[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.

                          ____________________