H13041
Headlines : Human Rights75,000 Protest Tortilla Prices in Mexico
The marchers are angry about tortilla prices that have doubled over the last year to roughly 45 cents a pound, causing hardship among the millions of poor Mexicans for whom they are a staple.
Since taking office Dec. 1, Calderon has drawn the greatest criticism for failing to control the largest spike in tortilla prices in decades. The national uproar has put him in an uncomfortable position between the poor and some agribusiness industries hoping to profit from the surge in international corn prices, driven mostly by the sudden explosion of the U.S. ethanol industry.
[Posted By phoenix_rising]Republished from The Washington Post (Katharine Graham, Berkshire Hathaway)
MEXICO CITY — About 75,000 trade unionists, farmers and leftists marched through downtown Mexico City on Wednesday to protest price increases for basic foods like tortillas _ the staple of Mexico’s poor _ and to demand a change in economic policy.
The march represented a challenge to President Felipe Calderon’s market-oriented policies and one banner read “Calderon stole the elections, and now he’s stealing the tortillas!” Others waved handfuls of the flat corn disks and chanted “Tortillas si, Pan no!” a play on the initials of Calderon’s National Action Party, the PAN, which also means “bread” in Spanish.
In a press statement, Calderon’s office said the president shares the protesters’ concerns and pledged to “continue taking all necessary actions to maintain price stability for basic goods and services, (and) punish all types of hoarding and speculation in the markets.”
But it was also a setback for his archrival, leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who protest organizers prevented from speaking at the demonstration in Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza. He held his own rally afterward, and most of the crowd stayed to hear him.
Posted by phoenix_rising
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- Tortilla price hike sparks complaints
Posted by Partisano on Thursday, January 11th 2007
Socialismo o Muerte!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
La Revolucion de 1910 fue una Revolucion Socialista, donde estan las frutas por las que pelearon nuestros padres????? Perdidas en el Capitalismo.
I am sure Katherine traveled down to Mexico to get the scoop first hand. LOL. WHAT an intrepid reporter. Interesting that she’d lend her name to the byline. I wonder if that’s some kind of secret code. Since she died 5 years ago.
Forget Muerte DR. Ya basta muerte. Do you remember how many people died in Emiliano’s Revolution? 900,000. Out of 15 million. More than HALF THE TOTAL POPULATION.
This is the Modern World.
And for your information, the slogan was ¡Tierra y Libertad!
And unido doesn’t sound like the current strategy. Someone’s in there breaking them up. Look for a fifth column amigos.
Right about the slogan, but im talking about Fidels Socialismo o muerte, modern times.
Repeat after nosostros :
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios
:-)
Modernisima times.
I know it seems mysterious. But the time space continuum is an artificial construct. We’re getting enough death as it is. That’s walking into the mouth of the enemy. Just to even vaguely think that way. It’s not healthy.
We don’t want FeCal to try and figure out what to do. It’s going to be our remote control or neoliberalism’s. The market is being manipulated by international trading cabrones. He needs to subsidize local organic farming, not just maize, so that it sends the dumped stuff running.
Price stability? Por favor. We want jobs. We want a living wage. We want a tortilla that tastes better than cardboard. AMLO knows what he’s talking about guys. Lo siento pero es verdad.
I’m pretty sure it was 80.000 in the plaza.
Oh! Government in First Dialogue with Social Forces
MEXICO CITY, Feb 1 (IPS) – The channel of dialogue that Mexico’s conservative government has opened up with trade unions and groups of small farmers demonstrating against the rise in the cost of basic food items, especially tortillas, will face many hurdles, including strong undercurrents of mistrust, say analysts.
President Felipe Calderón, who is considered by some leftwing and social organisations to have won the July elections by fraud, said he respected the protesters and shared the concerns they expressed. He also stated in a communiqué that he had instructed his ministers to hold talks with the groups who took part in Wednesday demonstration.
END OF QUOTE
Except plus look at this “Last month’s roughly 40 percent rise in the price of tortillas, a staple food item which has been free from price controls since 1999, was the first blow to the president’s public image, surveys show.”
I wonder if we’re looking at PRI pendejada. Remember : Carlos Slim gave everyone money. But he had lunch with PRI.
Yeah – it’s the ethanol. Riiiight.
I’d think that people who call themselves “news guerillas” would have a better understanding of how the international trade system works, but here’s the rundown:
1996: NAFTA is passed, allowing US agribusiness to import corn to Mexico at below-market taxpayer-subsidized prices.
1996-present Small farmers in Mexico are gradually driven off their land, as they cannot compete with subsidized US corn imports. Remember, Mexico is where corn originated – it has a longer growing season – and the only way this could have happened is due to taxpayer subsidies paid to US agribusiness giants like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. The farmers have no choice but to serve as cheap labor in sweatshops or migrate illegally to the US where they can be slave labor on corporate farms.
2006 Having cornered the market for corn, agribusiness concerns start jacking up prices on their US-subsidized corn exports to Mexico – and there are no farmers left around to provide an alternate supply, so they can get away with it.
Conveniently, they can blame the whole issue on ethanol from corn, even though corn ethanol was only 15% of US corn production in 2005-2006; 20% went to exports, and 55% went to feeding hogs and chickens on US factory farms.
It’s called a bilateral trade agreement – remember Seattle, would you?