Farmers in poorer southern region demand changes to free-trade treaty
Charlotte Observer | Sun, Aug. 06, 2006
FARMERS IN POORER SOUTHERN REGION DEMAND CHANGES TO FREE-TRADE TREATY
Mexico sees north-south divide over NAFTA
Apparent president-elect, U.S. unlikely to renegotiate provisions in 1994 pact
KEVIN G. HALL, JANET SCHWARTZ JAY ROOT
McClatchy Newspapers
URUAPAN, Mexico — Felipe Calderon’s contested, razor-thin victory in Mexico’s presidential election last month is likely to force his attention toward the underdeveloped south, where poor farmers want to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The treaty with the United States and Canada took effect in 1994, but delayed complete free trade in the most politically sensitive farm products until 2007 and 2008. These include sugar and orange juice imports into the U.S. market and corn and beans into Mexico.
Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised on the campaign trail to renegotiate NAFTA’s agricultural provisions with an eye toward protecting homegrown corn and beans. That helped him carry most of Mexico’s south.
Mexico’s industrialized north, which has benefited greatly from the trade deal, voted overwhelmingly for Calderon, a pro-business conservative. Over the 12 years of NAFTA’s existence, Mexico’s north has attracted billions of dollars in investment, much of it from the U.S. auto industry.
General Motors recently broke ground on a $650 million plant in San Luis Potosi, and a document leaked to the news media this year shows that Ford Motor Co. is considering an investment of $9.2 billion in Mexico over the next six years.
There’s nothing comparable in Mexico’s poorer south, which lacks the highways, ports, flush banks and geographic ties to the United States enjoyed by Mexico’s north.
NAFTA has brought a flood of cheap corn imports for livestock. When coupled with falling human corn consumption in Mexico by its growing middle class, that has sunk prices for corn grown in the south.
Rightly or wrongly, many southerners blame NAFTA, as does Lopez Obrador.
"I think this is demagoguery," said Jaime Zabludovsky, a top NAFTA negotiator for Mexico. "NAFTA cannot resolve all of Mexico’s problems and it wasn’t supposed to." But even Zabludovsky acknowledges that the south hasn’t shared equally in NAFTA’s benefits.
That’s not to say that NAFTA has been all bad for Mexican farmers.
Times have never been better for Juan Calderon Garcia, a 62-year-old nursery owner who sells just one product: avocado saplings. NAFTA has fostered a boom for his city of Uruapan, about 265 miles west of Mexico City, whose entrance sign boasts in Spanish, "The World’s Avocado Capital."
NAFTA opened the U.S. market, and initial restrictions were eased in January 2005, allowing Mexico to export to 47 U.S. states. Calderon Garcia, who’s no relation to the apparent president-elect, is selling twice as many saplings as a year ago, and expects to sell 40,000 to 50,000 this year.
It’s a different story for Miguel Santiago, a farmer in Santa Maria El Tule, a village in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca. For him, NAFTA might as well have been negotiated with Jupiter. Cheap U.S. corn has driven down prices in Mexico, Santiago and others say.
"Good times are when we have enough to eat," said Santiago, 66.
Ten years ago, Oaxacan marketplaces brimmed with locally produced corn. Now Mexicans buy sacks of U.S.-grown corn for a fraction of what it used to cost, said Chuck Collins, a scholar with the liberal Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.
"They can’t really compete with the price of U.S. corn. The land is going fallow and some rural towns are more like ghost towns," he said. "If you own a restaurant (in Mexico) or you are just making tortillas, your corn isn’t grown in Oaxaca anymore. It’s grown in Nebraska."
As a result, farmers leave to seek work in sprawling urban centers such as Mexico City or cross illegally into the United States.
In a news conference after his apparent election, Calderon acknowledged that he must show real results in Mexico’s impoverished south, but stressed that he won’t seek a NAFTA renegotiation to help corn farmers.
Given rising protectionist sentiment in the U.S. Congress, he said, it was doubtful that Mexico would be an "easy winner" in any renegotiation.
Besides, some powerful U.S. lobbies are flexing their muscles.
"We will oppose very strongly any renegotiation of NAFTA. This is a trade agreement that’s worked for the U.S. and it’s worked well for Mexico," said Jon Doggett, vice president of public policy for the National Corn Growers Association of St. Louis.
The Bush administration also has ruled out reopening NAFTA. But some veteran businessmen think that Calderon will find a sympathetic ear for some plan to delay the full opening to corn imports.
"I think they’ll work out it out. Maybe they’ll put it off a year to let Calderon have some time to get his feet on the ground," said Al Zapanta, the president of the Washington-based U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce. "My sense is there will be an accommodation."
