Discussion Outline

[UtahOwl]

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JUNE’S SUGGESTED OUTLINE: MURDER CITY: CIUDAD JUAREZ AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY’S NEW KILLING FIELDS BY CHARLES BOWDEN
Bowden is bitter and angry about the social disintegration he has watched occur over a decade or more in Juarez, Mexico, and paints a doomsday picture of its future and, perhaps, ours. However, he does suggest several steps for dealing with the ongoing disintegration of social structure:

1. Renegotiate NAFTA.
1a: What is NAFTA? On December 8, 1993, the leaders of the governments of Canada, United States, and Mexico signed the most anticipated trilateral free trade agreement, known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA; this was implemented on January 1, 1994, for the sole purpose of helping to remove most of the trade and investment barriers, while boosting high economic growth between the tri-bloc neighboring countries. One important area was agricultural tariffs: "Under the NAFTA, all non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade between the United States and Mexico were eliminated. In addition, many tariffs were eliminated immediately, with others being phased out over periods of 5 to 15 years. This allowed for an orderly adjustment to free trade with Mexico, with full implementation beginning January 1, 2008" (United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service).

1b: What effects has NAFTA had on Mexico? More than 10 years after the treaty was signed, NAFTA has fulfilled its goals of spurring competition, and increasing both trade and internal investment in Mexico. However, in the process of “competition”, the new NAFTA economies apparently have disrupted traditional agrarian lifeways as well. Formerly successful agrarian families, once able to send their children to college, find the markets for their traditional crops, such as corn, have been undercut by multinational agricultural corporations. The small farmers can't sell their corn at a profitable price. No official NAFTA compensation or reparations structure seems to exist to cope with the widespread disenfranchisement of indigenous families dependant on traditional, now obsolete, local economies. The Economic Policy Institute explains about post-NAFTA Mexico:
"In Mexico, real wages have fallen sharply and there has been a steep decline in the number of people holding regular jobs in paid positions. Many workers have been shifted into subsistence-level work in the 'informal sector'... Additionally, a flood of subsidized, low-priced corn from the U.S. has decimated farmers and rural economics."
In this fashion, NAFTA seems to favor North America's big business over the needs of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. The factories in Mexico, the maquiladoras, forbid workers the right to organize a union, have no environmental regulation, and are sweatshops paying slave wages that cannot support families. The benefits appear to go to governments, rich land owners, and large businesses. Meanwhile, the starving rural poor are abandoning the land and choose between living in slums and working in maquiladoras, joining the drug trade, or trying the risky crossing to the US.
1c: Given 1a and 1b above, is it reasonable, or even possible, to re-negotiate NAFTA to deal with its damaging side effects on Mexico’s rural and urban poor?
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2. Realize the war on drugs is a disaster.
2a: What is the history of the War on Drugs? The War on Drugs was declared by President Nixon in 1970, and began with $100 million the first year. Now it’s $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation. From Associated Press| Published May 13, 2010: After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified." The AP article in the Reference Materials lists total expenditures over 40 years for criminal justice costs alone:
— $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
— $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses. [Cost of state prisoners not included – these costs are eating into state budgets while making no dent in the drug problem.]
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."
2b. Which rationales for continuing the War on Drugs do you agree with?
i. We can’t stop doing what we’re doing, because drug addiction ruins lives and threatens to undermine the foundations of American society.
ii. We have to keep fighting the War on Drugs because otherwise all the hard-line, anti-crime politicians and prosecutors will have no clothes, and the soldiers in the War on Drugs will suffer an irreparable blow to their self-esteem. "To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters [Drug Czar before the current one] said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."
iii. Other?
2c. Which rationales for abandoning the War on Drugs do you agree with?
iv. It’s a failed policy. It’s been going on for 40 years, costing more and more money for no measurable progress. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske (the current Drug Czar) told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
v. Drug use is a public health issue, not a police issue. Spend money and effort on reducing the Demand side, not the Supply side.
vi. Decriminalize drugs in the USA. This would cut the obscene profit from drugs down by a huge amount, and the corruption that comes with it could not be sustained without the money. Then we might have a hope of policing the border, whereas now there is no hope – the money can buy or terrorize anyone into cooperating with the cartels.
Bowden: “It’s forty years old. We’re at war with our own people. We’re destroying nations, like Mexico. If you’re against drugs, this is a public health issue. You don’t send a cop because you’re having a cardiac.”

3. Change our immigration law.
Major conferences held in 2002 concluded that NAFTA achieved its trade and investment goals, but did not have many of the hoped-for side effects, such as reducing poverty and inequality in Mexico or stemming Mexico-US migration.

3a. One recommended migration change aims to stabilize the stock of Mexican-born US residents, about nine million, and legalize (but not increase) the current flow, about 300,000 to 500,000 a year. One proposal to accomplish this stabilization-legalization goal would have the US grant a combination of more immigrant and guest worker visas to accommodate the current inflow, and allow Mexicans working in the United States to earn immigrant status in the US. For its part, Mexico would police its border to prevent additional illegal emigration [but we see from Bowden’s history that this is not going to happen].
Is such a proposal desirable? Is it politically feasible in the US?

Bowden: “These Mexicans are coming north because NAFTA in good part destroyed their economic base in Mexico. Now, I don’t have a solution to immigration, but I know nobody is going to stay there until they have a decent living there. If we destroy their living, they’re going to come here. You want to build walls for recreation, go ahead.”

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS RAISED:
I. On p 228, Bowden is talking to El Pastor, the founder of the camp in the desert for the “crazy people” destroyed by the violence inside and around them, and he asks El Pastor, “Tell me what the slaughter of the year 2008 means?” El Pastor tells him, “Not even in the Mexican revolution did they kill so many in Juarez. This year of death shows the brutality inside the Mexican government – death comes from inside the government. Not from the people. The only way to end the violence is to let organized crime be the government. The crime groups are fighting for power. If the toughest guy wins, he will get everything under control.”
Do you think this is a viable solution for Juarez?

II. Do you buy Bowden’s portrayal of Mexico as a nation with an essentially illegitimate, powerless President, where the only effective power is the Mexican army – brutal, corrupt, installed in all the state governments, and efficient in only one thing – terrorizing the populace?

III. At least in the border states, rule of law is disintegrating in Mexico. Are there actions we can take to prevent the export of human misery across our southern border?