NAFTA Linked to Massive Human Rights Violations in Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Scoop Media New Zealand

NAFTA Linked to Massive Human Rights Violations in Mexico
Sunday, 6 April 2014, 12:44 pm
Article: Kent Paterson

NAFTA Linked to Massive Human Rights Violations in Mexico
by Kent Paterson

In a series of preliminary opinions, an international tribunal of conscience has condemned massive violations of human rights in Mexico.

Now wrapping up a four-year process of evidence gathering, members of the Mexican chapter of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) have found grave threats to the environment, food sovereignty, indigenous autonomy, and democratic rights of self-expression and organization of the Mexican people.

A common denominator is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), according to PPT representatives and collaborators.

“Groups and movements participating in the tribunal have documented ways in which NAFTA has been pernicious to Mexico’s social, economic and cultural life,” says Dr. Zulma Mendez, member of the Group for the Articulation of Justice in Ciudad Juarez and a participant in the gender violence and femicide section of the PPT.

According to Mendez,“The unequal relations of power that are present in NAFTA and which help to make it attractive to U.S. interests have been addressed: Transnational corporations that divest communities of a viable future through practices that turn communities into mass production spaces, workers into a pair of arms, and life as disposable…”

Read more: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1404/S00032/nafta-linked-to-massive-human-rights-violations-in-mexico.htm

[MisterP]

1. the PRI's often been tied to "pistoleros"--whether gunning down tomato farmers in Sinaloa

who complained about the "miracle" pesticides' effects

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acteal_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguas_Blancas_massacre

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thanks for providing these links to situations we need to know about.

From the Corpus Christi massacre link, concerning a massacre I had never learned about, I found the following information which will lead some of us to a completely new body of information:

Los Halcones (The hawks) was a black operations army group that was trained in the United States. The group was created in the late 1960s to repress demonstrations and prevent other large popular movements such as the student movement of 1968 from rising again.

Every time you think you'd heard it all! This is amazing. Paramilitaries trained in the U.S. Goddammit.

From the link concerning Aguas Blancas:

Planning of the massacre[edit]

Allegedly, the ex-secretary general of Guerrero, José Rubén Robles Catalán, and Gustavo Olea Godoy, head of the state police, were waiting in a helicopter some meters away, and took off when the first shot was fired.[1] The governor had before had a conversation with María de la Luz Núñez Ramos, saying measures had been taken so that the group would not reach Atoyac and that they would stop them by whatever means necessary. After the massacre he had another conversation with her, saying "They came for war, and war they got. Are we, or are we not the authority?",[1] However, it is said to have been planned by the governor Rubén Figueroa Alcocer (PRI).

Hope anyone who doesn't know will take the time to read about the Tlaltelolco massacre, and spend some time considering the following:

US government records[edit]

In October 2003, the role of the United States government in the massacre was publicized when the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of records from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the White House which were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests

The documents detail:

• That in response to Mexican government concerns over the security of the Olympic Games, the Pentagon sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis.
  
  
• That the CIA station in Mexico City produced almost daily reports concerning developments within the university community and the Mexican government from July to October. Six days before the massacre at Tlatelolco, both Echeverría and head of Federal Security (DFS) Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios told the CIA that "the situation will be under complete control very shortly".
  
  
• That the Díaz Ordaz government "arranged" to have student leader Sócrates Campos Lemus accuse dissident PRI politicians such as Carlos Madrazo of funding and orchestrating the student movement.

Thanks for the reminder to wake up, to take advantage of the freedom to learn more we need to know, while we still have that ability.

[MisterP]

6. here's the tomato book

the Green Revolution and population growth were supposed by the PRI to let Mexico "catch up" with the West--since we're gods we may as well get good at it
http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-Ramon-Gonzalez-Agricultural/dp/0292712685/

[Judi Lynn]

9. Thanks for the links.

Never knew about Diego Rivera's contract with Rockefeller, and how that went.

Glad he got a chance to paint the same ideas in a smaller version later.

[L0oniX]

2. NAFTA is just another way for the rich to exploit people and circumvent laws.

[Enthusiast]

3. +1 a whole bunch.......nt

[blkmusclmachine]

4. "nafta" means petrol/oil in spanish

[bemildred]

7. That was the idea.

You can't get filthy rich without exploiting someone, consumers, employees, foreigners, somebody has to get screwed.

[Zorra]

8. K&R nt

[Le Taz Hot]

10. One of the many reasons listed

when originally arguing against NAFTA that BILL CLINTON AND HIS WIFE HILLARY WHOLEHEARTEDLY SUPPORTED AND STILL SUPPORT. Remember that when Hillary is anointed as the Democratic Party's nominee. And I'm supposed to hold my nose and vote for her? Fuck that.