Lucia roams the UCLA campus like any other undergraduate student.
But life for this Bruin is different, and her life is indicative of a century-long struggle for a fair global trade agenda that considers the needs of subsistence farmers.
Lucia, who asked that only her first name be used because she is an undocumented immigrant, is a fourth-year part-time student who wants to be a doctor but cannot imagine how her undocumented family will ever be able to afford the cost of the education.
For now, she works at a Westwood fast food restaurant so that she can pay her ever-increasing student fees.
The story of her 1999 border crossing from Tlaxcala, Mexico, to Pasadena is rooted in decades of poverty and international imbalance. And if Congress does not revisit its formula for trade, similar stories will arise from countries to which trade is expanding.
While the situations in regions such as Lucia’s native Tlaxcala have been precarious for decades, things got worse after the 1994 signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement allowed the big subsidized agribusiness to challenge the farming in Mexico.
With protective tariffs eradicated, cheaper U.S. products flooded the Mexican markets and resulted in the near elimination of a farming lifestyle unable to compete for a market share.
What happened to Mexico after 1994 could happen to Peru and other countries starting this week.
Fast-forward to 2007 and President Bush is working to effect a new trade policy. For this reason, he has made so-called “free trade” agreements with Peru, Colombia and Panama his next goal. These three countries, with a combined consumer power of 75 million people and $245 billion in gross domestic product, undeniably increase the prospects for worldwide expansion of U.S. exports.
The Peru deal passed the House and is on its way to the Senate. Given the purchasing power of those three markets, the corporate pitch is easy to make, but some disagree.
On this side, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Jim Hoffa commented: “The purpose of trade deals is to make Wall Street richer and to make the average working man and woman poorer.”
Similarly, the president of the National Convention of Peruvian Agriculture, Luis Zuñiga, recently told Lima’s La República newspaper, “With a wide-open and tariff-free national agricultural market, Peru is giving an abysmal advantage to the subsidized U.S. products”.
The House of Representatives recently approved the agreement with allegedly improved labor and environmental conditions, but unions in both countries still oppose it. Industrialist unions in the U.S. do not want to lose any more manufacturing jobs to other countries. Farming syndicates in Peru are afraid of hurting the population that makes a living through the fields, just like Lucia’s family did for generations.
While the working classes on each side oppose the deals, it is unlikely that college graduates on either side would suffer. With our degrees, most of us will move on to professions with little or no international competition in the medical, legal, political, marketing or business fields. But should the effort that such degree requires validate a system where thousands cannot afford to make a living? Someone with Lucia’s background would certainly say no. Instead, we should challenge the notion that profit alone should drive international cooperation.
Regardless, in the White House’s own pompous rhetoric, these trade agreements create a “historic opportunity to strengthen the forces of freedom and democracy throughout the Americas.”
But Mark Weisbrot, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, begs to differ. The goal is not freedom or democracy but rather profit for multinational corporations.
He recently wrote that the main goal of these treaties is “to reduce wages here by throwing U.S. workers into competition with their much lower-paid counterparts throughout the world.”
Lucia’s parents were part of those counterparts. They lost their way of living through these policies and ended up looking for a better life on this side of the border, where they face a new uphill battle against poverty.
Congress should ensure that deals with Peru and other countries learn the lessons of trade and play it fair.
E-mail Ramos at mramos@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.