Several farmers' organizations across Mexico say they are planning to block key entry points along the US/Mexico border on Jan. 1, and try to prevent the importation of US produced corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk.Starting Jan. 1, taxes on those products will be completely lifted under the North American Free Trade Agrement (NAFTA), that will expose Mexican farmers to a new era of full competition with US producers who have technology for planting and harvesting, money to commericialize their products and are subsidized by the US government.
"If the Mexican government does not suspend the implementation of this final era of NAFTA there will only be more food insecurity in our country, the income of food producers will drop dramatically and prices will rise for consumers," said Victor Quintana of the Democratic Campesino Front of Chihuahua state.
Many economists and agricultural experts here and in the US expect the unfair competition to further devastate Mexico's rural economy, which in the past decade has seen the mass migration of millions of small-scale farmer unable to compete in international food markets.
"Mexican agriculture has been a net loser in trade with the United States, and employment in the sector has declined sharply," former Clinton administration official Sandra Polaski testified before the U.S. Senate last year.
Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas is a focal point for many of the protests, which aim to stop trucks transporting corn and other products into Mexico over the Cordoba international bridge. According to protest organizers, the New Years day blockade are part of a series of protests that have gone on for 13 years, since the Free Trade agreement with Canada and the United States first went into affect.
"The US and Mexican governments signed a commercial trade pact that has only generated unemployment and poverty on both sides of the border," said Carlos Marentes, a leader of the Border Union of Agricultural workers.
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