In November of 2011, six months before the United States gave Colombia a clean bill of health and allowed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to take effect, paramilitaries invaded the home of Juan Carlos Galvis in Barrancabermeja. Two black-clad invaders held a gun to the head of Galvis’ daughter…
For over two decades in many parts of Mexico, large corporations — mostly foreign-owned but usually with wealthy Mexican partners – have developed huge projects in rural areas. Called mega-projects, the mines and resource extraction efforts take advantage of economic reforms and trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement. Emphasizing foreign investment, even at [...]
For over two decades, Smithfield has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become one of the world’s largest growers, packers and exporters of hogs and pork. But the conditions created in Veracruz to help it make high profits, as one of Mexico’s largest pig producers, also plunged thousands of Veracruz residents into poverty.
Over the 27 years since IRCA, a general division has marked the U.S. immigrant rights movement. On one side are well-financed advocacy organizations in Washington DC, with links to the Democratic Party and large corporations. They formulate and negotiate over immigration reform proposals that combine labor supply programs and increased enforcement against the undocumented. On the other side are organizations based in immigrant communities, and among labor and political activists, who defend undocumented migrants, and who resist proposals for greater enforcement and labor programs with diminished rights.
Over the last 25 years, guest worker programs have increasingly become a vehicle for channeling the migration that has stemmed from free market reforms. Increasing numbers of guest workers are recruited each year for labor in the U.S. from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean under the H1-B, H2-A and H2-B programs. Recruiters promise high wages and charge thousands of dollars for visas, fees and transportation. By the time they leave home, the debts of guest workers are crushing.
A political alliance is developing between countries with a labor export policy and the corporations who use that labor in the global north.
The Americas Program presents a slide show of pictures and texts from renowned photojournalist David Bacon, who takes an up-close look at Occupy Movements on the West Coast.
