Trade Justice Alliance | 21 July 2018

Mexico’s Historic Election: A Labor Perspective - TJA Sunday Webinar 7/15/18

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Those of us in the trade justice movement have long understood the intimate relationships between Mexico’s family, worker and labor rights, and our own. Trump’s emphasis on building a ridiculous border wall as an empty solution along with his deplorable tactic of imprisoning asylum-seeking families in his "Zero Tolerance" program is beyond evil. Yet there is no attempt by Trump or any other former American president to link the migrant crisis to globalization and free trade. The recent election in Mexico is a referendum on the global reaction to the neoliberal assaults accompanying trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. We will not waste this teaching and activist moment.

Mexico’s landslide election of leftist, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a sweeping rebuke of working-class poverty, corruption, and a generation of rule by a party that had lost the support of the Mexican people. Mexico saw an election with the most votes in history, with over 50% of the vote going to Lopez-Obrador. With a large majority of seats in the house and senate going to his Morena Party, there is good reason to hope that AMLO will be able to accomplish a lot, especially in the realm of building the economy and overcoming endemic corruption.

There is also good reason to hope that Mexico’s Labor movement will also develop when the new president takes office in December, and that will bring relief to U.S. workers as well.

We look forward to hearing from two trade experts on the expected implications for Mexico’s political and labor movement in the wake of such a historic election.

Trade Justice Alliance is pleased to welcome Manuel Perez-Rocha, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and an Associate of the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam. He is a Mexican national who has led efforts to promote just and sustainable alternative approaches to trade and investment agreements for two decades.

Also joining us, for the first time is Héctor de la Cueva, the founder and Coordinator, General for the Labor Research and Trade Union Advisory Center (CILAS) in Mexico and member of the National Coordination of the Mexican Network of Action against Free Trade.

We recognize that there is also a great Zapatista and indigenous movement in Mexico that will be important voices in determining the country’s equitable economic and social justice future, and that are at odds with the Lopez-Obrador / Morena positions in many areas. We are hoping some of our attendees will have good questions for our esteemed guest speakers around these topics.