Exploring the Roots of Migration in Mexico

by Craig Hennecke

As legislation for health care reform was debated and passed in Washington, an equally pressing topic was waiting on the front lawn of the Capitol for consideration. On Sunday, March, 21st, 200, 000 people gathered to urge the administration to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform. President Obama addressed the crowd via video message pledging to work together with Senators who have "developed a framework that includes common sense, effective strategies to protect our borders and enforce the law while offering a path to citizenship for hardworking people who register, pay taxes, pay a fine, and agree to play by the rules."

Miguel Angel Vasquez de la Rosa of EDUCA focuses on the root causes of migration in Mexico.

One issue the President and lawmakers continually neglect to mention when discussing immigration reform is the impact that current trade policies the United States has with Mexico have effected immigration. In February, I traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, as a part of delegation with Witness For Peace, to study the roots of migration. We spent 10 days meeting with local members of organizations who focus on addressing migration issues. We met with activists who work to empower & educate indigenous citizens of their rights to water and food sovereignty. We learned from farmers who are working to restore the land and develop sustainable practices, while promoting the preservation of native seeds. These meetings, as well as hours of discussion each day, revealed the strong connection between policies developed for and as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the gradual decline of communities and economic opportunities for individuals in Mexico, which in large part lead to migration to the United States.

When NAFTA was signed into law in 1994, there was much talk of the shared prosperity and benefits for all three nations. The United States and Canada were going to experience an economic boom while Mexico was going to be lifted on to a level playing field; no longer participating as a developing nation. Bill Clinton gave a speech in September, 1993 in which he said "It means that there will be an even more rapid closing of the gap between our two wage rates. And as the benefits of economic growth are spread in Mexico to working people, what will happen? They'll have more disposable income to buy more American products, and there will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home. This is a very important thing."

For Mexico, none of this came close to happening. The reality was a tri-government-sanctioned exploitation of resources and corporate plundering of both human and natural resources that have decimated much of the economy and many small communities in Mexico. Increased job loss, a minimum wage far below the cost of living, and an unjust import/export relationship to the US, made it impossible for many Mexicans to survive in their communities. These effects of what is called "free trade" have a strong correlation to the increase of migration to the United States following NAFTA's creation.

Food and Farmers

The removal of tariffs on agricultural imports created an influx of cheap and genetically modified grain into Mexico. While U.S. agribusiness continues to receive subsidies from the government, the only subsidies small farmers in Mexico receive is via unpaid family labor and remittances sent home by those who migrated to the United States to find work.

Today it is cheaper to purchase imported corn from the US than to produce and sell within Mexico. This destruction of small-scale corn production not only decimates communities economically, but also destroys tradition and culture as it threatens age-old practices that have worked for centuries in Mesoamerica.

Tortillas, which are the daily bread of Mexico, saw a price increase of more than 500% between 1993 and 2000. Currently over 40% of Mexico's food is imported. During a cost of living exercise in Oaxaca City, our delegation examined the prices of everyday food items. The miminum daily wage in Mexico is about $7 a day. For a rural worker earning minimum wage, to pay for a single chicken it would take 10 hours of work. In the US, it would be the equivalent to paying over $70-- for one chicken. The Hemispheric Social Alliance reports that since NAFTA was created, the average cost of food in Mexico has increased by 357% while the purchasing power of wages has decreased by 50%. As larger cities in Mexico offer hopes for higher wages, smaller towns suffer from migration. This obviously is not a system that can support its people. When a farmer can work an hour in the US and make the equivalent of a day's pay in Mexico, the delusion presented by lawmakers when selling NAFTA to the public becomes evident.


Jobs

As employment dries up in many communities in Mexico, so do the communities themselves. Ghost towns are a by-product of these trade policies, where families have no choice but to abandon their land and either move to larger cities in Mexico or continue further to the United States in hopes of making a decent wage. With over 1.5 million rural jobs lost in 12 years, a reported 388 municipalities have become ghost towns due to migration problems.

Jobs that have been created through NAFTA are in large part through "maquilas," factories near the border, which often have massive wage and labor violations. Issues raised over these factories include discrimination against pregnant women, environmental concerns over factory output, lower than minimum wages and shifts longer than usually permitted. As corporations fight to save every dollar, the conditions set forth through NAFTA permit these egregious exploitations. Through the legal design of NAFTA, local and state regulations and tariffs are disregarded if they compromise the potential of capital growth for corporations in the region. If a regulation is in place which does present a threat to profit, and is not removed, a corporation can then sue the Mexican government for losses under the rules of NAFTA. Any laws in Mexico which protect employees, the environment, or the natural resources of an area, are immediately compromised by these overriding standards.


Migration

The struggle of supporting a family in Mexico has become much more difficult since the conception of NAFTA. Mexican citizens seeking to find work and better wages come to the US in order to support the communities left behind. The increase in migration to the United States since 1994 has almost doubled.

Often in the media an image is propagated of Mexican people arriving in the US in order to steal jobs and live for free, this is far from reality. From my understanding, it is a very difficult choice to leave one's own family, one's land, and one's community, in hopes of making enough money to send back to Mexico to support them. Often it is the intention of immigrants to work for a few years then to return back to the community and again live with their family. This is becoming more difficult as jobs continue to decline in Mexico and returning is dangerous with the increase in drug related gang violence on the border.


Reform

As the issue of comprehensive immigration reform reaches the public forum once again, the impact of NAFTA, CAFTA, the FTAA, and other developing trade policies cannot go unmentioned in these discussions. It is critical to reform these policies in order to create equitable employment opportunity for the citizens of Mexico and those throughout Latin America. While the immigration debate unfolds there is actual sensible legislation introduced in the House to address some of these problems. The TRADE Act is a bill currently proposed which would address many of the fault of our current trade policies as well as allow new standards for future agreements. Outside of the United States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) ahs been created, which is an agreement formed by Bolivia, Cuban and Venezuela aimed at countering US and corporate influence in Latin America. There are now eight countries supporting this agreement.

Of course NAFTA didn't start migration to the United States. A history of land conflicts, political exclusion, and oppression of the people have always led citizens of Latin America towards the U.S. in search of stability and economic relief. But if we are to addres comprehensive immigration reform in this country, common sense tells us that ignoring our trade policies would be a dubious way to begin the discussion.

Afternoon light illuminates a wall in Oaxaca City.

Megaprojects Threaten Local Communities

by Tony Macias, Mexico International Team

“We know that our life is here in the earth, in the water,” declared a speaker at a recent national conference for the defense of rivers in Paso de la Reina, Oaxaca. “Here, we take care of our river,” asserted another orator. These simple words are a powerful call to action against a proposed massive hydroelectric project on the Rio Verde that would provoke major environmental damages and the displacement of thousands.

The town of Paso de la Reina sits on the western shore of Rio Verde, its fields of corn, lime groves, and pastureland crowding the narrow and verdant river valley. Members of the roughly 1,000-person town use the river for swimming and bathing, fishing, and irrigation. Its waters are available year round, and are a source of gravel and sand for the construction of local buildings. Known as the “mother of our waters”, the river has important spiritual and cultural value for the Chatino Indigenous people living nearby.

Slated for a site upriver from the town center, this hydroelectric dam would create a wall over 500 feet tall and a 7 ½ square-mile artificial lake, flooding nearly 5,000 acres of prime forest and agricultural land. The billion-dollar project would expropriate land from 9 local communities and drastically affect access to fresh water for over 114,000 people in the area . People from Paso de la Reina stand to lose all they have.

The construction of a dam on Rio Verde would permanently alter this landscape and displace thousands of local residents from their traditional homes. Photo by Tony Macias

Oaxacan officials state that the purpose of the dam is to generate electricity and to serve as a source of irrigation for the Oaxacan coast. Municipal authorities predict that the construction of the dam would generate at least 10,000 jobs and would boost the tourism corridor along the coast thus benefiting the economic development of the region.

While these same officials reiterate time and time again that the project would not displace or take land from the people, Paso de La Reina residents aren’t buying it. They fear that after a few years without abundant water, the local agricultural economy will collapse, driving them to abandon their once fertile fields and migrate to nearby cities or even the U.S. in search of work. They don’t believe the government’s promises of cheaper electricity or jobs.

They also know the bitter experience of other displaced communities who were compensated with less desirable land far away without even basic services such as electricity and sewage systems. The now-completed El Cajón Dam in the Mexican State of Nayarit forced hundreds of local residents to move to sub-standard housing that is already decaying just 3 years after its construction. Oaxacan communities displaced by the Cerro de Oro dam are still waiting for over 10 billion pesos that the Mexican government owes them in resettlement costs.

Megaprojects in focus

This proposed dam is part of a larger scheme, the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project (MIDP- formerly Plan Puebla-Panama), designed to strengthen regional integration and to unite the region through infrastructure and energy. The MIDP proposes nearly 100 large-scale projects from southern Mexico to Colombia.

Part of the free market, free trade economic model promoted by the U.S., MIDP projects are designed to lure foreign investment. According to Gustavo Castro of Otros Mundos, a Chiapas, Mexico- based nonprofit, free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA facilitated foreign investment as a part of wider privatization efforts in these developing countries, but “these investments are not viable without the infrastructure that MIDP provides.”

As of May 2007 over $8 billion have already been invested in these megaprojects. Developing countries finance about one-third of these costs, with another one-third coming from international financial institutions like the World Bank, and the rest from private donors and undisclosed sources. Megaprojects direct huge sums of international loan money away from social programs and small-scale production and directly into infrastructure that most benefits foreign investment. They are usually implemented without consulting local communities and often ignore legal claims made by communal land holders.

More chilling, project defenders have resorted to criminal and violent tactics such as bribes, threats, home destruction and forced removal in efforts to keep projects going. In Guererro and Chiapas, community activists working against megaprojects have been murdered. An engineer with the Federal Electricity Commission put a price on the head of one local activist during the construction of El Cajon dam in Nayarit . Families have been forcibly removed from their homes in Guerrero, Jalisco, and Veracruz. In other states Mexican military have participated in forced removals of communities for these projects.

With the War on Drugs and Terror as a pretext, the Mexican government has used military and federal police as well as paramilitary forces to criminalize social protest. In a telling statement, Mexican president Felipe Calderon likened “out of control” unions to the country’s out-of-control drug cartels, saying both are "roadblocks to institutional order and market-based growth". As more and more communities organize in response to megaprojects , fears grow that violence and repression will be used to ensure that these projects move forward.

Resistance in Paso de la Reina

Road block by local residents to keep out officials who would move the dam project forward. Photo by Tony Macias

However, these chilling precedents have not deterred Paso de la Reina residents from protesting the destruction of their community. In 2007, local communities and organizations founded COPUDEVER to resist the dam project. Three communities, including Paso de la Reina, have voted a resounding “no” to the dam project. As of February 2010, local leaders set up road-blocks to deny state government representatives and Federal Electricity Commission members access to the area.

But Paso de la Reina residents aren’t up against only the Mexican government in their struggle to stop the dam project. They will have to confront International Financial Institutions that play an important role in financing these megaprojects. As one of the major lenders to these institutions, the United States government has tremendous influence over what these institutions fund; the U.S. has used this power to promote the free-trade model in international development loans these institutions provide.

The World Bank and other institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank continue to make loans to Mexico and other Latin American countries to support large infrastructure projects without much oversight. Massive social protest globally has increased public awareness about the problems associated with these projects, so these institutions increasingly work in secret, refusing to divulge details about the projects they fund.

Sign up for Witness for Peace e-mail action alerts to receive updates on this dam and other projects financed by international financial institutions in Latin America.

Facing the Free Trade Storm: CAFTA and Nicaraguan Families

Claudia Chamorro, a licensed social worker, lost her long-standing job with a local NGO 8 months ago. She lives in Managua with her parents, three siblings and four children. Claudia’s two other sisters and a brother migrated to San Francisco, in search of work in what her sister deems “the land of opportunities, where if people don’t study, it’s simply because they don’t want to.” For years, these siblings have sent back $50 or $100 monthly from the U.S., which the family relies on heavily to meet their basic needs.

In recent months, however, these remittances have all but disappeared. Both her brother and sister received sharp cuts in their working hours at a restaurant in the Bay Area and were unable to send anything for seven months until, finally, $50 arrived in January. Unable to find work and without the much-needed remittances, Claudia is finding herself considering the worst option imaginable to her: making the trip to the U.S. herself.

In the midst of this economic crisis, Claudia and many others like her are stashing away fifty cents here, a dollar there, to purchase a chance at survival – a refrigerator on wheels, a set of juggling balls, or a bus ticket to Costa Rica. As more jobs are lost each month in the deflated global economy and foreign-owned textile factories or maquilas steadily close, countless people have but two options. They can turn to the informal market, selling cold homemade juices from a mobile refrigerator or juggling in the streets, or they can leave their country in search of work in the stronger economies of Costa Rica, Spain, or the U.S. In spite of increasing stories about the difficulties of migrating abroad, more and more Nicaraguans are considering migration their only hope for sustaining their families and their homes.

Meanwhile, those migrants already working abroad, including Claudia’s three siblings, have felt the blow of the economic crisis with unique force. Many living in the U.S. or nearby Costa Rica have either lost their jobs or experienced a serious cut in hours and/or wages. For their families back home in Nicaragua, this loss is tremendous. In 2008, money sent home by migrants made up approximately 13% of Nicaragua’s GDP, a total of $818 million. As these remittances dwindle or disappear, migrants’ families often lose their main source of income.

But the financial impact isn’t the only setback. Migration comes at a great cost to families who, after years of separation, often experience a deterioration of the family unit – a structure central to Nicaraguan life. As Claudia said, “Our family has completely deteriorated. We haven't all been together in 24 years. At one time, we were siblings who knew each other face-to face. Now, we are siblings who know each other only by internet.”

Claudia's family and the difficult choices they face illustrate the vast interconnectedness of the Nicaraguan and the U.S. economies. Within the economic structure imposed by DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic -Central American Free Trade Agreement), the U.S. economy functions as the heart pumping blood through Nicaragua’s veins. When the U.S. heartbeat slows or stops, the repercussions are felt acutely in Nicaragua. Decreased demand in the U.S. for key Nicaragua exports causes increasing unemployment in Nicaragua, where many find work in free trade zones or export-based agriculture. The economic slow-down in the U.S. also means fewer jobs for migrants living abroad, and therefore a gradual loss of another vital lifeline – the precious remittances sent from afar.

Such heavy dependence on remittances points to an inherently unsustainable economic model, propagated by DR-CAFTA, wherein a country relies on the stability of a foreign market for survival. Furthermore, research shows that in Nicaragua remittances are spent primarily on meeting basic needs. Little is “caught” by the Nicaragua economy and invested in ways that contribute to long-term growth, stability, and relative sustainability. Remittances are only a temporary fix in the struggle against cyclical poverty, punctuated by a dependency on a foreign market.

Since there is little to no protection in free trade agreements such as DR- CAFTA to mitigate the disastrous impact of these agreements on the poor, Nicaraguans feel each financial blow with a new freshness, seeing fewer and fewer options for survival. For many, picking up a juggling ball or mounting a bus to San José remain the only options in sight.

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Take Action

o Pressure your Representatives and Senators to co-sponsor the TRADE Act, a bill that will ensure fair and just trade agreements that meet the goals of broad-based, people-centered development and poverty reduction.

o Contact your WFP Regional Organizer to connect with local migrant communities, immigrant rights organizations and campaigns to stop human rights violations towards migrants en route or already working in the U.S.