How the U.S. caused the tortilla crisis.

last updated 8 January 2015

Mexico

Ana María Aragonés

Blame NAFTA, said Ana María Aragonés in La Jornada. The Americans wrote the North American Free Trade Agreement in their favor, specifically to “dominate” other countries in agriculture. Now they control the corn market, and poor Mexicans, whose staple food is corn tortillas, are going hungry. How did this happen? The U.S. restructured its agriculture and meat industries, concentrating them into a few large producers in rural areas. The only way for U.S. agribusiness to profit was by relying on government subsidies and hiring Mexicans to “work under precarious labor conditions at very low wages.” NAFTA allowed a flow of labor northward and a flow of goods southward. “We now import food and export our workforce, which favors U.S. competitiveness and leaves us at the mercy of the ups and downs of their economy.” Corn is a prime example. Under NAFTA, exports of American corn to Mexico have more than doubled in the past 10 years. Now, when the American corn price goes up, it is Mexicans who suffer. We can feed nothing but “the labor market of our insatiable neighbor to the north.”

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