THE IMPACT OF NAFTA

Little Belleville reaches out to the world. A group of Loyalist College students are on a study tour of Chiapas. The idea is to learn about "development" and Chiapas has been the focus of development efforts, both governmental and non-governmental, since January 1, 1994. 

Why is that date significant? Canadians of a political or business stripe might remember it as the date of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Many Mexicans and others remember it as the day that the Zapatista peasant army took over various towns and villages in the southernmost state of Chiapas.

NAFTA and the Zapatista uprising are intimately connected. NAFTA was a formal agreement among Canada, the United States and Mexico to allow free trade among these countries.  NAFTA meant that money rules.  In particular, for Mexicans it meant that "Free Trade" trumped article 27 of the Mexican constitution. Article 27 had protected every Mexican's right to have land on which to survive, prosper and feed the family. For the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, the Constitution protected their right to ejidos, the shared lands that they worked but that no individual could sell. These are fertile lands and the people with their small plots and sustainable agricultural practices have prospered. Now when money rules, land is for sale.

But the people say that this land is not for sale. The Zapatistas understood that the implementation of NAFTA would mean the end of a communal land system that had sustained them and was protected under the Mexican Constitution of 1917. The President of Mexico in 1994, Salinas, had attempted to change the Constitution through presidential fiat; that is, without going through proper legal processes. The campesino small farmer indigenous peoples rose up to say "NO." If the Mexican state would not abide by its own Constitution and protect their interests, what were their options? I will have more to say about the path the Zapatistas chose.