FIGHT AGAINST EXPLOITATION AND NEOLIBERALISM: EZLN AND NAFTA TURN TEN/PART2
The major food, textile and clothes industries â and other sectors as well (think no further than the âmaquiladorasâ, the textile factories that have sprung up in the State of Chihuahua, on the border between Mexico and the United States, and of the high level of exploitation of the women who work there) â have also been able to take advantage of the same benefits, with the same results. Taking advantage of the lack of clear legislation in the field of environmental protection, and relying on âthe elimination of customs barriers, the promotion of the conditions for free competition, the increase of investment in the three member countries, and the defence of intellectual property rightsâ enshrined under article 102 of the treaty, these large American manufacturers have made Mexico their ideal base for increasing revenue and reducing costs, crushing the traditional local economy but also causing the loss of 525,000 jobs in the United States, against the 170,000 new jobs promised by Washington by the end of the first ten years of the treaty. Furthermore, the lack of clear norms regarding environmental protection, food security, the transportation of goods and banking activities are causing considerable economic losses â besides the loss in terms of sovereignty â for Mexico. Think no further than the possibility provided by the treaty for companies and investors to demand compensation for âindirect expropriationâ â that is to say, for any action by the government of that country, even if aimed at protecting the environment or food safety, which might reduce the value of a foreign investment on its territory. The example is provided by a Californian company which, in August 2000, obtained from the Mexican government damages to the value of almost 17 million dollars because a city council in the Central American country had ruled out the construction of a plant for treating industrial waste in a high environmental impact area. This, and the fact that, according to the American Centre for Economic and Political Research (CEPR), in the last ten years the gross domestic product per head in Mexico has increased by only nine percentage points (a fifth of that registered in the 1960s and 1970s), is at odds with the satisfaction of Washington and the World Bank â as well as Canada and Mexico â with an accord which, as the Zapatista have understood perfectly, has had the sole result of increasing the wealth of those who were already wealthy and of destroying local productivity, binding the national and local economies in Mexico ever more closely to the intentions of the large international groups based in the United States. (Translation of an article by Luca Leone)
[LC]
