On NAFTA and the killing of farmers

Declaration from Ciudad Juarez To the People of Mexico

posted January 9, 2002

Saludos Solidarios

The Movement "the fields can't take it anymore!" continues

The fast/protest initiated at the beginning of the New Year continued in the middle of the Cordova-Americas International Bridge under near freezing temperatures but in a high spirit of unity and struggle. Peasants, indigenous and border farm workers continue fasting, passing information to the public and inspecting commercial trucks entering México to stop agricultural products.

Today (Jan. 2, 2003) groups from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez held a rally and a press conference to announce their adhesion to the protest. On behalf of the groups from El Paso, Guillermo Glenn from the Asociación de Trabajadores Fronterizos made public the following statement:

NAFTA MUST BE ELIMINATED OR RENEGOTIATED

The US government continues to implement NAFTA without regard to its devastating impact on workers and their families and poor people in general. In the case of the campesinos a major displacement and destruction of Mexican agriculture without a plan for what will happen to the Campesino families. This is the same strategy that has been implemented with the working people of El Paso.

The only concern is for the business side of NAFTA regardless of the human suffering it may cause on both sides of the border. NAFTA has to be renegotiated to include assistance to workers and their families.

19 billion dollars of subsidies for farmers in the US, there are no subsidies of this type for Mexican farmers. Workers in the US do not get subsidies instead they get ineffective training programs that do little to help their economic situation.

The Movement "The Fields Cant Take it Anymore!" demands:

• Renegotiate NAFTA
• No to corn and bean contracts from the US and Canada
• Reevaluation of the agricultural programs in Mexico to include the voice of the campesinos
• Respect for legitimate campesino and farm workers organizations
• Quality safe food for consumers
• Recognition of the San Andres Agreements for indigenous communities, Asociación de Trabajadores Fronterizos, Border Agricultural Workers Project, La Mujer Obrera and several community organizations.

We will keep you informed. We are also enclosing the English translation of the Declaración de Ciudad Juárezmade public in the first minutes of 2003.

We respectfully ask you for messages of solidarity for this struggle and

thank you in advance for your support.

Carlos Marentes
Border Agricultural Workers Project
6412 Edgemere P8
El Paso, Texas 79901
marentes@farmworkers.org

Declaration from Ciudad Juarez

To the People of Mexico:

Exactly nine years ago the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Nine years ago the war waged against campesinos and Mexican agriculture in general intensified.

It was also nine years ago when our Zapatista brothers, sent out the first cry of resistance against the neo-liberal economic model. An economic model that concentrates wealth among a few, obliterates the collective social fabric, destroys communities, consumes natural resources, and violates individual and communal rights.

Today on this first minute of the year, on this first minute of the 10th year of NAFTA, begins the next to last stage in this war against our agriculture, against our self subsistence, against the very basis of our independence as a nation.

Today the monitoring of all agricultural products with exception of beans, corn, powdered milk, and sugar cane, disappears.

Today all taxes, all quotas, and limits are removed.

Today the last remaining products that allowed for our delicate economic ladder of subsistence: beef, pork, poultry, egg, milk products, rice, wheat, potato, apple, and others will be allowed into our country.

Today our farmers will have to defend themselves alone against products that count on North American subsidies that are up to 30 times superior to those subsidies given by the Mexican government.

Only the genius, the ineptitude, and or the participation of the president and many legislators, refute that this new stage of NAFTA conceals a very real war against our self-subsistence as an independent country.

Only those who suffer from extreme naiveté refuse to see that this new stage of NAFTA, empowered by George W. Bush and fueled by the complacency of the government of Vicente Fox, is yet another strike in a war of conquest. The same war that is fought to control natural gas in Central Asia, oil in Iraq and Venezuela, and now the market for agriculture in Mexico.

The dislocation of our traditional agricultural production, orienting the products only for export, and thus make our need for sustenance dependent on United states imports, controlled by a few trans-nationals, is to accept the mother of all defeats; the surrender of our peoples food.

That is why we have come. The leadership of campesino organizations and those organizations who struggle with us have united in the struggle “El Campo no Aguanta Mas” (Our Agriculture Can Not Take Any More).

Here in Ciudad Juarez where in 1911 campesino forces ended the 40-year Porfirista dictatorship.

Here along the border with the most powerful nation on the planet; whose nation stands at the brink of a war whose goal is to reinforce its military, economic, and political might over the world.

Here on the Cordova International Bridge where the importation of afore mentioned products are scheduled to enter our country. These products frozen for 10 years, throw-away surplus, transgenic, and cheap, whose purpose it to destroy our national production, affect the health of the Mexican people, and forfeit the autonomy of our sustenance as a nation.

Precisely where our county begins, where Latin America begins, we send out a call to the people of Mexico. We declare that at this very moment we are a part of a national movement of civil resistance, passive, non-violent, whose goal is the rescue of Mexican agriculture, and of Mexico itself.

Today we launch our counter-offensive of peace, of reason, of suggestions, and acts of disobedience. We have already brought this before the Executive and Legislative powers, without much to show for our effort. We have declared the need of a moratorium to address issues regarding agriculture in NAFTA to the United Stated Embassy.

Today we declare ourselves on a fast on this international bridge. From here we send out an invitation to a “National Dialogue Toward the Salvation of Mexican Agriculture” to be celebrated soon.

We invite all social sectors, politicians, and economists interested in the rescue of our agriculture, our nourishment, our dignity, and our national sovereignty to participate.

From here we will announce the diverse actions that compose our counter-offensive strategy: Acts of civil resistance, resources before the Supreme Court of Justice, resources before the National Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, the International Organization of Labor, reiteration of our proposals to the Legislature and the diverse actions that we will announce as we go along.

Our six proposals and basic demands are:

1. A moratorium on agriculture and NAFTA and an immediate
   renegotiation of the same.
2. Remove bean and corn from the list; the basic nourishment of our people, from NAFTA and any other commercial treaties with other nations.
3. Emergency programs for 2003 and a long term program (2020) to
   reevaluate and restructure the nation’s agriculture with the participation of campesinos, based on the central objective of national subsistence, multifunction of agriculture, reevaluation of campesino agriculture, the promotion of products for the internal market equal to that of exportation, profitability and insurance on deposits, rural employment and agricultural subsistence, and the conservation of natural resources. In short, to enable a growth in the agricultural and forestry sectors with equitability, sustainability and sovereignty.
4. Respect to genuine and autonomous organizations and rural initiatives, the end tof president Fox’s relationship with rural corporatism in particular the reform of the government agency in charge of dealing with the new “Financiera Rural” and give way to more genuine and democratic methods of representation for producers, and rural communities, leaving behind the distribution of resources based on political quotas that only results in the shameless continuation of old and insidious rural corporatism.
5. Quality and sanitation in agricultural products for the Mexican consumer.
6. Recognition of the San Andres Accords in relation to the rights and culture of Indigenous people.

Our prime voice in this matter is not the government but you, all of those who make up the Mexican people. We are making this call to action to the entire citizenry.

We invoke this challenge in the spirit of Morelos and his struggle. We invite all of our brothers and sisters in the country to join this struggle and participate, to the limits of their capacity, in this “Movimiento El Campo No Aguanta Mas”, by participating in one or several of the following actions:

• By protesting at international bridges and customs stations
• Sending letters with signatures to your senators demanding they declare an economic, environmental, agricultural state of emergency, and a moratorium on the agricultural aspects of NAFTA
• Wearing a green ribbon on your shirt or blouse.
• Writing on the windows of your home or vehicle statements such as “A Moratorium on the Agricultural Aspects of NAFTA” “Let’s Save our Agriculture, Lets Save Mexico” or “Mexican Agriculture Can Take No More”.
• Sending letters to local newspapers, participating in area radio shows expressing your solidarity with our demands.
• Reevaluating and promoting the consumption of Mexican agricultural products, cultivated by small and medium sized producers.
• Organizing boycotts of all imported foods, especially those that make up our basic breadbasket.
• Participating in the National Dialogue Toward the Salvation of Mexican Agriculture on the date and place that will soon be declared.

Our struggle is not to restore a past long since gone. Our struggle is to reconquer our bases and from those roots create a free and sovereign future for the prosperity of our communities, and all those people, and communities that make up our country. This struggle is not for the benefit of a few; it is not confined to a single sector, or a certain crop.

We struggle to regain the right that has been stripped from us, all of us: the right to live with dignity from the work that we do, the right to feed oneself healthy foods, the right to create a social economy based on our commonalities and open to advances in science and technology, the right that our agriculture and our agricultural communities not only survive but live with the dignity that comes from knowing the future is wide open.

Let’s Save our Agriculture, Lets Save Mexico

From the Cordova International Bridge in Ciudad Juarez Mexico, at the entrance to Mexico at the entrance to our America, this first minute of the first day of January 2003.

Sincerely,

Movimiento El Campo No Aguanta Mas