------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 7, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL: BUSH & FOX When the long-dead bodies of 11 Mexican workers were found in a locked boxcar in Iowa in mid-October, the world got a small glimpse of the terrible tragedy that has befallen the Mexican people since the NAFTA agreement went into effect. After the elections of George W. Bush in the United States and Vicente Fox in Mexico two years ago, the two leaders met and came away all smiles. A new relationship would be forged between the imperialist giant and the neighbor it has oppressed since stealing half its territory in the 1840s. U.S. markets would be opened to Mexican products and an agreement would be reached allowing Mexicans to work legally in the United States. Now the bubble has burst. When Fox and Bush talked to reporters after meeting in Los Cabos on Mexico's Baja peninsula on Oct. 25 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, "they were unsmiling, sat far apart and barely looked at each other." (Washington Post, Oct. 28) Bush had tried to line up Fox to vote in the United Nations Security Council for the U.S. resolution endorsing a war on Iraq. Fox declined, as did all the other Pacific Rim leaders. Fox had tried to get Bush to live up to his promises about improving the economic relationship with Mexico. Bush played hardball. NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexico. The U.S. now has a huge trade surplus with Mexico in agricultural products--and not because of "free trade," but because the U.S. government subsidizes agribusiness giants to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Corn produced by these huge corporations has flooded the Mexican market and bankrupted hundreds of thousands of small farmers there. The result? An upsurge in the number of desperate people risking death to cross the border just to get less-than-minimum-wage jobs in the United States. Bush, instead of working out a plan to allow for immigrant Mexican labor, has tightened the restrictions that make these workers "illegal" and subject to harassment and even death. No wonder Fox can't hold his head up at home. The brave new world he had promised the Mexican people was a total illusion. Imperialism only takes; it concedes nothing without a struggle. Fox, the former head of Coca-Cola's Mexican operation, is in no way the person to lead that struggle. The horrible irony of this period in history is that hunger and suffering are on the rise globally because the productivity of labor has risen so much with the scientific and technological revolutions of the recent period. Humanity's ability to produce has far outstripped the straightjacket of capitalist private property and its insatiable thirst for profit. More corn means more hungry people when it should mean no hungry people. Capitalism long ago evolved into imperialism, where the corporations and banks of a few highly industrialized countries, with the U.S. at the very top, hold the rest of the world hostage, demanding the ransom of super-profits every day. That's what drives the aggressive policies and insulting demeanor of the U.S. president toward the rest of the world. This should only spur on the movement here to extend a hand of solidarity to workers of all nationalities, here and abroad, while repudiating the imperialist globalization of the transnational corporations that spread misery and war around the world. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
