Right-Wing Paranoia Misses the Real Threat of NAFTA's Militarization

by Laura Carlsen, IRC Americas Program

It's got millions of right-wing citizens calling Congress, sponsoring legislation, and writing manifestos in defense of US sovereignty. It comes up in presidential candidates' public appearances, has made it into primetime debates, and one presidential candidate—Ron Paul—used it as a central theme of his (short-lived) campaign.

Not bad for a plan that doesn't exist.

At around noon on March 14 a group of armed men killed farmer leader Armando Villarreal Martha with submachine gun blasts near his house in Nuevo Casas Grandes municipality, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Villarreal Martha was the leader of the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN). He was well-known for his campaigns for lower electricity rates for farmers and campesinos, and was imprisoned for a year and a half before being acquitted of charges in connection with the occupation of the Janos and Villa Ahumada customs station in 2002. Earlier this year he was involved in national protests calling for the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in demands for the reactivation of the petrochemical industry to make fertilizers and other chemicals cheaper for farmers. He ran as a local candidate for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1988 and for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1992. (La Jornada, March 15)

Authorities in Ciudad Juárez said March 14 they had discovered a further 19 bodies buried behind two houses used by drug dealers, bringing the total number of corpses found there to 33. Agents began digging behind the houses on March 1, after raiding one, confiscating 3,700 pounds of marijuana and arresting several people. All but three of the bodies appear to be men, and most have been buried at least five years. Some were dismembered. It's the second such find in less than a month: federal authorities also unearthed nine bodies buried in the yard of a Ciudad Juárez home in late February after a drug bust. (LAT, NYT, March 15)

Mexico's lower House of Deputies voted to open an investigation into accusations that Government Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño improperly helped his family win contracts from the state oil monopoly Pemex. The accusations stem from contracts Mourino signed between 2000 and 2004 when he acted as the legal representative of his family's company while also working as a lawmaker and then as deputy energy secretary. The move comes as President Felipe Calderon, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, is seeking to further open Pemex to foreign investment.

At a Feb. 29 press conference in Mexico City, researchers from the Economic Investigations Institute (IIEC) of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) gave a generally negative assessment of the economic impact of the 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico. According to the institute's Emilio Romero, Mexico has lost 2 million agricultural jobs during the period, while 400,000 Mexicans now migrate to the US each year. Jose Luis Calva said that since NAFTA took effect in 1994, Mexico's growth rate has averaged 3% a year, as opposed to a rate of 6.1% a year from the end of the 1910 revolution until 1982. Agricultural production has increased, he said, but productivity increased much more slowly than in the US; Mexico's rate grew from 1.7 to two tons per hectare while the US rate grew from seven to 8.9 tons.

Jacobo Silva Nogales (Comandante Antonio) and Gloria Arenas Agís (Coronela Aurora), convicted as leaders of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), had their sentences reduced from 46 years and three months to 14 years and two months. Andrés Nájera Hernández, director of the Eureka Committee, which advocates for Mexico's political prisoners, called the decision a great advance in the struggle for a "general amnesty for all political prisoners in the country." Nogales and Arenas were arrested in October 1999. (La Jornada, March 5)

The family of New York IMC reporter Brad Will, killed Oct. 27, 2006—presumably at the hands of municipal police in Santa Lucía del Camino, Oaxaca—called upon Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) to follow the "logical" line of investigation and abandon ongoing probes of popular activists in Oaxaca. "This crime was one of the most photographed in history, yet they continue with this hypothesis while those responsible remain free," Brad's father Howard Will told the Mexico City daily La Jornada. He called upon Mexican federal authorities to undertake a "serious and objective" investigation, because that pursued by Oaxaca state authorities is totally "prejudiced." (Re-translated from Spanish translation.) (La Jornada, Feb. 29)

David VenegasAfter nearly 11 months in prison, David Venegas Reyes, a leader of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), was released from Santa María Ixcotel penitentiary, following the issuing of a judicial order (amparo) protecting him from further prosecution, citing insufficient evidence. The charges have not been formally dropped. (La Jornada, March 6) Vengas Reyes received threats on his life and those of his family while in detention last year. (Venegas Reyes letter, May 2, 2007, online at Casa de Paz, Chiapas)