A new NAFTA! Who wins?

Last week the United States Congress passed a new NAFTA. Who will benefit, I wonder?

Twenty-five years ago this New Year's Eve, while the President of Mexico slept on his yacht off the Pacific coast, the indigenous of the mountains of the Mexican State of Chiapas surrounded the city of San Cristobal de las Casas and the towns of Las Margaritas and Ocosingo. On New Year's Day, 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, these people who no longer had anything to lose, liberated these three places from the Mexican government in the name of the Zapatista Liberation Army.

Commandante Ramona of the EZLN
Thanks Wikipedia

In January of 1996 I accidentally found myself in the town square of Comitan de Dominguez, a place strategically located between the three places that the Zapatistas had briefly liberated. Overhead helicopters chopped and around the square tanks and jeeps armed with big machine guns roamed. But in the square a group of several hundred small brown people had created a liberated space and, with a  bonfire burning day and night, created a free kitchen and a small new country. They called themselves the Civil Zapatistas and I joined them for three weeks. It’s a long story but here is a description of my first meal with the Civil Zapatistas. 

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Roberto, a self employed mechanic, is giving one of his firebrand speeches. The little man with the red bandana jumps up and down and hollers through the megaphone. Viva Zapata! Viva los campesinos! Fuera el PRI!  He shouts under the indigo sky and the dirty white tassel of his stocking cap jiggles in fury. Short brown people applaud and shout back, Viva Marcos, el subcommandante.

My lunch has just been served me from the free kitchen. The women bring it to me from the large cauldron in the center of the occupied zocalo. The fire burns there all night serving coffee, posol and three square meals a day to people who would be lucky to have one per day at home.  

My beans and rice are heavy. They bend the paper plate and seek the ground. The thick tortillas, three, keep them on the plate. I, already over fed, don't deserve more. But cannot insult by refusing these people so recently able to be generous. Besides, even under the intense January sun, the hot food entices. I seek protection from the sun under a pine, on the well crafted rock wall. I am butt to butt with two skinny brown men in white cowboy hats. They wolf down their meals. They use tortillas and their fingers as deftly as chopsticks. Both wear red panuelos, or bandanas; the mark of Zapatismo and the audacious occupation of this square.  

Next to we three hombres is a young family, also three. They, the raven haired parents, visit with friends. She, on the stone wall on one side of the side walk, he on the other. She with the young women. He with the young men. Both small and handsome.   

Their beautiful button of a baby weaves a fabric between these two young Sunday revolutionaries. With her best pink party dress not quite covering her knees she flirts with the dangerous unknown between the firm rock of each parent. The old paving stone of the walk keep her vertical. The weight of the sky holds her down.  

Slightly tethered to her mother she focuses across the fifteen foot expanse to her father. Then she launches herself. Part gallop, part stumble she drifts off course,  over corrects, re-corrects and, like any accomplished athlete, keeps her focus on the point that is her father.

Then she careens into the outstretched harbor of her father's hands.  A minute for a satisfied squeal. Then she refocuses and is off to her mother. Over and over, some times dodging the knee cap of booted pedestrians, and neither her parent nor she tire.

On one crossing of the walk, however, the baby is distracted briefly. A small and noisy covey of four year olds streak by, nearly knocking her down. She stops to ponder the wild things. Then, refocusing, propels herself toward her father. There is work to do. She knows her future.