Farmers Warn of World Cup Protests After Cancelled Meeting with Interior Secretariat
In Mexico City, farmers were met by riot police and a heavy security presence.
In Mexico City, farmers were met by riot police and a heavy security presence.
Progress toward food sovereignty requires policies that protect, regulate, and promote the responsibility of the State. Maintaining the mistaken notion that these are goodwill aid packages given to farmers and agricultural producers only when budgetary resources are available will deepen the agricultural crisis and increase food dependency.
The situation of FNRCM members in Tlaxcala is unknown. Meanwhile the state government announced that traffic has been restored on the roads.
The fact that the authorities have spoken with the farmers doesn’t mean their demands have been met. Caught between the fire of the USMCA and the wall of public policies that strangle or abandon them, they are fighting for their survival.
Organizers considered the government’s has no interest in resolving the agricultural crisis, and balked at the demand that they not hold any demonstrations during this year’s World Cup.
The objective of the mobilizations is to pressure large importers & grain buyers, who buy subsidized US imports instead of national production.
Mexico’s Secretary of Economy touts a new trade policy of origin over price, yet the import of highly subsidized staple grains benefits US producers at the expense of Mexico’s domestic producers.
Mexico’s three year crisis is causing desperation, aggravated by US crop dumping, a hostile Agriculture Secretary, monopoly profiteering and an unwillingness from the government to protect agriculture and food sovereignty.
Citing insufficient support, bankruptcies, crop-dumping by the US, and abandoning Mexican food sovereignty in USMCA negotiations, farmers say the government’s ties to big business has pushed them to this national action.
Farmers will seek to prevent the transit of heavily subsidized grains imported from the US & denounced the concentration of the food market by a small number of transnational corporations.