Globaleyes

On the Move: A Mexican perspective on globalization

By Ana Paula Hernández

This is the second in a series of articles on economic globalization with an international perspective sponsored by the Peace Ministries Program of MCC Canada.

 

It is possible that the indigenous people who farm in the Mountain region of Guerrero, one of the poorest regions in Mexico, have never heard the term “globalization.” However, they are well aware of its meaning. They have very real insight into how globalization has impacted their communities, their families, and their hopes and possibilities for the future.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed between Mexico, Canada and the United States in 1992, has brought a serious crisis to the Mexican countryside. Although rural and indigenous communities have always lived in poverty and exclusion, for hundreds of years they were able to live off their lands. The crops they grew provided them with food for their families and with minimal income to buy necessities.

When the NAFTA agreement came into effect in 1994, cheap products started coming into Mexico, particularly from the United States. They could be sold at very low prices due to the large subsidies provided by the US government to American farmers. Suddenly, the Mexican people who used to live off their crops couldn’t compete, and therefore could not sell their crops for a fair price.

The majority of rural and indigenous communities in Mexico simply cannot survive off their crops anymore. They have had to find other ways to survive. In the Mountain region of Guerrero, in southwestern Mexico, the only other option is to migrate.

In this region, an estimated 80 percent of the families have at least one member who has migrated. A small percentage of the population migrates to the United States but it is very difficult for many families to raise the 25,000 Mexican pesos (about $2300 US dollars) to pay a pollero (the Mexican term for people paid to help migrants illegally cross the border). Therefore, the majority migrate to northern Mexico to work in the agricultural fields for four or five months each year. With what they earn during that harvest season these internal migrants, otherwise called agricultural workers, and their families return to their communities and try to survive the entire year.

This situation has turned agricultural workers into one of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, particularly when they are indigenous. Their fundamental human rights are regularly violated. It starts in their home communities, which usually lie in the region’s poorest municipalities, with little access to health, education, adequate housing and employment. The violations continue throughout the hiring process, through their transportation in unsafe vehicles, and most importantly, to their experiences in the fields. As agricultural migrants, the rights to adequate housing, education, and health services are simply not a reality.

Neither are labour rights. Many times the companies only transport workers to the agricultural camps but not back to their places of origin. Children are commonly employed without any pay, and if the harvest is bad even the adults don’t receive the promised payment. If the workers suffer an accident or are killed while working in the camps, the employers take no responsibility.

These workers and their families arrive in a land that is not their own, where many of them speak Spanish poorly, if at all, making them particularly vulnerable to abuses by authorities.

What makes the situation even more serious is that internal migration does not help the home communities of workers. With international migration, workers are often able to send financial remittances back to their home communities, thus helping to improve some conditions there. Internal migration, however, has had no effect on the marginalization and extreme poverty of the sending communities.

But worst of all, there is no hope that this will change anytime in the near future. On the contrary, the situation is going to become worse. By 2008, all remaining tariffs on products coming in from the United States and Canada are to be eliminated, including tariffs on commodities basic to the survival of the Mexican population such as corn and beans. Meanwhile, subsidies to farmers by the US government will continue.

The implications of globalization for countries like Mexico are grave. Globalization is clearly part of the structural causes that keep the majority of Mexicans in poverty, with no access to fundamental social and economic rights, and with few possibilities of changing this situation.

If there is to be hope, the Mexican government needs to change its approach to combating poverty. For example, the government needs to renegotiate the agricultural chapter within NAFTA, and the US government must demonstrate the will to reduce its subsidies. Otherwise, the vast majority of the population, such as the indigenous men and women of the Mountain region of Guerrero, will continue to be condemned to a life of migration.

 

Ana Paula Hernández is a sociologist who was born Mexico City. For six years she worked in the Miguel Agustín Pro Juaréz Human Rights Center, and three years ago left Mexico City with her husband to work in a human rights center in the Mountain region of Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest regions. She is currently the deputy director of Tlachinollan Human Rights Center in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero, dedicated to the defense and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples.

 

The perspectives included in Globaleyes do not necessarily reflect MCC opinion.