Mexico anti-NAFTA march moves to capital
Prensa Latina | 20 Jan 2008
Mexico Anti-NAFTA March Moves to Capital
Javier Rodriguez Roque
Mexico, Jan 20 (Prensa Latina) — The Mexican farmer march against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will enter Sunday the city of Chihuahua on its way to this capital.
The column of farmers driving their tractors departed on Thursday from Juarez City, and intends to go 1243 miles up to the Zocalo Plaza on January 31, when they will hold a rally against the agreement.
According to the program, when the farmers stop in Chihuahua on Sunday, they will place a wreath at the monument to hero Francisco (Pancho) Villa and will hold a meeting at the city"s central plaza and another in the local Congress.
They will explain to people and deputies at those places the serious damage caused to the Mexican agricultural sector by the NAFTA, and the loss of sovereignty that it means to Mexico, they said.
They will go on Sunday to Camargo and Jimenez towns, where 200 other tractors with their crews will wait for them to join the original protest march.
The farmers have mobilized after creation of the Francisco Villa Farmer Resistance Movement, and will be one of those organized in different points of the nation to meet in the capital"s rally on January 31.
Meanwhile, the National Farmer Confederation ratified that all its affiliates will show the farmers" power in that mega-concentration, the motto of which is to demand renegotiation of the NAFTA agricultural chapter.
Reopening Mexican borders to the subsidized corn, bean, milk, and sugar imports from the United States and Canada, free of taxes, causes a crisis in the rural sector, due to impossibility of competing with them.
