Here’s an observation for the Zapatistas: Distributing flyers around UCSD with big pictures of masked men brandishing automatic weapons (or even dolls made out to look that way) with promises to “help those who are resisting” against “the evil wrought by the powerful who only humiliated us” might cause some resentment in America. In fact, it might make Americans scream “Ya Basta!” Indeed, enough.
The Zapatistas are not Al Qaeda nor the Al-Aqsa Martyrs, but their flyer did a fantastic job of making the radical left look like Arab terrorists, which is a disservice. Full disclosure: I only attended five minutes of their meeting (they were here asking for money). It conveys my erstwhile ignorance of this group that I asked, “What do you think of North American Free Trade Agreement?” which begot the familiar run-around of the protectionist left. However, it is worthwhile to debunk some of these points, in general, not just as they are made by the Zapatistas.
Their response was that all of the land and wealth in Mexico is now being sucked up by a few powerful corporations. Citizens are being forced to live brutish lives in maquilladoras (sweat shops). It was most telling that the people leading the discussion veered into generalizations: that this was what was happening all over the world, in China and in Korea, too, statements which dovetailed their flyer. But, as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times noted, sweatshops are one of the preferred wage sources in third-world countries, as they don’t involve constant sweat. As Paul Krugman wrote in Slate, “global poverty is not something recently invented for the benefit of multinational corporations.” Disparities in wages existed long before advances in telecommunications, transportation and other technologies that finally made it profitable for businesses in developed nations to use third-world labor.
Specifically, NAFTA has turned North America right side up again. As the Congressional Budget Office, relying on U.S. Census Bureau data, notes, U.S. exports to and imports from Mexico have risen steadily over the past 15 years — trends that NAFTA reflected and reinforced rather than started. Thanks to NAFTA and, especially, to trends that were in place long before, America is now running a trade deficit of $17 billion annually with Mexico — a wealthy country is financing the growth of a poor one, as it should. The Mexican maquilladoras pay a few dollars per day — and yet people come to Tijuana from other parts of Mexico seeking better lives. There is still a sharp contrast at the Mexican border, but the influx of capital is starting to put pavement and concrete where muddy dirt roads once lay. There’s room for debate on what the best ways are to funnel the maximum possible amount of the capital revenue to the workers, but were America to forcibly close its borders to trade, the misery would doubtlessly deepen.
“They’re being forced to work in sweatshops, with chemicals that make their babies come out deformed!” came another response to my question. This is undoubtedly true; National Geographic once ran an article about industrial growth in China, showing a man whose hands were so burned by sulfuric acid that the skin was peeling away in thick yellow flakes. Some of these chemicals are probably teratogens.
However, when contrasted with the conditions these people otherwise endure (that were not created by globalization), the reasons people still take such jobs becomes more clear. Sewage runs through the streets in the colonias of Tijuana. Outhouses of rotting wood are the best sanitation available. Electricity is pirated by bending a fork in half and throwing it over lines that may run a mere eight feet overhead. Dogs are plentiful, as are the diseases they carry. Strep throat is passed from dogs as they lick the children, rabies is a persistent danger, and fleas and lice are everywhere. The dirt floors of the houses crawl with insects, and the common adobe walls make homes for bloodfeeder insects that transmit Chagas’s disease. Babies deformed by industrial chemicals are a tragedy, but many babies born at this time of year won’t survive the winter at all.
Richard Rothstein’s writing in Dissent magazine is a good example of the response to such arguments. Speaking in regard to sweatshops in Chad, which he agrees benefit the population, he argues “it can’t be immoral to … pay a little more for apparel,” and makes numerous arguments in favor of an international minimum wage and labor laws. It would indeed be wonderful to be able to bring this sort of cleanliness to developing and third-world countries, but as Krugman points out, multinational corporations have only recently begun to use third-world labor, while the advantages of first-world labor remain formidable. Rothstein’s own observation — that there is considerable diversity among the wages of even third-world countries — merely reflects the fact that multinational corporations are opportunistic in using cheap labor, not controlling its sources. Cheap labor is the only thing that third world developing economies can really offer; stability, quality of workers and existing infrastructure are profound advantages of developed economies. As Kristof pointed out last month in his New York Times column, Niger attempted to enact labor laws for the benefit of its workers, but the results have seen high unemployment and a quiet form of abject poverty.
The meeting’s attendees made one other argument, specifically that Coca-Cola ordered the assassination of a number of union workers in Colombia (some later research revealed that the alleged incidents took place in the late 1990s). It cannot be denied that corporations and their contractors are capable of shady business deals and outright criminal behavior. However, there are better ways to keep corporations honest and steadily improve the lives of the world’s indigent than to promote rebellions, to shut down trade, to boycott and to divest. A better option is to support international aid for things such as disease prevention and sanitation, or diplomatic efforts to maintain political stability in other countries. People who are healthier can work harder for more income and begin to identify other discomforts in their lives, starting with labor conditions. A healthy labor force and a stable political climate — principle advantages of the First World — are things for which multinational corporations will pay much higher wages.
Rather than supporting militants who make the American far left look like Al Qaeda, left-wing Americans should be fighting for international aid and free trade, issues that conservatives have taken the lead on and tepidly agreed to, respectively. There is much that can be done for the people whose hard labor does indeed improve our lives.
But it’s not to be accomplished by raging against the establishment, cutting off commerce or financing rebels.
