[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 16, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2256-H2259]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REPORT OF CHURCH LEADER DELEGATION TO MEXICO WITH REGARD TO EFFECTS OF
NAFTA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wish to extend my sincere appreciation to
the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for allowing me to precede
him here this evening. He is always very gracious and accommodating to
other Members.
Mr. Speaker, this evening I begin what will be a series of 5-minute
speeches to place in the Record information about a very important trip
on our continent that was taken by religious leaders of Canada to
Mexico in a fact-finding trip subsequent to the passage of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA.
They traveled there in late March and early April, and in fact have
produced probably one of the finest documents I have had the
opportunity to read regarding what has happened in the last 7 years
post-NAFTA. The delegation included representatives of the Presbyterian
Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the United
Church of Canada, the Canadian Religious Conference, and the Inter-
Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America. They traveled
throughout Mexico to all different regions, and this evening I will
only talk about a few of the areas that they visited.
The compelling report that they have produced tells all of us who are
going to be faced very shortly with a vote on fast-track extension, to
move NAFTA to expand its concepts to all of Latin America, to think
twice about what we are doing and to go back and redress some of the
horrendous conditions that the original NAFTA agreement has created in
our own country and in the other two major nations on this continent,
Canada and Mexico.
The group first visited the Sierra Tarahumara, which is in the
central part of the country in the region of Chihuahua, and I will only
read parts of their written report. They begin saying, ``In the once
densely forested mountains of the Tarahumara Sierra, we met with the
indigenous communities of San Alonso, who gave us a letter for our
government, signed with their thumbprints that pleads for 'an end to
the impoverishment of our people.' ''
[[Page H2257]]
They said, ``People here once lived from agriculture and from selling
small amounts of timber, but changes to forestry controls under free
trade have brought multinational corporations and clear-cutting. Soils
for food crops are eroding,'' and it is important to say the soil layer
in Mexico is very thin. For them, it is survival.
They said, ``Laws have been imposed that favor companies from other
countries. The local Catholic Church referred to legislation that had
preceded NAFTA's passage, and said these laws have enabled much wealth
to be taken from the Sierra, leaving behind growing poverty.''
They said, ``We saw the impact of this in the ulcerated sightless
corneas of a child, whose mother had nothing to feed him now, but a
soup of ground corn. We sat with an indigenous woman who had brought
her dying baby to a dispensary run by nuns, and heard that 48 percent
of infants in the Sierra die before the age of 5 because of chronic
malnutrition. Other than suicide, a new phenomenon in these indigenous
communities, the nuns told us, many see only two alternatives: To
cultivate marijuana or poppies for drug traffickers or to migrate north
in search of work, abandoning ancestral land, breaking up families and
splintering communities.''
They said, ``In the community of Baborigame, we heard how 48 percent
of children die before the age of 5 from poverty-induced chronic
malnutrition. We personally witnessed the desperation of mothers of
children who had died. The Carmelite Sisters told us that the situation
is worsening. Indigenous people who once were able to eat corn and
beans now often can only afford to eat a soup of ground corn, and
lately they also have witnessed a new cause of death previously unheard
of in these historic indigenous communities, suicides due to sheer
hopelessness.''
The report goes on to talk about policies associated with NAFTA have
effectively privatized what were once community lands, or ejido lands,
that provided rural and indigenous communities with guaranteed land in
perpetuity. Unable to get a just price for their products and saddled
with overwhelming and unpayable debts, Mexican farmers are increasingly
being forced to sell those lands, leading to a growing concentration of
land in few hands.
They say those buying up the land and who are renting from farmers
unable to make a go of it, including multinationals like PepsiCo, have
basically used the land now to produce potatoes for the fast food
market in our three countries.
Mr. Speaker, I will continue in the future. I will enter this
particular report in the Record.
Report of the Ecumenical Church Leaders Delegation to Mexico--March 28-
April 6, 2001
introduction
From March 28 to April 6, 2001, five Canadian church
leaders travelled to Mexico as part of an ecumenical fact-
finding delegation organized by the Inter-Church Committee on
Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA). The delegation was
made up of: Rev. Glen Davis, Moderator of the Presbyterian
Church of Canada; Mgr. Jean Gagnon, Auxiliary Bishop of
Quebec City; Archbishop Thomas Morgan, Anglican Diocese of
Saskatoon; the Very Rev. Robert Smith, former Moderator of
the United Church of Canada; Sr. Priscilla Solomon, Canadian
Religious Conference; Suzanne Rumsey and Kathy Price, Inter-
Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America.
The delegation's mission was to explore the impact of the
North American Free Trade Agreement--along with free trade
policies and legislative changes that were implemented prior
to 1994 in order to make Mexico ``NAFTA-ready''--on human
rights. The delegation's time in Mexico focused on three
areas: visits with indigenous and non-indigenous communities
in the Sierra Tarahumara; visits with communities of small
farmers in Central Chihuahua; visits with workers and
migrants in the Special Border Zone of Ciudad Juarez.
the sierra tarahumara
In the southern mountain region of the state of Chihuahua,
known as the Sierra Tarahumara, our delegation visited
indigenous communities where we heard how privatization of
state Forestry Services and the lifting of controls over
logging--policies implemented in the lead up to the signing
of the North American Free Trade Agreement--have coincided
with the arrival of transnational forestry companies and
intensive, largely unregulated logging. This has resulted in
the denuding of forests that once provided edible plants,
medicinal herbs and a livelihood to the Tepahuane, Raramuri
and Huichol indigenous peoples, along with growing
desertification, depletion of soils and shrinking of
agricultural harvests. Meanwhile, we were told that NAFTA has
enabled cheap wood imports to enter Mexico from countries
such as the United States, Chile, Brazil and even Russia (via
the U.S.), driving down the price that indigenous communities
can obtain for the timber resources on their land,
contributing to growing poverty as well as pressure to cut
down more and more trees in order to make a living.
``We want the impoverishment of our people to end,'' states
a simple yet eloquent letter we were given, signed by 73
members of the indigenous community of San Alonso, who asked
us to pass it on to you. We have attached their letter to
ours and ask you to read its urgent plea for controls to stop
the degradation of their environment by the rapacious
operations of multinational corporations. Efforts by
communities to halt these practices have been largely
ignored, or worse still, met with threats and violence.
The Catholic Diocese of the Tarahumara told us in
unequivocal terms that NAFTA is to blame for the increased
clearcutting by multinational companies that are destroying
the region's forests. Indeed, the Diocese told us they have
brought a complaint to the Commission for Environmental
Cooperation in Montreal citing violations of Articles 14 and
15 of the NAFTA side agreement but to no avail. In ``Our Word
About the Destruction of the Forest'' the Diocese states:
``Laws have been imposed that favour companies from other
countries . . . These laws have enabled much wealth to leave
the Sierra, leaving behind growing poverty . . . Exploitation
of the forest has brought no benefits to the majority of the
inhabitants of the Sierra . . . If we do not halt the
destruction, we are heading for death.''
In the community of Baborigame, we heard how 48 percent of
children die before the age of five from preventable diseases
that result from poverty-induced chronic malnutrition. We
personally witnessed the desperation of a mother whose baby
would have died, had the Carmelite sisters, who run a small
dispensary, not taken him to the nearest hospital, three
hours away. The Carmelite sisters also told us that the
situation is worsening; indigenous people who once ate corn
and beans, now often can only afford to eat a soup of ground
corn and lately they have witnessed a new cause of death,
previously unheard of in indigenous communities; suicides due
to sheer hopelessness.
In such a context, many indigenous inhabitants feel they
have little option but to choose between two terrible
alternatives: abandon their land and migrate north in search
of work (a process that is causing family, community and
cultural disintegration) or turn to cultivating drugs like
marijuana and poppies, illicit crops which unlike others,
fetch a price that enables them to feed their families. Drug
trafficking is present throughout the Sierra because there is
no work, we were told by the Diocese of Tarahumara. ``The
people need to survive in this impoverished mountain
region.'' We were outraged at the price these people are
paying for their survival.
We also heard from the respected, church-based Commission
for Solidarity and the Defence of Human Rights (COSYDDHAC)
how instead of providing solutions to the hard economic
realities and growing poverty that have forced some into drug
cultivation, the Mexican government has militarized the
region. COSYDDHAC has documented arbitrary detentions,
torture, disappearances and assassinations committed by the
police and military, who justify their actions in the name of
the ``war on drugs''. In a joint letter to the Mexican
government that was shared with us, Bishop Jose Luis Dibildox
and 28 priests, religious and lay workers stated: ``The
methods used by the army create a doubt in the minds of the
public as to what is the real aim of their actions, which in
some instances seem to be responding to other interests, such
as the militarization of Mexico, especially in indigenous
regions.''
In Baborigame, we witnessed the trauma and terror that
repression by state security forces is causing amongst
inhabitants of the community. We witnessed the pain of people
whose relatives were shot down in cold blood, victims who
included a local indigenous leader. We share the grave
concern of the Tarahumara Diocese that ``instead of seeking
ways to ease tensions, and bring about well-being and peace,
we see actions that will bring war and death.''
The Farming Region of Central Chihuahua
In rural communities in the state of Chihuahua, we
witnessed the terrible human impact on small farmers of
policies that have consciously neglected and excluded them.
Since the implementation of policies that were entrenched in
NAFTA, communities where families once made a living from
farming basic grains for local markets and their own
consumption have found it increasingly difficult to survive.
As a result, men of working age are forced to abandon their
farms and migrate north in search of temporary jobs. Many of
them work illegally in the United States, having been unable
to obtain a work visa. As a result, they are paid
exploitative wages and denied the rights and benefits
accorded to others.
The suffering caused by these realities was evident in our
conversations with inhabitants of the communities we visited.
``We have become half men because we are no longer able to
provide for our families. We can no longer be husbands to our
wives, or fathers to our children,'' we were told by
[[Page H2258]]
small farmers who must leave their communities in search of
work for 4 to 5 months at a time. This means the women, as
they told us, ``are left to assume the roles of both women
and men'', taking on a triple work load of caring for their
homes and families, looking after their farms, and often
seeking paid work in order to feed their children.
The exodus from the countryside, as we were told by the
respected Democratic Campesino Organization, as well as many
of the farming families we met with, is a direct result of
economic policies that were enacted to make Mexico NAFTA-
ready. Unlike in the United States--and to a lesser extent in
Canada--where basic grains producers continue to be
subsidized for the costs of production, subisidies to corn
producers in Mexico were competely phased out in 1997, 12
years ahead of schedule, thus creating an unlevel playing
field. Moreover, since NAFTA came into effect in 1994,
tariffs have been lifted and cheap corn and beans from the
U.S. have flooded the Mexican market, making it impossible
for Mexico producers to compete. In addition, free market
policies that began prior to 1994 but which have been made
permanent in NAFTA, have resulted in the elimination of
credit for small farmers, leaving them at the mercy of local
loan sharks who charge usurious interest rates.
All of these policies have had a predictable effect, one
which was impossible to ignore in the faces of those we met
with: increasing poverty and increasing desperation as
families worry how they will get by from one day to the next.
As in the Sierra Tarahumara, we heard of families reduced to
a diet of cornmeal soup, and of the existence of preventable
diseases due to chronic malnutrition. It is this situation,
in which vast numbers are robbed of their very dignity, that
is forcing people to leave in search of other means to
survive, provoking family and community disintegration in the
process.
Policies associated with NAFTA have also effectively
privatized what were once communal or ejido lands, that
provided rural and indigenous communities with a guaranteed
land base in perpetuity. Unable to get a just price for their
products and saddled with overwhelming and unpayable debts,
Mexican farmers are increasingly being forced to sell those
lands, leading to growing concentration of land in few
hands. Those buying up the land or renting from farmers
unable to make a go of it,--including multinationals like
PepsiCo--have used vast extensions to produce potatoes for
the fast food markets of the three NAFTA countries. In an
arid state where we were told that ``water is gold,''
PepsiCo was able to obtain access to wells, which small
farmers had been denied, and its large scale irrigation
has reduced the already alarmingly low water table. This,
together with extensive use of chemical fertilizers and
pesticides has meant that arable land is being destroyed,
and with it, the means for rural Mexicans to be guaranteed
the basic human right to adequate nutrition and food
security.
It is clear to us that one of the factors that is fueling
this crisis in the countryside is that a significant
proportion of Mexico's gross domestic product is being used
to service its foreign debt. We wish to share with you what
we were told by the Democratic Campeesino Organization, a
position which we support: ``Developing countries like Mexico
need to have food security and policies that guarantee that
security, because if they don't, the 40 million people who
live in poverty and the 20 million people who live in extreme
poverty in Mexico will continue to migrate north.''
Ciudad Juarez
In the border city of Ciudad Juarez--home to 397 maquila
factories employing 281,000 workers that assemble electronics
products and car parts for export to the United States and
Canada--we saw where many whose means of survival has been
eliminated under free trade in the Tarahumara Sierra, or the
failed farms of the plains of Chihuahua, end up. It is a
reality we would not wish on anyone. The political leaders of
this hemisphere have, on numerous occasions, told their
citizens it will take time for the benefits of free trade to
be realized and equitably shared. In Ciudad Juarez we came
face to face with what 30 years of free trade has wrought on
countless human lives. That is because the city has operated
as a free trade zone since the 1970s, when the first maquila
assembly factories were established under rules that provide
generous incentives for foreign investors, while workers are
paid what can only be called exploitative wages and denied
rights which Canadian workers take for granted. What we saw
in Cuidad Juarez is nothing less than economic slavery.
Until the recent recession in the United States,
unemployment in Cuidad Juarez stood at an astonishing 0
percent. Yet 58 percent of those fully employed workers and
their families live below the poverty line. Of that total 18
percent live in poverty and 40 percent live in extreme
poverty. In 1976, a maquila worker earned a salary in pesos
that was the equivalent of US$11 a day, yet the value of that
salary is now as little as just US$4.50 a day, due to
currency devaluations under free trade. As one maquila worker
put it, ``You have the choice to clothe yourself or to feed
yourself.''
What does a maquila salary buy? We visited several colonias
where maquila workers have no choice but to live and this was
how one member of our delegation described his reaction: ``I
stood in the dust and saw houses pulled together, framed with
packing pallets from the maquila, and covered with cardboard.
I saw the barrels that once carried chemicals to the maquilas
with their dwindling supply of tepid, unpotable water. And
you know what I discovered? I discovered that these people
are employed 10 to 16 hours a day producing cheap microwaves,
cheap TVs, cheap computers for Canada. And our government
says, ``NAFTA is a good deal for Canada!' Mr. Prime Minister,
you have not been to this shantytown. A day's work for a
salary equivalent to the cost of a jug of milk is not a good
deal for anyone! If my car is cheaper because of what I saw
here, that is unacceptable.''
In Juarez, we saw with our own eyes what a local priest had
told us, you can work for a Fortune 500 company and live in a
cardboard house. Indeed, we were appalled at the living
conditions of thousands upon thousands of people who exist
without decent housing, and without access to essential
social services like water, sanitation, health care, and
education.
Time and again, we heard from young workers about the
dehumanizing impact of the highly controlled environment of
the maquilas. Assembly lines are often sped up by supervisors
in order to meet high production quotas, approval must be
obtained for bathroom breaks, which are carefully timed and
future breaks denied if the time is exceeded. Workers told us
they are treated ``like a machine, a cog in the wheel.''
Exhausted young women workers, demoralized by salaries that
do not afford the means for anything more than basic
survival, added: ``The maquilas have robbed us of our dreams
for a better future.''
Workers also told us they are fearful about the long term
effects of being exposed to chemical solvents without
adequate protection, in denial of their right to a healthy
work environment. As we heard repeatedly: ``The only
right people have here is the right of a job. But in
reality that's nothing more than the right to be
exploited.''
None of the maquila workers we spoke to in Juarez had the
right to unionize freely to defend their rights. The
experience of workers who have tried to challenge such a
situation was brought home painfully to us by the testimony
we received from maquila worker, Pedro Lopez, from the state
of Tamaulipas. Mr. Lopez told us about his experience trying
to help organize an independence union at the Duro Bag
Company, a maquila where labour rights were routinely
violated. The first such initiative to occur under the new
administration of President Vicente Fox, the vote took place
on March 2, in what can only be described as conditions of
fear, intimidation and violence. Workers were locked inside
the factory and had to declare their vote verbally (rather
than a secret ballot) in the presence of heavily armed men
(who the day before had entered the plant with machine guns),
hired by the ``official'' union affiliated with Mexico's
former ruling PRI party. International and Mexican observers
were not allowed to enter. Needless to say, the independent
union lost the vote. The following day, Mr. Lopez had to be
hospitalized when his vehicle was forced off the road by two
others, the ``accident'' leaving a scar still visible on his
face.
The 3 metre high fence that runs along the border with the
United States--a sign that desperate people from other parts
of Mexico can come to Juarez to be a source of cheap labour
in the maquila factories but are not welcome any further
north--was always visible during our stay. Visible too was
the militarized U.S. border patrol, posted along the fence at
regular intervals. Borders between Canada, the United States
and Mexico under NAFTA have been opened to the free passage
of goods and capital but not to people.
It is deeply troubling to us that a wall has been erected
on the border between the United States and Mexico under
NAFTA, in contrast to the experience of Europe, where the
Berlin Wall has been dismantled and the European Union has
opened up its borders to increased movement of workers
between member countries. As we heard from social
organizations in Juarez, militarizing the border does not
stop those desperate for the means to adequately provide for
their families from trying to get across. It only makes the
crossing more dangerous, as those attempting to get into the
US take greater risks, such as picking routes that require
days walking in the desert or other hazards. A study by the
University of Houston recorded over 300 deaths during border
crossings in 2000.
____
A Visit to Northern Mexico Shows Just How Badly Economic Democracy is
Needed--But Will the Summit of the Americas Address That Challenge?--
April 2001
Mexican President Vicente Fox's arrival in Canada is sure
to occasion, on the part of apologists eager to have the
Summit of the Americas extend free market policies, rhetoric
that would be more suitable for the Second Coming. For they
regard it as gospel that it was the North American Free Trade
Agreement that brought democracy--and President Fox--to
Mexico.
Fox is, by all accounts, a gifted and concerned leader, but
I'd like to ask him and his NAFTA partners how they square
the supposed arrival of democracy with the fence--steel,
chain-linked, three metres high and guarded by armed Border
Patrols at regular intervals--that I saw along Mexico's
border with the United States.
It's a strange, capricious fence. Trucks roar through its
gates night and day, loaded
[[Page H2259]]
with goods. Money floods over it; investments heading south,
profits heading north. Canadians and Americans pass through,
with only a cursory glance from officials. For Mexicans--at
least, for the now 58 percent of Mexicans who live in
grinding poverty despite their country's ``rapid economic
growth''--it's a different story. The fence is there to keep
them out.
Earlier this month, I travelled to northern Mexico with
other Canadian church leaders to see what has happened to
those the fence was built to retain.
In the once densely-forested mountains of the Tarahumara
Sierra, we met with the indigenous community of San Alonso
who gave us a letter for our government, signed with their
thumbprints, that pleads for ``an end to the impoverishment
of our people''. People here once lived from agriculture and
from selling small amounts of timber. But changes to forestry
controls under free trade have brought multinational
companies and clear cutting. Soils for food crops are
eroding. ``Laws have been imposed that favour companies from
other countries,'' says the local Catholic Church, referring
to legislation that paved the way for NAFTA. ``These laws
have enabled much wealth to be taken from the Sierra, leaving
behind growing poverty.''
We saw the impact in the ulcerated, sightless corneas of a
child whose mother had nothing to feed him but a soup of
ground corn. We sat with an indigenous woman who had brought
her dying baby to a dispensary run by nuns, and heard that 48
percent of infants in the Sierra die before the age of five
because of chronic malnutrition. Other than suicide--a new
phenomenon in indigenous communities, the nuns told us--many
see only two alternatives: cultivate marijuana or poppies for
drug traffickers or migrate north in search of work,
abandoning ancestral land, breaking up families, and
splintering communities.
In the farmland of Chihuahua, families who used to make a
living growing corn and beans have also seen their livelihood
destroyed by so-called free trade. Promised that NAFTA would
greatly improve their lot, Mexican corn producers saw
subsidies eliminated by 1997--12 years ahead of schedule--
along with credit for small farmers. Meanwhile, the lifting
of tariffs has allowed a flood of cheap corn and beans from
the U.S., where farmers can access 5 percent loans and
subsidies at 46 percent of the cost of production. Unable to
compete, Mexican farming families are struggling to survive.
Once again, we heard how people are reduced to eating little
other than corn and we witnessed the agony of families torn
asunder, communities dispersed, as former farmers are forced
north to the squalor of the border or the perils of crossing
illegally into the United States, in search of the means to
sustain their children.
Our last stop was Juarez, on the border with Texas, a city
rapidly expanding with newcomers from the Sierra, from
abandoned farms, and other parts of Mexico that have only got
poorer under NAFTA. Many have been lured by the promise of a
job in one of some 400 maquila factories that assemble car
parts or electronics for Fortune 500 companies selling to
North American consumers. ``The maquila has stolen our
dreams of a better future'', exhausted women barely out of
their teens, told us, explaining the pressures of the
assembly line, impossibly high production quotas,
repetitive motion injuries and salaries of just US $4.50 a
day.
Others told us about employment conditions that beggar
description: forced to work unprotected in the presence of
dangerous chemicals, their right to organize unions thwarted
by managers who bring in thugs armed with automatic weapons.
Earning in a day the equivalent of a two-litre jug of milk,
workers are condemned to slums, without potable water or
sanitation, where many live in hovels made of discarded
pallets, covered with cardboard.
``Good fences make good neighbors.'' That's what the poet
Robert Frost's neighbour told him one spring day when they
were out surveying the winter-ravaged stone wall that ran
between their properties. Frost wasn't so sure. He wrote,
``Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in
or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense.''
The work that Messrs. Fox, Bush, Chretien and their
colleagues do this weekend will be an offense if it does not
address the unconscionable disparity between rich nations,
like Canada and the United States, and poor nations, like
Mexico. Policies such as those enshrined in NAFTA, which
guarantee the free play of market forces, are an offense
because they deny that which is the first democratic right--
the right not to starve to death. Then they compound the
offence by building barriers--steel, chain-linked, three
metres high--to wall the hungry out.
The day the fence is no longer necessary will be the day to
celebrate the arrival of democracy--true democracy--in the
hemisphere.
____________________