Campesinos, who shut down border crossings and major highways twice last year and face ruin due to the dumping of US crops, believe the government is sacrificing Mexican agriculture in order to secure a USMCA deal.
Farmers are guaranteed a price of 27 pesos per kilo from the federal government centers, compared to the 7-12 pesos that intermediaries or coyotes pay them. But there’s one catch: they aren’t operating.
Mexico is facing a race against time to strengthen not only energy sovereignty, but also energy security in a period of intensified US imperialism.
Transnational corporations won in both NAFTA & the USMCA, and Mexico is not prepared to face the greater demands the US will impose in its favor for the continuation of the USMCA or in a new trade agreement.
As Monday’s protests demonstrate, Mexican farmers are at a breaking point. Caught between the USMCA trade agreement and a wall of policies that ignore them, they are fighting for their survival. Their anger will not subside anytime soon.
Mexico’s farmers strike has not ended, as the government has only negotiated with certain producers over issues such as a low price for corn which benefits monopolies and the destruction of food sovereignty initiated by free trade with the US.
Producers did not agree to formalize the base price of 5,200 pesos offered by the government in this most recent national agricultural strike.
Mexico’s Peasant Agricultural Movement & National Union of Agricultural Workers deployed throughout the country for the second time in as many weeks, demanding the government set a minimum price on corn and end the destruction of their livelihoods caused by decades of free trade.
UNAM’s Enrique Dussel Peters warned that it will be replaced by an American tactic of bilateral blackmail & that if Mexico unilaterally imposes tariffs on China, Mexico “is heading towards a dead end”
The US’ War on Terror comes to Latin America, Mexican foreign policy & the Global Sumud Flotilla, USMCA bullying, national polling, and media spin from the LA & NY Times.