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Vallarta Living | January 2007  
Chickens, Mexico, and NAFTA
Doug Bower - PVNN


| An American Expat in Mexico's Heartland - click HERE for info
 I hope what I write in this book will make you think twice about moving to México. I am not saying that in any sort of selfish sense as if I want to keep México all to myself. Not at all. What I mean is that México does not need more Americans who try to conform it into their American image. That is what happens in expat enclaves and American sectors and it is why I write what I do and how I do. México has had enough Americanizing Colonization with its horrible results seen in San Miguel de Allende. - Doug Bower | Here’s a very interesting little tidbit:
 Americans never understand their responsibility in the Mexican Immigration to the U.S. debacle. They will blame everyone under the sun, and then some, rather than look inward to themselves as major contributors to the problem.
 Here’s what I mean.
 In the next two years, thanks to NAFTA, Mexico will begin to buy its chicken from America. That’s right. Mexican farmers will be forced to compete with American chicken farmers. America can, of course, raise chickens in such quantities that no Mexican farmer will be able to match. This means loss of jobs on a massive scale.
 The word is that this NAFTA inspired deal will destroy chicken farming in Mexico.
 Just like everything else Americanization in Mexico does, destroying heritage, culture, and Mexican jobs, so will this. American chicken farmers will simply adopt the Superstore business model: do everything in such warehouse quantities the Mexican chicken farmers will not be able to keep up.
 And, just what will all these Mexican chicken farmworkers do when their jobs are taken by the destruction wrought by yet another Imperialist Americanization tactic?
 They will try to get into the U.S. for work “by hook or by crook.”
 America destroys Mexican jobs and then screams to high heaven that too many Mexicans are sneaking into the States. What you will never hear is someone in America taking responsibility for stealing Mexican jobs.
 No one seems to understand the Mexican perspective: “If America takes our jobs with their warehouse--superstore approach to chicken farming and exports the chickens, why can’t we come to America to find the jobs they stole from us?
 Just why is it Americans never see this connection?
 Why is it Americans fail to see if their trade agreement, enacted by the politicians for whom they voted, effectively takes jobs from Mexico, why shouldn’t the Mexican people try to come to America to find the work stolen from them?
 There is a connection between NAFTA and Immigration and yet Americans refuse to see it.
 Maybe they don’t want to see it because it is something altogether different that motivates their xenophobic hatred of Mexicans.
 I’ve been suggesting this for years. There is something more at work here, in this immigration issue, than simple economics. It has a historical basis and is firmly rooted in more than crying over “Those Mexicans are taking our jobs.”
 The insanity is that America’s bottom-line, the almighty dollar, is what is motivating this recent Americanization tactic. There is not a care in the world for how it will impact the lives of thousands of Mexicans in the process.
 But, Americans will scream even louder and longer when the Mexicans come flooding across the border looking for the work America stole.
 Greed.
 Greed.
 Greed. | 
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