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United States of North American Oligopolies Mexican President Goes to Washington
AMLO said they were going to celebrate the entry into force of the Agreement, which he says is a great achievement for the benefit of the three nations and their peoples. AMLO surprisingly began his speech as a member of a region and not as a representative of a country. He said: "North America is one of the most important economic regions on the planet. However, our region is suffering an inexplicable deficit when it comes to trade; we export $3,579,000,000,000 to the rest of the world, but we import $4,190,000,000,000. That is, we have a deficit of $611 billion, which translates into capital flight, fewer opportunities for companies and the loss of employment sources." He stated that the new Agreement "specifically seeks to reverse this imbalance by further integrating our economies and improving the functioning of supply chains to regain the economic presence that North America has lost over the last five decades. Suffice it to say that in 1970 the region accounted for 40.4 per cent of world output, and now its share of the global economy has dropped to 27.8 per cent." He added that "the Agreement is a great option for production, creating jobs and fostering trade without having to go as far from our homes, cities, states and nations." So he opted for joining a regional bloc headed by U.S. corporations. López Obrador stated, "In other words, the volumes our countries import from the rest of the world can be produced in North America with lower transportation costs, reliable suppliers for businesses and using the region's labour force. ... taking full advantage of all the region offers us as well as applying a good development cooperation policy. ... attracting investment from other parts of the hemisphere. (It should be remembered that the word hemisphere describes one half of the globe, and he did not specify which hemisphere he was referring to. North-South? East-West?). "This Agreement makes it possible to attract investments to our countries from other parts of the hemisphere, he continued -- as long as the principles are adhered to of producing goods with high regional content and ensuring fair wages and working conditions for the workers in countries that export or import consumer goods." In this way, Mexico joined the U.S. trade war against China, along with Canada.
AMLO affirmed that the three countries end up complementing each other and that what Mexico contributes is its workforce -- good workers with a work ethic. At no time did he refer to the way these workers are treated in the United States and Canada, where they truly suffer modern slavery. But AMLO called to put differences aside and to resolve them with dialogue and mutual respect. However that dialogue did not take place because the word "migrant" or "wall" was never heard. No respect was seen either: On July 6, a day before AMLO's arrival, to the surprise of his own people and others, Trump had proudly exhibited in a tweet four photos of himself on the Arizona wall, a symbol of segregation against Mexicans. In those days it was reported that he would continue to try to overturn the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy (DACA) that protects 800,000 migrants who came as children to the United States and are studying. And to top it off, at the same time he attacked Chicago and New York, sanctuary cities, saying that they protect "criminals," since he wants to carry out raids against migrants. And if that were not enough, it was announced that the number of beds in migrant shelters and detention centres is going to be reduced by 60 per cent. So his phobia against migrants -- mostly Mexicans -- did not stop ahead of the Mexican president's visit; rather, he blatantly reaffirmed his anti-migrant policies. Regarding the history of U.S. aggression against Mexico, from whom the U.S. stole more than half its territory, and against whom it is now building a wall -- something similar to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians -- the Mexican president commented, "For certain in the history of our relations we have had disagreements and there are grievances that are not yet forgotten, but we have also been able to establish tacit or explicit agreements of cooperation and coexistence." And he gave as one of his examples that during the Second World War Mexico helped satisfy the United States' need for raw materials and supported it with the labour of migrant workers, who were known as "braceros" (day labourers). "Since then and to date, we have been consolidating our economic and trade relations, as well as our peculiar coexistence, at times as distant neighbours and at other times as close friends." He did not mention that it has also been a relationship of imposition, abuse, exploitation and violence. At another point when dealing with migration, which skyrocketed with the impositions of the International Monetary Fund from 1977 on, and with the signing of NAFTA in 1992 that drove 12 million Mexicans from the country due to the economic devastation that the first Agreement gave rise to, AMLO said it was "history, geopolitics, regional and economic circumstances which fueled migration." "A community was formed here of about 38 million people, including the children of Mexican parents. It is a community of good and hard-working people who came to earn a living in an honest way and that has contributed a lot to the development of this great nation," López Obrador said forgetting to mention how that community of good and hard-working people is mistreated and that we are not 38 million Mexicans in the U.S., but 15 million more than this who are made "invisible" because they are branded as "illegal," and that none of their human rights are recognized for the crime of looking for work there that cannot be found in Mexico. And that they are deported after years of living in the United States, being locked in cages, separating families and ripping children from their homes. AMLO mentioned that more Americans (one and a half million) live in Mexico and are part of our society than in any other part of the world, and concluded, "So we are united more than by geographic proximity by our various economic, trade, social, cultural and friendship ties." He did not comment on how Mexicans are treated in the U.S. compared to how Usians are treated in Mexico. And then he went on to praise President Trump: "Like in times when our political relations were at their best, during my mandate as President of Mexico, instead of insults directed towards me and, what I consider most important, towards my country, we have received understanding and respect from you." And closing his eyes, he affirmed, "I believe that in the future there will be no reason or need to break our good political relations or the friendship between our governments." That is how he spoke in Washington from whence Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Iran and China are attacked, assaulted and invaded. AMLO spoke as if he were facing a respectful, kind and considerate neighbour. He forgot that Trump had just threatened to intervene in Mexico against the "bad boys," and about the century-long history of the Yankee Empire. He recalled that Franklin Roosevelt did not intervene openly against the Oil Expropriation of 1938 and thanked him, yes ... he thanked him for being "increasingly respectful of our Mexican countrymen," thanked him for his understanding and his help on matters of trade, of oil, with acquiring medical equipment to treat patients with COVID-19. And going to the extreme, he expressed his appreciation that Trump has, according to him, never sought to impose anything on us that violates or infringes on our sovereignty. Claiming that he has abandoned the Monroe Doctrine, he claimed the tycoon Trump has never treated Mexico as a colony, but "has honoured our status as an independent nation ... and has behaved towards us with kindness and respect." AMLO forgot that Trump threatened to impose brutal tariffs on Mexican goods if Mexico did not look after its southern border with its National Guard to prevent the entry of migrants from Central America, and that, in practice, Mexico has become a "third country" in charge of retaining migrants in its territory so they do not enter the U.S., and that today in the south of Mexico there is another virtual wall against migrants.
On this trip to Washington, the current government showed that basically it follows the same line as the previous governments of the PRI and the PAN: the construction of an integrated United States of North American Oligopolies. It will be the peoples of the United States, Canada and Mexico who take charge of their sovereignty, defend the interests of the peoples and workers of the three countries against narrow private interests of the oligopolies and their governments, and construct their independent and free development, with justice, peace and democracy under the banner of "Integration NO, Sovereignty, YES!"
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
The
President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador
(AMLO)
spoke next to U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in
Washington on Wednesday, July 8. It was the first international visit
of Mexico's head of state and it was carried out in the context of the
approval of the new North American trade agreement between Canada, the
United States and Mexico, known in Mexico as T-MEC (CUSMA in Canada).
Justin Trudeau had previously declined to participate in the meeting.
He was not interested in talking about the Canadian renewable energy
projects that were canceled by Mexico, nor about the complaints in
Canada of human rights organizations denouncing the deplorable working
and housing conditions of Mexican seasonal agricultural workers and the
Canadian government's lack of attention to them. To date, more than a
thousand agricultural workers have been infected with COVID-19 and
three have died.
It should be
remembered that for centuries Mexico identified as a Latin American
country. Starting in 1994 with NAFTA, the first Agreement, the
neo-liberal governments from Salinas on labelled Mexico as part of
North America. That first agreement led to the destruction of the
Mexican economy, abandonment of the countryside, the loss of energy
sovereignty and the beginning of rapacious mining in Mexico that
contaminates and steals water from communities and plunders our wealth,
in exchange for nothing. The first agreement marked the beginning of
worldwide crime; migration and drug trafficking shot up and destroyed
economic sovereignty. It was a deal between the shark and the sardine.
The U.S. has a Gross Domestic Product 20 times larger than Mexico's and
10 times larger than Canada's. And this new Agreement is even worse
than the first.
Finally, it seems that Trump
and López Obrador have a common enemy: the Democrats and
former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, and that they
agree on revealing the crime called "Fast and Furious" in which the
Obama administration sent Mexico, with Calderón's agreement,
2,000 high-powered weapons to hand over to criminal drug cartels. If
this scandal breaks out, it benefits both leaders. It is not known
whether deep down this was the real interest of both in meeting,
regardless of the fact that in both countries the COVID-19 pandemic is
at its most complicated moment.