The Effects Of NAFTA On Indigenous People

Although NAFTA was originally implemented to modernize Mexico’s economy by creating manufacturing jobs for laborers, it favored wealthy national leaders and oversaw the detrimental effects it would have on the indigenous people of Mexico. The adoption of NAFTA between the three countries precisely began in December of 1992, when President Carlos Salinas of Mexico, President George H. W. Bush of the United States, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada signed the free trade agreement ("Mexico Signs"). NAFTA was designed to expand the free flow of goods and services throughout North America and eliminate tariffs on exports for industrial and agricultural purposes among the three nations. NAFTA officially took effect on January 1, 1994. In
Indigenous populations in Mexico have had a legacy of colonization through racism institutionalized into a system that marginalized them on their own homelands. From the 1990s to present times, most people within those indigenous communities worked as small rural farmers on the plantations of affluent landowners and were often exploited for their labor. Particularly in the southern area of Mexico, which included Chiapas, most Chol, Tojolabal, Tzeltal, and Tzotzil indigenous farmers specialized in coffee production. In 1989, the price of coffee bean exports lowered tremendously ("Zapatista Rebellion"). Not only did the coffee bean prices affect indigenous communities, corn prices affected them as
Because farmers relied on corn production for their main source of income, most have been put out of business due to competition of corn exports from the United States. The implementation of NAFTA lowered the price of Mexican produce being exported to the United States ("The Zapatista"). The tariff reductions of corn devastated indigenous farmers on a further level--numerous became impoverished and income inequality rapidly increased. During the first decade that NAFTA was implemented, “U.S. corn exports to Mexico quadrupled while Mexican corn prices fell 66%” (Darlington and Gillespie). Consequently, tension and hostility between indigenous communities and affluent businesspeople increased tremendously. Shortly after NAFTA was enacted in 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), an indigenous revolutionary leftist group, protested the implementation of the free trade agreement and other neoliberal economic policies of Mexico. The EZLN guerilla forces organized an armed rebellion in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico and occupied numerous towns--this rebellion came to be known as the Zapatista Uprising. Ultimately, the EZLN demanded for “direct democracy, redistribution of land, and improvement of social