Location
You are invited to our first of five educational sessions this winter entitled Extracting profits: Perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Mexico and the burden of "free trade" -- NAFTA capitalist devastation and community resistance
Rachel Mehl and Aaron Samsel of Toronto Bolivia Solidarity will give a short introduction after which we will break up into small discussion groups.
Mexico entered into NAFTA with the U.S. and Canada in 1994, beginning a new era of supranational capitalist trade. Mexico’s experience is a critical reference point in understanding corporate interest in expanding free trade throughout the global south.
In this study session, we will explore NAFTA’s devastating effects on Mexico’s campesinos, indigenous communities, and urban poor, and the corresponding surge in Mexican economic refugees to its northern neighbors. We will also discuss the various forms of resistance that have emerged in post-NAFTA Mexico, their relationship to the neoliberal state, and implications and possibilities for Canadian solidarity.
Reading suggestion:
Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future (attached) (https://nacla.org/node/4958) - a focused article on NAFTA, its discontents and moves to militarize these economic policies through the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
No Registration. Everyone welcome.
Optional readings:
1. NAFTA’s devastating effects on campesinos (Revolutionary Worker)
2. Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona - 2005
3. Northern Mexico campesino mobilization against NAFTA 2008
4. Guerrilla forces in Mexico (EZLN, EPR, APPO, FPDT - Atenco)
