natures of ordinary Mexicans and Americans,
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Feel free to copy while giving proper attribution: YucaLandia/Surviving Yucatan.
© Steven M. Fry
Read-on MacDuff . . .
Surviving Yucatan 