Mexico Week In Review: 12.24-12.30

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 12.24-12.30
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Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS).  CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas.  CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To view newsletter archives, visit: 
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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ACTEAL UPDATE: MAIN MASSACRE SUSPECT REARRESTED

Mexico has rearrested a man accused of ordering the killings of 45 
Indians in the southern state of Chiapas, a massacre that shocked the 
country 10 years ago and which rights groups say remains unsolved. 
Right-wing paramilitaries killed the Tzotzil Indians, including 
pregnant women and children, in the village of Acteal on Dec. 22, 
1997.

The Chiapas state government said in a statement it had arrested 
suspected paramilitary Antonio Santiz, who had previously been 
imprisoned, hours after it named a special prosecutor for the 
long-running Acteal investigation. It was not clear why Santiz had 
previously been released. "This person (Santiz) is considered to be 
... the intellectual author of the massacre at Acteal," said Chiapas 
Justice Minister Amador Rodriguez. Hundreds of people have been 
arrested since 1997 but only a few have been sentenced. Rights groups 
say those sentenced are innocent scapegoats and accuse successive 
governments of protecting the perpetrators.

Source: Reuters: 12/23
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CHIAPAS: GOVERNOR SAYS NO PARAMILITARIES IN HIS STATE

Chiapas Gov. Juan Sabines said in an interview that no paramilitary 
groups exist in that southern Mexican state and insisted that the 
Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN, is now part of the 
political reality of the state and should not be attacked. "My 
government does not see them (the EZLN) as a problem to be solved. 
Many people of Chiapas live in Zapatista communities, they play their 
part on Good Government Committees, and for that reason our first 
proposal towards them is respect for their peaceful struggle," 
Sabines told the daily Milenio.

In office since late 2006, the state governor of the leftist Party of 
the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, denied that any paramilitary 
organizations exist in Chiapas such as those in the 1990s that 
carried out massacres like the one at Acteal that left 45 Tzotzil 
Indians dead on Dec. 22, 1997. "For my government any operations of 
'white guards' or paramilitary groups are intolerable. There's no 
place for them in Chiapas," he said. "The problems we have to solve 
are the exclusion and lack of care for indigenous communities that 
sparked this movement (a reference to the EZLN)," he said. He 
acknowledged that the last group detected with those negative 
characteristics, the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and 
Peasant Rights (Opddic), was deactivated through the arrest of its 
leaders, and said that others of the same type have also been 
disarmed.

Sabines believes that Chiapas in recent years has become one of the 
safest states in Mexico, with no political prisoners, focused on 
development and attracting investment, and where no one continually 
thinks about violence as was the case years ago. The same has 
occurred with the country as a whole, governed since Dec. 1, 2006, by 
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whom he considers "a great ally" 
and "friend" of the inhabitants of Chiapas, one of the poorest states 
in Mexico. EFE

Source: EFE: 12/27
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NAFTA UPDATE: TARIFF'S END RILES FARMERS

Farmers and activists here are planning a series of protests as NAFTA 
enters its final stage on New Year's Day, when the last tariffs and 
quotas on corn, beans, milk and sugar melt away. Opponents of the 
free trade agreement warn that the final lifting of trade barriers 
could spark even more migration from Mexico's devastated countryside 
and leave Mexico dependent on the United States for corn and beans, 
staple dishes since the age of the Aztecs. At least one peasant group 
has said the NAFTA expansion could spark armed rebellion in the 
countryside if President Felipe Calderon's government doesn't do more 
to protect small farmers.

Corn and beans were considered especially sensitive to the Mexican 
economy when the free trade agreement was signed in 1993, and 
officials buffered them with 15 years of gradually dwindling 
protections. Government officials insist the Jan. 1 opening is 
largely symbolic since corn and bean tariffs have mostly been phased 
out already. NAFTA supporters in Mexico say protesters are trying to 
wrest more government aid by exaggerating the impact of the opening. 
"It's an important date because it marks the end of the process," 
said Luis de la Calle, a Mexico City economist who helped negotiate 
the original agreement in the early 1990s. "But in terms of the 
market, there will be very little impact."

But members of Mexico's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or 
PRD, the second-largest party in Congress, have called on Calderon to 
renegotiate the final opening and remove corn and beans from the list 
of unprotected trade goods. Calderon, however, has shown no 
inclination to tinker with the free trade agreement. "The government 
is scared of renegotiating [corn and bean tariffs] because 
renegotiating part could mean renegotiating the whole thing," said 
Jose Romero, a NAFTA expert at the College of Mexico. "And they worry 
renegotiating could send bad signals to international financial 
markets."

Mexican farm associations say the nation's farmers are woefully 
unprepared to face an onslaught of American corn, and they decry the 
large subsidies that U.S. corn farmers receive. Last week the World 
Trade Organization launched an investigation into whether the United 
States has surpassed international limits on so-called trade 
distorting subsidies for its farmers by billions of dollars since 
1999. And American farmers are far more productive than their Mexican 
counterparts. According to the Mexican Institute of Competition, 
American farms produce an average of 22 tons of corn per acre, 
compared with just 6 tons per acre on Mexican farms.
Cruz Lopez, president of the National Farmers Confederation, said 
domestic corn producers fear they will go out of business, unable to 
compete with American imports, and leave Mexico dependent on the 
United States for its basic food needs. "There is an abyss between 
the [subsidies] that we receive and those of the Canadian and U.S. 
farmers," Lopez said. "For us, it is very important to guarantee to 
the Mexican people that we can produce corn and beans."

Mexico imports about 10 million tons of corn annually, compared with 
the 22 million tons it produces domestically. Mexican farmers are 
pushing for more subsidies from the Mexican government, and they are 
predicting dire consequences if they don't receive help. "If this 
refusal to protect the national producers continues on the part of 
the government ... the countryside could take the path of weapons and 
the guerrilla," said Max Correa, leader of the Central Campesina 
Cardenista Peasant, a farmers' advocacy group. "It's not a 
catastrophic vision, it's a reality," he told the Mexican media 
recently.

Since Mexico entered into NAFTA, it has lost nearly 3 million farm 
jobs and seen a massive migration from the countryside to the United 
States. An estimated 80 percent of the 400,000 Mexicans who annually 
migrate to the United States are from rural areas. Many experts say 
that the great bet of NAFTA - that peasant farmers would find jobs in 
a burgeoning Mexican manufacturing industry - hasn't been realized. 
"The U.S. doesn't want them, the manufacturing industry can't absorb 
them, so where do they go?" Romero said. "They don't have the 
political strength to influence policies." Experts say the high 
worldwide price of corn, driven by increased ethanol production, 
should provide a buffer for Mexican farmers, but that could prove 
temporary. The end of sugar tariffs, however, should benefit Mexican 
producers by opening up the lucrative American market, de la Calle 
said. But Mexican sugar producers fret that high production costs in 
Mexico could slow exports to the United States.

Among the protest actions planned are street rallies in various 
Mexican cities and a human chain along the U.S.-Mexico border. 
Protesters have already staged a week-long hunger strike in downtown 
Mexico City. But with the Mexican Congress on holiday recess and 
Calderon uninterested in renegotiating, experts say the chances of 
heading off the Jan. 1 opening are non-existent.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 12/23
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SENATE PROPOSES MORE SEVERE SENTENCES FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The Mexican Senate proposed reforms of the Federal Penal Code to 
punish those who commit sexual violation with prison sentences of up 
to 20 years. Mexican congressman Humberto Andrade Quezada said the 
current Federal Penal Code establishes sentences from 8 to 14 years. 
He specified that sexual violations increase, especially against 
women and young girls, and the project wants to impose more severe 
punishments.

Andrade Quezada said there was a request to elevate the punishment 
for excess of aggressiveness against adolescents up to 7 years of 
prison, when the maximum is four years. He demanded state congresses 
and institutions to revise their judicial frame to promote a greater 
severity and guarantee respect and integrity for women in Mexico.

Mexican human rights and non-governmental organizations regard 
violence against women as a social disease, affecting more than 9 
million Mexican women. Forty-six percent of Mexican women recognized 
having been victims of irritation, emotional or financial, physical 
or sexual abuse, according to a poll by the National Women's 
Institute (INMUJER). "The poll by our specialists revealed the 
existence of domestic violence in 7 of each 10 Mexican homes," said 
Patricia Espinosa, president of INMUJER.

Source: Prensa Latina: 12/23
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SPECIAL REPORT: NAFTA AT FOURTEEN - HISTORIC SHOWDOWN ARRIVES

As the 14th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement 
(NAFTA) fast approaches, rural opponents of the trinational pact are 
stepping up their mobilizations on both sides of the US-Mexico 
border. Mexican farm groups and their supporters are gearing up for 
border-wide actions on January 1, 2008 to protest the final 
elimination of tariffs on corn, bean, sugar and powdered milk.

This month, adherents of the "No Corn, No Country" campaign, a 
movement which has drawn the support of hundreds of rural and urban 
organizations across Mexico, kicked off the latest in a series of 
planned actions with a Mexico City hunger strike that attracted the 
support of artists and intellectuals. In a country where maize is 
part and parcel of a long indigenous history, the specter of foreign 
corn overwhelming local producers and markets is stirring nationalist 
sentiments. "For Mexico, corn and beans are not just food, but they 
are also part of its history and culture," said nationally-known 
cartoonist Jose Hernandez. "With the total opening of Mexico to 
importations, the destruction of the natural patrimony and culture of 
our country is being permitted."

NAFTA's opponents contend Mexico cannot fairly compete with the 
United States and Canada in the production of basic grains. 
Recognizing asymmetries between the nations, the trade pact's 
negotiators allowed a 15-year phase-in for the complete elimination 
of tariffs on agricultural products. As the tariff tear-down date 
draws near, the structural inequalities that existed in 1994 are 
still pronounced today. Cited in a US press story, the Mexican 
Institute of Competition reports that Mexican corn farms yield 6 tons 
per acre compared with the US average yield of 22 tons per acre. 
Other press accounts report that US subsidies for corn growers 
average $20,000 per farmer, while Mexican subsidies amount to about 
$770 per grower. Currently, Mexico produces between 19-21 million 
tons of corn annually, a sum dwarfed by the US yearly production 
total of 300 million tons.

Registering a production deficit, Mexico has grown increasingly 
dependent on corn imports from the US since the advent of NAFTA in 
1994. Annual corn imports of 10 million tons account for nearly 
one-third of the country's corn consumption. In dollar terms, the 
value of basic grain imports leaped from $778 million in 1992 to 
almost $2.5 billion in 2006, according to Daniel Villafuerte Solis, a 
researcher with the Center for Advanced Studies of Mexico and Central 
America (Cesmeca). NAFTA's proponents argued that liberalized trade 
would benefit consumers through lower prices, but the promise has yet 
to materialize in Mexico's corn tortilla market. According to a 
recent story in the Mexico-based Cimac news service, tortilla prices 
have shot up 738 percent since 1994. With international corn prices 
going up in the wake of the ethanol biofuel boom, Mexican corn 
consumers are likely faced with further price increases.

The tortilla price pinch continues as Mexican consumers close out 
2007, the first year of the Calderon administration, paying 35 
percent more for the basic basket of goods than they did in 2006. 
Manufacturing wages have risen only 4.5 percent in the same time 
period, according to the Attorney General for Consumer Protection and 
the Bank of Mexico. Anti-NAFTA activists charge the trade pact has 
resulted in the loss of between 1.8 million and 3 million farm jobs 
during the last 14 years. Mexican Congressman Hector Padilla, the 
president of the agriculture commission in the Chamber of Deputies, 
said the rural hemorrhaging was even worse if statistics from 1991 
are taken into account. According to Padilla, the number of people 
employed in the countryside plummeted from 9.9 million in 1991 to 4.9 
million in 2006. As is widely documented, many of the displaced 
campesinos emigrated to the United States.

"According to the World Bank, the results of NAFTA's application in 
the agricultural sector have been disappointing," Padilla said. "We 
have a countryside in regression, economically stagnated." In a 
snapshot of  many rural communities, researcher Villafuerte studied 
the recent history of Frailesca, Chiapas, an area once known as the 
"breadbasket" of the southern state. According to Villafuerte, farm 
production fell from 169,000 hectares in 1983 to 88,000 in 2005. Like 
many other analysts, Villafuerte predicts the rural problem will only 
worsen after the full implementation of NAFTA next month.

Other researchers challenge contentions that NAFTA is the cause of 
Mexico's deepening farm crisis.  A 2005 study by Braulio Serna of the 
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) 
concluded that NAFTA had little impact on Mexico's countryside. 
Instead of free trade, Serna cited other factors for the rural 
crisis, including government policies, low international commodity 
prices, backward farming methods, climatic conditions, and global and 
national economic crises. Concurring with the ECLAC report, Marcos 
Ramos, an agricultural researcher with the National Autonomous 
University of Mexico, said blaming NAFTA for rural  economic failures 
was an "overly simplistic view.." Mexico City economist Luis de la 
Calle, who participated in the original NAFTA negotiations, said 
recently that the January 1 opening should have little jolting effect 
on a market which has gradually opened over the years.

Perhaps in celebration of NAFTA's 14h birthday, the federal Mexican 
Radio Institute (IMER) has been running spots sponsored by the 
Ministry of Agriculture, Ranching  and Fishing that tout Mexico's 
performance in the global farm market. Featuring the voice of Mexican 
golf champion Lorena Ochoa, the messages stress Mexico's "winning" 
roster of products capable of competing in the world market. 
According to a report in Inter-Press Service, less than four percent 
of the 31 million cultivated acres in Mexico is currently devoted to 
export production. The language employed in the IMER spots is 
reminiscent of the 2006 campaign rhetoric of presidential candidate 
Felipe Calderon who urged a "winning" Mexico.

Among other members of Mexico's political class, however, criticism 
of NAFTA's agricultural provisions is mounting. Politicians from the 
center-left PRD, Convergencia and PT parties, as well as sectors of 
the former ruling PRI, are increasingly calling for changes in the 
trade pact to protect producers of basic grains and other vulnerable 
products. PRD Senator Antonio Mejia Haro said the Mexican Senate's 
rural development commission will conduct forums across the country 
in March and April next year to hear the concerns of rural producers 
and residents. "We are looking at legislative actions that could 
result in the renegotiation of the agricultural chapter of the trade 
agreement," Senator Mejia said. Concerned that reopening NAFTA's 
agricultural sections for negotiation could undermine the treaty as 
whole, as well as send a bad signal to world financial markets, the 
Calderon Administration and its supporters in the center-right PAN 
party are balking at reviewing the farm country clauses.

At the grassroots level, US and Canadian rural advocacy organizations 
including the Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade 
Policy and El Paso's Border Agricultural Workers Union (UTAF) are 
backing the "No Corn, No Country" movement's demands to remove basic 
grains and food staples from NAFTA and safeguard their production in 
Mexico. On January 1, 2008, the Democratic Campesino Front of 
Chihuahua, UTAF and other groups plan a "human wall" at the border in 
El Paso-Ciudad Juarez under the slogan of "No Walls for Corn, No 
Walls for Our People Either." In a December 14 letter sent to the 
heads of state of Mexico, Canada and the United States, scores of 
farm groups from the three nations appealed to the leaders to halt 
the imminent tear-down of NAFTA's remaining agricultural tariffs. 
Until now, no public response to the appeal has been forthcoming from 
the governments.

Sources: Frontera NorteSur (FNS): 12/20; Inter-Press Service: 
12/06,19; Cox News Service/San Francisco Chronicle: 12/20; Prensa 
Latina: 12/16; Frontenet/Notimex: 12/14; Cimacnoticias: 12/14; La 
Jornada: 12/12,13,20; Proceso/Apro: 12/11,12

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The above articles were originally published and copyrighted by the 
listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes 
which CIS maintains is  'fair use' of copyrighted material as 
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

end: Mexico Week In Review: 12.24-12.30
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