The NAFTA Blueprint

by Rodrigo Garcia

  * * *

  A wake-up call, wake-up calls were sudden impacts of reality infiltrating a once comfortable pseudo-environment provided by sources of conformism. I had just received a significant wake-up call. Illegal immigration transformed itself to a harsh truth of neo-liberal capitalism. And―Texas business and government officials, maybe from other states too, meeting with Chinese businessmen while traveling to Mexico to the different ports and other areas of interest. It was related to the ports, supercorridors, the toll roads, real estate, free trade, drug commerce, railroads―NAFTA, it had to be.

  Jay Jacobs had already maintained the Texas Governor was a shareholder in the EuroCarril-Zachary merger. Was the Governor of Texas involved with a corporate monopoly? This was colossal. With this new information, I had enough to at least bring it up to Franklin as a corruption scandal, but I didn’t want to jump too far ahead. I needed to build foundations, to establish narrative momentum in my stories.

  I wondered what the longshoremen workers in Los Angeles and Long Beach thought about this new port in Baja California that would increase and contribute to unemployment. Service jobs had been out-sourced to foreign countries so often now that Americans weren’t even surprised anymore when a company declared bankruptcy or moved their operations to India or Costa Rica or some other foreign land.

  I recalled Valerie Castellanos. I had published an article about her sister―Stella Castellanos. We had been corresponding about a possible novel regarding Stella, who was accused of murdering an American colleague in Chile but was cleared of the crime. I remembered her from gatherings with friends back home. She always seemed a bit complicated, but I couldn’t speculate if she was capable of murder…I guess anyone was capable. Valerie’s husband, Jake, was a longshoreman who worked on the Los Angeles docks. He would be a good source of information if I could establish contact. I had met him once at a gathering. After I contacted Valerie and discovered Jake worked on a clear-air campaign, I also discovered Stella was living in Brazil, unscathed by the murder trial which left her free to roam the world. I wanted to talk to her…to someone who had gotten away with murder, but some other time. My next stop would be to the Long Beach and L.A. ports. Back in my hometown, back in the neighborhood in Los Angeles, to continue following the story.

  I crossed over the border from Tijuana to San Diego on foot. I had never done that before. My brother was scheduled to pick me up on the San Diego side at a fast food joint, and then I would get dropped off in San Pedro at the Los Angeles port. That didn’t work out in my favor, but I’ll tell you all about that later.

  I went straight to the office to meet Jake at his jobsite. I wanted to get right down to business…I had almost forgotten how chaotic ports looked. After the meeting, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports had been awarded environmental awards because of their dedicated practices to reduce pollution through progressive programs and initiatives. I felt a sense of pride, of worthy praise. California had been leading the way in progressive policies since the late nineteenth century in the United States…the progressive movement. I was proud of California, to be Californian, to be an Angelino, from the golden state of progress.

  The green port policy, the clean air action plan, the clean trucks program, the green flag incentive, the green command and control center, these were all initiatives that Hudson Port Ltd had significant concerns with, which is why they wanted to relocate to Mexico. I couldn’t prove it. The Chinese companies weren’t distinguished because of their maverick dedication to a clean environment, and they didn’t own the ports in California, thus the plans to move forward with Mexican ports had a simple underlying principle. Monopoly.

  I called Helena in Texas, “Helena! Hey…its Michael, you’re not going to believe everything I’ve discovered!” I was hysterical.

  “Where to start―the ports in Mexico, the new customs facility in Kansas City, the new port project in Baja California, the monopolization of certain industries…I have so much to tell you! Are you sitting down? I’m still in California but I’ll be back―”

  She cut me off, “Michael, calm down, hold on. I have something to tell you as well. Do you remember Jay Jacobs, the commissioner of the Trans-Texas Corridor?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “He died yesterday. It was sudden, supposedly. The newspapers and the obituary claim he died of heart failure, a natural death. He was supposed to go public tomorrow, to make a declaration of the clandestine nature of the Trans-Texas Corridor. He called me the day before.”

  She paused for a few seconds, “I think he was murdered.”

  6.