Just a quick thought about Mexico: Mexico is a relatively poor country that has become (like Canada) an appendage of the ailing US economy. The downturn in the US economy has obviously had a negative impact on the maquiladoras and sweat-shops that were created to serve US transnationals. But don't forget that NAFTA has decimated Mexican peasants by flooding the market with subsidized US grain. This has forced millions of Mexicans to run the gauntlet of the US border to find work in the USA to sustain both themselves and, through their remittances, the millions more left behind without a livelihood. The rise in unemployment within the USA itself has also affected "illegal" Mexican workers and this has lowered the amount of the remittances.
Poverty and hopelessness is behind the surging narcotics business resulting in a horrific rise in violent crime. Continued hopelessness, government corruption and brutality, might eventually force a mass people's movement as we have just seen in Tunisia and Egypt, for an end to the stolen elections and torture policies of America's next-door neighbour.
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Trade agreements and IMF policies have always led to the decimation of agriculture and not by accident either. How else do you create a large pool of hungry, desperate workers to staff your sweatshops.
Whether it is corn in Mexico , rice in Haiti, or the auto pact in Canada nations are forced to open up their markets so that the ruling elite can destroy the economy of the victim nation.They do this by attacking the nation's strongest sector,for maximum effect.
After over three decades of that happening nobody can pretend that these are unintended consequences.
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