A friend of mine was murdered yesterday. She was in Haiti, working in an orphanage for 18 months. She went to the bank to withdraw some money but forgot her passport, so she stepped outside and headed back to her room to fetch it. Someone asked her for money as she was leaving, and when she honestly denied having any, she was shot. I'm struggling to deal with my emotions and I am looking for those ever coveted but elusive answers. With my grief comes the certainty that there is more to this incident than a misguided attempt at mugging.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Its people, desperately seeking an escape from poverty, sometimes resort to violence. Theirs is a desperation far different than anything we could understand, and unfortunately it usually isn't until a tragedy occurs that we even pay attention. The man who killed Maureen was a victim himself. He was driven to commit a crime because the system wasn't working. Society failed him. We failed him. Currently, in the Americas, more and more people find themselves unable to provide the basic necessities for their families. Our leaders, in pursuit of a more efficient and productive society, support neo-liberalism and free trade, claiming the model will bring economic growth. The North American Free Trade Agreement's (NAFTA) six-year history proves that free trade does allow growth - the bank accounts of the country's elite sure do expand.
At the same time, though, it gives the poor majority fewer options for survival. Most small farmers lose their business to competition from huge international producers. Since the enactment of NAFTA, one million Mexican farmers have lost their jobs and in many cases their land, too, all in the name of the elimination of trade barriers. And Mexico, before its free trade endeavor, was in relatively good shape compared to many of its neighbors.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the proposed agreement that will be further negotiated during next month's Summit of the Americas and will expand on NAFTA to include Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. Those already struggling to make ends meet in poor nations like Nicaragua, Peru, and the Dominican Republic will face an even more hostile environment as state-owned industries are privatized and purchasing power and wages decrease. The quality of health care and education in these countries will likely worsen, as the owners take less interest in the population for which they provide services and more interest in yielding a profit for stockholders. When domestic industries fall victim to transnational corporations, the unemployment and underemployment rates will skyrocket, as they did in Mexico. After the implementation of NAFTA, the only sector of the economy that experienced significant growth was export processing, a.k.a. the maquiladora industry. Sweatshops fall into this category. The number of sweatshop employees in Mexico has more than doubled in the past six years. Free trade is robbing peasants of land, decent jobs, and even clean air.
Economic gains and profits are the first priorities for corporations and sadly for many of our lawmakers as well. I attribute a great deal of environmental destruction to this greedy attitude. Under NAFTA, corporations are rarely held accountable for violations of laws that protect the environment. Each nation has the right to sue any other member nation for monetary compensation if environmental laws inhibit trade in any way and prevent someone somewhere from earning money. A US corporation sued a small
Mexican state after its governor decided to disallow the construction of a hazardous waste site on property which the corporation owned. The NAFTA tribunal ruled in favor of the corporation and forced the state to pay $16.7 million to compensate for lost business. This is not an isolated incident; the tribunal has yet to deliver one verdict in favor of a community's right to a healthy environment.
In short, the neo-liberalization trend has already exploited the world's poor, and it is doubtful they can sustain the intensified abuses that will come with the FTAA. This is a critical time for oppressed people to take a stand against their oppressors. Maureen's killer most likely reacted to the institutionalized violence of which he is a victim and lashed out at a random target in anger and frustration. Regrettably, the woman he chose was not the enemy. She was doing something positive; she was dedicated to the struggle for social justice and was fighting in the most honorable way imaginable. Her passion and unwavering commitment to peace earned my intense admiration and I refuse to compromise her integrity by placing blame on the man who pulled the trigger.
The 34 heads of states who are meeting up in Quebec in April are at fault. They are making the conscious decision to oppress the very people they're supposed to represent. Instead of designing a more egalitarian society, they are choosing to create a few new billionaires and let the rest of the world scramble for their crumbs. It is our responsibility to change this; we must take care of our poorest neighbors and ensure their survival. Like Maureen, who died while caring for orphaned children of this hemisphere's poorest nation, we must try to deconstruct our inherently violent economic policies and promote peace, at whatever cost.
Emily Good is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
