The author explains how NAFTA, which has been a boon to corporate profits, has also been a major root cause of the massacre of 43 Mexican students that has so shocked the Mexican people.
We are often told that freer trade is a panacea for all our economic ills. Yet if that were the case, Mexico, which has signed more trade agreements than just about any other nation on the planet, would be one of the world’s richest, strongest performing economies. Instead it’s on the verge of a vertiginous descent into social chaos, endemic lawlessness, and failed statehood, while its economy – at the exclusive service of transnational corporations, home-grown oligarchs, corrupt politicians and drug lords – continues to splutter in the slow lane.