Mexico: The Other Earthquake

No doubts, we all regret the number of victims and destruction left by the most recent earthquake in Mexico. President Enrique Pena Nieto said they will not stop until they find the last of all the missing people because “human life is the most important thing,” he said.

That way he prevented those diggers and other similar machineries, most of them from private owners, take control of things until the last debris could have been removed. This action was absolutely laudable.

Against this background, the talks on the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were postponed.

It is presumed the Aztecs side will come off worse than they were in the previous agreement. According to Trump, such agreement greatly benefitted Mexico and left a huge U.S. trade deficit.

As a matter of fact, the humble Mexican people, the poor ones, suffered the agreement as U.S. manufacturers and few from Canada moved their factories into Mexico. There they could find cheap labor and earn abundant sum of money creating unemployment in North America as well.

The illegal economy boosted the Mexican enterprises so all of them could be internationalized, especially those with a certain degree of involvement of Mexican politicians. Thanks to NAFTA, these enterprises have established in the U.S. to continue their illegal practices: money laundry, diversion of resources, tax evasion, drug trafficking, etc. The question is: Canada and the U.S. Can they trust Mexican companies with all these flaws?

The world economic crisis is caused by high levels of corruption involving national companies that were internationalized in the last decade. That is the reason why the U.S. is demanding the whole world a purification of enterprises linked to the NAFTA.

This is not new. Let’s remember the devaluation of the US dollar in 1929 to cut the census of the entrepreneurial sector. It triggered massive suicide. Hundreds of entrepreneurs jumped from New York skyscrapers after their companies went into bankruptcy. Mexico is going through this enterprise purification with the renegotiation of the NAFTA, but I do not see any entrepreneur committing suicide now.

There is some uncertainty in Mexico due to the suspension of the NAFTA. However, it has never benefitted the Mexican people as Carlos Salinas de Gortari had the privilege of his companies having total trade freedom. Now with this purification going on, his law office has taken control again. But he only plans to boost his companies.

Trump proposed a live coverage of the negotiations in the three countries so NAFTA could be understood as something clean. He even went further and encouraged the most important social networks (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) to be there to vouch for it. But the Mexican government opposed to that idea suggesting that Mexico already has its own list of entrepreneurs.

Trump, before taking office in the U.S., has referred a series of disrespectful comments on Mexico, its migrants, and Pena Nieto and his staff. And none of them answered because all of them have shell corporations in America with which they are money-laundering and diverting resources to their bank accounts in Switzerland.

They are well-aware that if they make any kind of protest, their companies will be audited and their illegal movements would be revealed. The U.S. government has already basic knowledge of the embezzlements and financial crimes. Therefore, we should not be surprises if some of them can be extradited, even Pena Nieto after the termination of his presidency.

In this context, we cannot trust in any actual improvement for the Mexican citizen. Its government, more servile than ever before, will continue with its policies of privatization of health, education; so life is getting more and more expensive. Capitalist economy created de gratuity. Such gratuities led to “mandatory quota”. This led to bribery, and it led to extortion.

So it is life in Mexico with a governmental system with many handicaps. Mexico is at a disadvantage in an agreement with more powerful partners. It is certainly another earthquake for the Mexican people.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Diaz / CubaSi Translation Staff