READ THIS!!

Where there are unresolved political and economic disputes, there will be violence. One would hope disagreements were settled without violence, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Sorting the common criminals from the political dissidents should not be the Army’s job. Although the military remains a respected insitution in this country (and — though it suprises some — historically sympathetic to the left), it loses credibility with the people when it ends up on the “wrong” side.

When this happens, people are going to try to acquire the “skills set” they need to compete. Pancho Villa — to use a famous example — found banditry and cattle rustling the perfect training for his military career. How much it prepared him for his administrative and political one can be disputed. But you see the problem.

What I wrote last September seems to take on new relevance given what Ciro Gómez Leyva called “Mexico’s Tet Offensive” in the “drug war” this past week.   The Administration’s predictable response of throwing more soldiers at the symptoms of a social and economic problem,  are likely to inflame, not calm, a chronic problem that seriously impacts people on both sides of the border.

If you read only one thing this weekend, it should be “So Far From God, So Close to Wall St.” by Jeff Faux in the 3 August 2009 (U.S. magazines newsstand dates sometimes are ahead of the calendar date) The Nation.  Jeff Faux founded the Economic Policy Institute in 1986, which studies the  political and economic issues affecting workers.  Of course, it is biased toward U.S. concerns, but Faux’ analysis of NAFTA brings up the problems created for both the United States and Mexico. A few startling paragraphs:

Several years ago I gave a speech to a group of businesspeople in Mexico City. Those from the multinational banks and corporations thought NAFTA was a great success, but smaller Mexican businessmen saw it differently. You Americans, said one, promised that with your technology and our cheap labor, we’d be partners in competing with Asia. Then you opened up your markets to China and invested there instead. “Sure,” he said. “We can make TV parts for half what it costs in the United States. But the Chinese can make them, and ship them, for a tenth. So instead of closing the gap between Mexico and the United States by raising wages, we have to narrow the gap between Mexico and China by lowering them.”

When I mentioned the conversation to a New York investment banker who had lobbied for NAFTA, he conceded that his side may have talked vaguely about partnership with Mexico. But he shrugged and added, “Things changed”–that is, profit opportunities in China dwarfed anything Mexico had to offer.

The Wall Streeters had little interest in making Mexico more competitive. They also had little interest in making the United States more competitive. Their purpose was just the opposite: to disconnect themselves and their corporate partners from the fate of any particular country. The World Trade Organization, the opening of the US market to China and a parade of bilateral trade agreements followed in NAFTA’s wake.

Faux concentrates on how the present “Narco War” is an unintended — but natural — by-product of NAFTA, suggesting (in plain English, not economic or political jargon) what needs to change:

The entire relationship must be rethought. In this regard, Obama’s abandonment of his campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA was a missed opportunity. A renewed debate over the trade deal could have spurred public discussion of the failure of neoliberal economics, the “war on drugs” and an immigration policy that ignores conditions in Mexico that drive people across the border. It could have been a forum to think through the question of how continental integration can work for working people rather than just investors. For example, what kind of cooperative transportation, energy and green industrial policies would make the people of three nations–now bound together in one market–globally competitive?

Go read it. NOW!

There will be a test.