Douglas M. Hinds wrote:
>You really think that? Try it first in your own back yard. Here, few
>want more of that destructive, never ending cycle.
A good revolution stops the cycle. And, I am trying in my own back yard. I
have worked for economic, environmental, and social justice for many many
years.
>People have been migrating to the US to resolve their economic problems
>since long before the reforms done in the early 1990's.
Yes, but the numbers are now staggering. Our community of 32,000 usually
gets about 11,000 workers in a year, but now estimates from non-profit
(not government) social service organizations working to assist people with
immigration say those numbers are closer to 35,000. The employers are in
hog heaven, now putting nearly everyone on part time, no contract work. The
schools cannot keep pace with the population growth and are on year round
sessions with portable classrooms at nearly every site. The housing here is
non-existent. A friend took four months to find a house this year. After
the major earthquake here in 1989, it took me one year to find a house to
rent. The most recent census is being challenged for not counting as much
as 30% of the residents of this area.
>Land reform laws don't allow foreign corporations to own land and even
>nationals are limited to set amounts
When our food processing plants moved to Irapuato, they *bought* the fields
that had been used to grow corn and vegetables, and moved people off their
family lands. They began growing broccoli, tomatoes, and strawberries for
processing and export. Mexico during this period of time, in the '80s, did
not import corn. Shortly thereafter, she began importing corn for domestic
use. Whether the corporation *bought* the land legally or not is moot. In
actuality, the land was no longer available for use by the locals. Without
food, and without jobs paying more than about $4 U.S. a day, families
couldn't live. They moved to larger cities and the U.S.
>And the existence of a market for
>organic food outside Mexico is helping drive a move toward the use of
>more environmentally friendly. technology.
That may be so where you are but people researching this from here find DDT
and other pesticides banned in the U.S. being used on crops grown in Mexico
for export to the U.S. Some crops have been brought into the U.S. and
transferred to different boxes so as to appear grown in the U.S. The local
Teamsters union has documented this on numerous occasions, with pictures
and testimony.
>> With our current law setup, far more males than females are involved in the
>> system from police attention to arrests all the way up to prison time.
snip
>Does that represent choices made, doors closed, or both?
Don't know--I'd say that it represents the means by which the power elite
retain their control--by generating divisiveness at the lowest levels of
our social triangle. Poor minority youth are an identifiable group and have
the highest rate of mortality by homicide of any in the U.S. Something
interesting is going on; I have a friend investigating and will let you
know what her findings are.
>3 kinds of land ownership now exist in Mexico - small private,
>collective and communal. Only communal land is subject ot the above.
>Collective ownership is cooperative to a degree established by those
>involved. They are are no longer subject to the will of often corrupt
>leaders and govt. officials, as a result of the reforms.
So why do we hear up here about indigenous lands being taken over and
forests burned to provide lands to grow coffee or other crops? Why do
people here with families in Mexico talk of their relatives losing their
land to U.S. corporations? Why is more land being used to grow beef for
export than before-- this means fewer acres for Mexicans and fewer Mexican
crops grown and more hunger.
I understand your point about growing for export but the crops in Irapuato
don't count as the plants there are considered maquilladoras (even though
they are more than 400 miles from the border) and therefore are treated
differently for import and export. Mexico gains much less than say export
of oil or minerals than from maquilladora products.
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