The NAFTA Blueprint

by Rodrigo Garcia

  * * *

  When I arrived in Baja, I made arrangements to meet with a fellow by the name of Praxedis G. Guerrero, a union miner recommended by the miners in Michoacán. I took a flight there after leaving Michoacán without advising the Chronicle or Helena about my whereabouts, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Jewish guy from the limo. Something was drawing me towards the energy he was radiating...it seemed off, but I couldn’t figure it out. When we walked in different directions at my meeting with the Kansas City Rail Project, he glanced at me over his shoulder and nodded with a blinked eye. I couldn’t place it, so I dismissed it.

  I was only gone for a few days from work but I decided it would be preferable to advise the paper about a lead I was pursuing in El Paso, Texas, regarding the Minutemen Project, so I had to work in swiftness. I pushed for a few more days on the story knowing it would be easily granted, my boss loved to believe I would land something extraordinary to increase circulation in the paper. Like many other newspapers, we were in danger of extinction thanks to the internet. The internet was the death of the newspaper…and the book…and the compact disc, and other things I couldn’t identify although I knew they were soon approaching.

  It wasn’t in my budget to fly to Baja California either, but I believed this contact would provide solid information. International reporting wasn’t for the frugal, it’s not like I would get reimbursed for all out-of-pocket expenses. I had a Chronicle-issued credit card, but I couldn’t always justify expenses. Yet, the pursuit of the truth encouraged people like myself to view due diligence with cynicism.

  Anyway, Punta Colonet was a runty, sleepy, coastal town about one-hundred fifty miles south of Tijuana, where the Port of Illusion was being planned. Being in border-town Mexico gave me comforting thoughts of remembrance because many people from Southern California often spent weekends traveling to Baja California as short getaways to eat fish tacos or lobster. In addition, my parents met in Cuernavaca, I had a fondness for the country even though some Mexicans had complexes towards Argentineans. I didn’t care though, I knew Mexico well, I had loads of Mexican friends, and I had covered some stories there about drugs, immigrant smuggling, and that whole Gold Shirts piece.

  After exiting the airplane, then making my way through the terminal into the luggage claim, the density of Mexico became apparent. The waiting area was like a circus with masses of people stumbling over suitcases and backpacks creating safety hazards throughout the vicinity. Welcome to Mexico―Bienvenidos a Tijuana! I took a cab to Punta Colonet, to a café where we had planned to meet.

  “Hola, buenos dias, nice to meet you. Michael Korsakov…I’m with the Houston Chronicle. Do you speak English by any chance…I’d rather conduct the interview in English if you don’t mind?”

  “Yeah…of course…a lot of Mexicans speak English. It’s you gringos that have a hard time with Spanish,” said Praxedis, “you guys just refuse to speak it. You can speak only one language. I used to live in Colorado, Denver…of course I speak English,” he smirked.

  “Well actually, I’m half Argentinean, half Russian, and I speak Spanish fluently. I actually speak Russian, English, and Spanish, but when I’m pursuing a story I prefer to continue in the language I had started to avoid confusion and translations. Does that make sense, compañero? But if you want we can do it in Spanish―como quieras, boludo.”

  Praxedis looked a bit flummoxed, perhaps he felt inadequate for his presumptuousness, trying to offend me because I looked like a typical gringo with my cornhusk hair and blue eyes, you know, so he swallowed his pride.

  “So…how can I help you? You’re writing a story about Punta Colonet?”

  “Well…I’m trying to learn about the West Coast ports in the U.S. and the connection with the ports here in Mexico that service American citizens with cheap Chinese goods. The guys in Michoacán said something, you know, about the development of a new port being bid on by big business investors. What do you know about that?”

  “That’s interesting…you actually just missed it. Last week there was a conference, some Texas-based company representing Chinese and Korean interests talked to politicians and businessmen here. I don’t know, they were like middlemen or something. They’re working for Hudson Port Ltd, those damn Chinese are buying all of Mexico. Some of your gringo countrymen politicians were here too, some politicians and businessmen from Texas.”

  Which politicians from Texas―that caught my attention? And what corporation or businessmen, what did they represent? What were they doing with Hudson Port? I speculated at high-ranking Texas congressmen.

  “They want to build roads, train routes, the port, even a small city…here in Punta Colonet. They’re not concerned with the environment though. A Japanese company tried to build a port here years ago as well, but the people here rejected it because of the environmental concerns. Everybody’s wanted it…the French, the Russians, the British, the Americans. You know, nobody really cares about the environment, the Chinese just have more money. They want to build this mega-container port…it’s supposed to be as big as the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports combined. The government’s doing all these plans for port and urban development, it’s already happening.”

  “So how do the locals feel about it now, since they rejected it in the past? What’s changed?”

  “Well, first of all, the people around here think it’s a good idea because there’s no movement of anything around here. It’s like a ghost town. I mean―there’s no real money or source of income here…there’s no hope for some future good-paying jobs. People are hoping that their children will be able to work on the port in the future, to get a better salary. But what they don’t realize is that they’re going to bring in specialized and skilled workers from other parts of Mexico. These people here don’t know anything about port maintenance or what job skills they actually need. They’re going to need specialists, probably from China and other countries…from other ports in Mexico. They don’t care about all the pollution from port operations, of all the ships, of all the trucks and trains. They don’t care about toxic paint in the water, destroying natural life and sea creatures…it’s going to be the biggest investment in Mexico’s history, four billion dollars…can you believe that? And nobody is against it. Just a few of us union miners and we work for a Canadian company that’s against the port as well. Isn’t that ironic, you know, all these foreign companies dominating Mexico’s affairs. But the Canadians want it for their benefit as well, too bad all those gringo surfers won’t be coming here anymore from the United States,” he finished off.

  “I don’t understand. How are they going to get all that cargo to Kansas City…to that new port we’re developing there to be spread across the heart of the country?” I was vexed.

  “No, no, no…you got it all wrong. The port of

  Lazaro Cardenas is going to be used for Kansas City distribution, but this new port here in Baja, that’s going to be distributed to Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and all the way up to Canada…through the Canamex Corridor. All these supercorridors all over Mexico, the United States, and Canada, they’ll be used to connect highways, railroads, pipelines, infrastructure, fiber optics…you name it…it’s all for your country’s NAFTA plan. It mostly benefits the gringos. The corridors are about eighty-five percent compliant with plans to move forward all over the continent, owned by the same people, who own the same things. The Chinese are going to take over the world…you’ll see.”

  I stood there in awe, it made sense. There were so many changes going on throughout North America in secrecy because private companies and government officials had not released public statements or had received public support for such projects. People were dulled by mass media consumerist propaganda that we didn’t have time to think about being informed citizens. This increase in monopolization of several industries sent shivering fears throughout my inner system.

/>   “Wow, thanks for the information. All this is going on right underneath our noses, and nobody seems to care, people are just so apathetic.”

  I was thinking aloud and a bit imprudent, it even bothered me when people came across some climactic information and all of a sudden they were intellectual informed citizens playing their civic duty. I had just appeared that way.

  “Woe, woe…wait a minute. Maybe Americans are uninformed, but Mexican people have been concerned about this for years. Let’s just look at Chiapas for example.”

  Chiapas, there it was again after so many years, it kept coming up around the NAFTA debate. I had pursued a story there after high school prior to entering the university, extracurricular activity around the Zapatista conflict.

  “Look, on January 1st, 1994, the Zapatistas in Chiapas declared war against the government. Why? Because the Mexican government signed the NAFTA agreement that privatized land in rain forests throughout Southern Mexico, to sell to foreign companies for businesses…to increase industrial development and production. The free-market economy has been spread throughout the world. No one’s untouched by the shame. All these technocrats, board directors, big businesses, private investors, and land speculators…you know, high-level capitalists, they all want a piece of Mexico…to rape and pillage it like always for its rich natural resources. These indigenous communities in Chiapas used to live traditional lives, they didn’t even speak Spanish, but then the big bad gringos want to take their land and tell them to work for them instead, and get a credit card and commute to work, and work at a sweatshop or something. Then they want to tell the Mexican government to borrow money from the World Bank and the IMF, which American and Jewish bankers own, and that they’ll renegotiate their debt if they let them take control of their local land and natural resources at lowered prices instead. You know Article 27 of our Constitution granted indigenous communities agrarian land reform and protection? But now NAFTA has compromised it and paralyzed their way of life. And now they just want them as exploitable cheap labor. They can’t even set up a union, so what are their options―1. Starvation, 2. Rebellion, join the EZLN, and 3. Immigrate illegally to the United States to make more money to provide for their families. So now the United States has another wave of immigrant laborers coming from non-traditional places like Puebla, Oaxaca, Chiapas, from southern states…where people’s standards of living are declining and everybody’s trying to buy something to eat. But then they go to the U.S. and the government wants to tax them, but not give them national benefits, and everyone wants to be racist against hard-working Mexicans. I’ve lived in the U.S., I know what the racism’s like, but you think any of those foreign companies take responsibility for that? The poverty-stricken communities they helped to create here? You actually think those indigenous people want to leave their native lands to go to the land of opportunity, to New York, to Wall Street, to help their families survive. Not to live but to survive? You think they want to separate themselves from their families, to head to the border, where many of them die, where they become criminals, where these same people have stolen their land, where they decapitate the heads of the household. And then they say we’re a threat to your national security? So what do you gringos do now, you implement raids and this ‘Return to Sender’ operation, and scare everyone with this domestic terrorism bullshit. And then these companies want to rob land all over Mexico, and Central and South America, and everywhere else. And take our natural resources, and they say that Mexicans are dirty wetbacks. Man…fuck the gringos!”

  I ignored the aggression. Many Mexicans I came across often attacked the American culture with emotional duress. If they wanted to blame their problems on the United States to scapegoat their responsibility, then so be it. Their plight was not my concern. The Mexican government and citizens were also guilty of shortcomings. That’s always the case―assume some responsibility.

  “I’m sorry, but I have one more question. Can you confirm that the American politicians and businessmen were from Texas? I mean―how’d you know they were from Texas anyway? Can I go on record with all of this?” I asked with embarrassment.

  “They were definitely from Texas. There was a banquet for them at a hotel where my wife works. Plus, there was a story in the paper about it, what do I care. Maybe you should research the travel records of public officials from Texas. Isn’t that information open to the public? You gringos are all about transparency, right? There’s always politicians and businessmen traveling down here for some business interests or something, especially now. And yes, they are usually from Texas. From some corporation over there, but I don’t know the name. It’s no big secret to us. I don’t care what you publish. You guys are as corrupt as we are, but you hide it better. And by the way, that was three questions. Pinche gaucho-gringo, communista!”