Migration, elections, and how we remember migrant deaths

Dispatch #1 from the Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Mexico City

By Pedro Rios

Yesterday on November 2, hundreds of social justice and human rights defenders from over 70 countries gathered in Mexico City in the opening session of the 5th assembly of the Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development, and Human Rights (PGA). Concerned with how governments treat migration on a global scale, over the next few days delegates will be discussing how to force a more transparent process in government discussions that seek to market and commodify migrant workers.

The context for this meeting is ever more pressing given the results of the mid-term elections in the U.S. that project a right-wing and regressive politics for migration issues. If political campaigns are any indication of how intolerable conditions have become for migrants, the new Congressional make-up and its vicious Tea Party influence paints a bleak future for addressing issues of vulnerability for migrants in the US. Those vying for political power from throughout the political spectrum promote a calloused and accepted bigotry that frames migration as a dehumanized process, whereby migrants are portrayed as degenerates.

"Managed Migration" or the Privatization of Migration Control?

From this vantage point, governments (and their corresponding corporations, or vise-versa) respond to migration as a phenomenon that needs to be managed, controlled, marketed, and exploited. This is a dangerous proposition if the US exports immigration proposals at the global level: that the function of governments in response to reactionary tendencies is to manage migration like a corporate outfit.

It appears this has been the pattern with increased neo-liberal economic agreements around the world, intensified by militaristic projects. This latter part becomes much more alarming when it is infused and promoted by a sector of society that is ultra-nationalist, reminiscent of repressive regimes that shame our collective human history.

In Mexico City the PGA represents a refreshing moment, that at the global level, migrants’ rights advocates continue to push for a framework on development centered on more humanistic proposals. The belief that migrants are social agents capable of dialogue and producing solutions to global social, economic, and political problems is a necessary perspective missing in government and corporate meetings on the issue. Missing also is the foundation that projects of economic development should promote sustainable ways of living, that their commitment should be for how communities could remain whole.

At this convergence on migration, development, and human rights, delegates are insisting on the need to break the corporate paradigm that defines structures and mechanisms dealing with migration around the world, and offer something different, something new.

Remembering the Fallen Migrants, Organizing for Human Rights

Recalling the 72 migrants that were assassinated in Tamaulipas earlier this year, as well as the surge in border deaths this fiscal year and all who have perished along the migratory routes around the world, it was appropriate that delegates held a moment of silence on November 2, on Día de los Muertos.

While throughout Mexico and Latin America, and throughout cities in the United States, communities commemorate Día de los Muertos with altares, a day in which those who have passed are remembered and their lives celebrated, here at the Convento San Hipólito, where the main PGA plenary sessions are held, this recollection represented an affirmation that migrant lives matter.

I believe it is this insistence that we share as delegates: The need to re-frame development with alternative economic models, the need to find ways of making migration an option and not a necessity for survival, and the need to ensure that human rights mechanisms are integrated into development models that will frame how our communities will interact with each other for years to come.

Pedro Rios is the director of the American Friends Service Committee's U.S.-Mexico Border Program in San Diego, CA.

U.S. Immigrant Groups Converge in Mexico, Join Global Call for End to Criminalization and Exploitation of Migrants

Contact:
Colin Rajah (415) 203-8763 crajah@nnirr.org
Catherine Tactaquin (510) 459-4557 ctactaquin@nnirr.org

(Mexico City, Mexico) Dozens of U.S. immigrant groups are heading to the 5th People’s Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) being held in Mexico City Nov. 2-5. The PGA is a community-based gathering to develop and advocate alternatives to the 4th intergovernmental Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), meeting a week later in Puerto Vallarta on Nov. 10-11.

Led by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), close to 80 groups from around the U.S. will join an estimated one thousand other civil society delegates from around the world at the PGA. This will be one of the largest international civil society gatherings focused on one of the most contentious issues worldwide, migration. NNIRR is a co-founder of the PGA.

“There is an unprecedented increase in hostility towards migrants around the world, including in the U.S.,” declared Colin Rajah, Director of NNIRR’s program International Migrant Rights & Global Justice and a member of the PGA international coordinating committee. “As governments discuss ways and means to maximize the development benefits of migration, migrants themselves are being traded as cheap and disposable labor commodities.”

Raising Migrant Voices for Justice & Human Rights

During the PGA, community- based, human rights, women’s, faith-based, labor, migrant workers and other organizations from Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe will share their experiences, strategize and develop action plans to counter the growing government attacks undermining the rights and safety of migrants. Key PGA representatives will also attend the Civil Society Days Nov. 8-9 at the GFMD, and will be delivering one of four international civil society presentations during the government forum.

The PGA serves as a broad-based civil society forum exposing governments’ repressive and inhumane criminalization of migrants around the world and the increasing exploitation of migrant workers in vulnerable and precarious conditions. The PGA also advocates for better global governance and adherence to human rights protections of migrants.

U.S. Will Attend GFMD for First Time

For the first time, the U.S. State Department will be leading an inter-agency delegation of a dozen government representatives to the GFMD. Assistant Secretary of State Eric Schwartz, heading the delegation, is expected to deliver a speech in New York on Nov. 8, in conjunction with the opening of the GFMD.

Rajah commented, “While we applaud the Obama Administration’s reversal of the previous U.S. government policy of non-participation in international fora such as the GFMD, we are concerned that there is little if any indication that the U.S. will modify it trade and migration policies, which drive the forced displacement of communities and violate the rights of migrants. We will be pushing the U.S. to turn around these policies and end the repressive and inhumane treatment of migrant communities. The U.S. must comply with the international human rights protections of all migrants around the world, including in our own country.”

The GFMD was created in 2006 by the United Nations General Assembly, upon the recommendation of then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. While its mandate seeks to overcome the limitations of strictly national approaches to key migration issues, the GFMD has become a key site for developing migration and development policy at the expense of the rights of migrants and countries in the Global South.

The inaugural GFMD was held in Brussels in 2007, followed by Manila in 2008 and Athens in 2009. The Swiss government is expected to host the GFMD next year.

The PGA: Creating a Global Vision & Action Plan for Migrant Rights

The PGA was jointly created by regional migrant and migrant rights networks from around the world. Recognizing the limitation of the GFMD’s framework approach, it sought to raise the level of broad civil society engagement as key stakeholders in the debate, and more importantly, to promote the central role of human rights as a framework for migration and development.

¿Qué es el neoliberalismo? Una breve definicion para activistas en los EEUU

por Elizabeth Martínez y Arnoldo García

Click here to read this essay on neoliberalism.

El neoliberalismo es un conjunto de políticas económicas que se ha difundido en los últimos 25 años. Aunque el término se utiliza muy poco en Estados Unidos, sus efectos se pueden apreciar claramente en el enriquecimiento de los ricos y el empobrecimiento de los pobres.

"Liberalismo" puede referirse a ideas políticas, económicas o aun religiosas. En Estados Unidos, el liberalismo político ha obrado como estrategia para impedir conflictos sociales, y es presentado a la clase pobre o trabajadora como "progresista" en comparación con el pensamiento conservador o derechista. El liberalismo económico es diferente. Los políticos conservadores que dicen odiar a los "liberales" (en el sentido político) en realidad no tienen problema con el liberalismo económico, incluido el neoliberalismo.

"Neo" significa un nuevo tipo de liberalismo. Entonces, ¿de qué se trataba el viejo tipo? La escuela del liberalismo económico se hizo famosa en Europa cuando Adam Smith publicó en 1776 "La riqueza de las naciones", en el que promovía la abolición de la intervención gubernamental en asuntos económicos: no a las restricciones a la manufactura, no a las barreras al comercio, no a los aranceles. El libre comercio era, según Smith, la mejor forma de desarrollo de la economía de una nación.

Tales ideas eran liberales en el sentido de que promovían la ausencia de controles. Esta aplicación del individualismo estimuló la libre empresa y la libre competencia, es decir, que los capitalistas pudieron acumular riquezas sin límites.

Desafío al liberalismo

El liberalismo económico prevaleció en Estados Unidos durante todo el siglo XIX y a principios del XX. Luego de la Gran Depresión de los años 30, John Maynard Keynes elaboró una teoría que desafió al liberalismo como la mejor política para los capitalistas. En esencia, Keynes señaló que el pleno empleo es necesario para el crecimiento del capitalismo, y que sólo puede lograrse con la intervención de los gobiernos y los bancos centrales. Estas ideas tuvieron gran influencia sobre el New Deal (Nuevo Trato) del presidente Roosevelt, que mejoró las condiciones de vida de muchas personas. Así, la creencia de que el gobierno debía promover el bien común fue ampliamente aceptada.

Sin embargo, la crisis o reducción de ganancias que vivió el capitalismo en los últimos 25 años inspiró a la elite empresarial a revivir el liberalismo económico. Esto es lo que lo hace "neo" o nuevo. Ahora, con la globalización de la economía capitalista, el neoliberalismo se practica a escala mundial.

Una memorable definición de este proceso fue la ofrecida por el subcomandante Marcos, en el Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neoliberalismo, realizado en Chiapas (México) en agosto de 1996 con los auspicios del movimiento zapatista: "Lo que la derecha nos ofrece es convertir el mundo en un gran centro de compras donde se pueden adquirir indígenas aquí, mujeres allá", y podría haber agregado "niños, inmigrantes, obreros e incluso un país entero como México".

El neoliberalismo incluye entre sus conceptos principales:

Gobierno del mercado. Liberación de las empresas privadas de cualquier control impuesto por el Estado, sin importar cuánto daño social ello produzca. Mayor apertura al comercio y a la inversión internacionales, como en el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN). Reducción de salarios mediante la "desindicalización" de los trabajadores y la supresión de derechos laborales obtenidos tras largos años de lucha. Eliminación de los controles de precios. En definitiva, libertad total para el movimiento de capitales, bienes y servicios. Para convencernos de que esto es bueno para nosotros, nos dicen: "Un mercado desregulado es la mejor forma de aumentar el crecimiento económico, que en definitiva nos beneficiará a todos". Este concepto equivale a la economía del "goteo" de Ronald Reagan, sólo que la riqueza no gotea demasiado.

Reducción del gasto público en servicios sociales como educación y atención de la salud. Reducción de la red de seguridad para los pobres, e incluso recorte del gasto en mantenimiento de caminos, puentes, suministro de agua; todo en nombre de la desregulación estatal. Por supuesto, los promotores de esta política no se oponen a los subsidios gubernamentales ni a las exoneraciones fiscales para las empresas.

Desregulación. Debilitamiento o eliminación de toda norma gubernamental que pueda disminuir las ganancias de las empresas, incluidas las leyes que protegen el ambiente y la seguridad laboral.

Privatización. Venta de empresas, bienes y servicios públicos a inversores privados. Esto incluye bancos, industrias, vías férreas, carreteras, electricidad, escuelas, hospitales y aún el suministro de agua potable. Aunque en general las privatizaciones se realizan en nombre de una mayor eficiencia, a menudo necesaria, tienen el efecto de concentrar la riqueza aún más en unas pocas manos y de hacer que el público deba pagar más para satisfacer sus necesidades.

Eliminación del concepto del "bien público" o "comunidad", y su sustitución por el de "responsabilidad individual". Presión a los más pobres de la sociedad para que atiendan por sí mismos su salud, educación y seguridad social.

Neocolonización

El neoliberalismo ha sido impuesto en todo el mundo por poderosas instituciones financieras como el Fondo Monetario Internacional, el Banco Mundial y el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, y es incontenible en América Latina, donde se aplicó por primera vez en Chile (con la ayuda del economista Milton Friedman, de la Universidad de Chicago) tras el golpe militar respaldado por la CIA contra el gobierno del socialista Salvador Allende, en 1973. Le siguieron otros países, y algunos de los peores efectos se sintieron en México, donde los salarios disminuyeron entre 40 y 50 por ciento en el primer año de vigencia del TLCAN y el costo de vida aumentó 80 por ciento. Más de 20.000 pequeñas y medianas empresas quebraron, y más de mil compañías públicas fueron privatizadas. Como dijo un analista, "el neoliberalismo significa la neocolonización de América Latina".

En Estados Unidos, el neoliberalismo está destruyendo programas de bienestar social, atacando los derechos de los trabajadores (incluidos los de los inmigrantes) y recortando programas sociales. El "contrato" republicano es neoliberalismo puro. Sus partidarios trabajan duro por negar protección a los niños, los jóvenes, las mujeres y el planeta mismo, y tratan de que aceptemos esto con el argumento de que nos liberará del peso del Estado.

Los beneficiarios del neoliberalismo son una minoría de la población mundial. Para la vasta mayoría sólo produce más sufrimiento que antes: un sufrimiento sin los pequeños y difíciles logros de los últimos 60 años, un sufrimiento sin fin.

Elizabeth Martínez es una activista de los derechos civiles y autora de varios libros, entre ellos 500 años de historia chicana en fotografías. Arnoldo García es miembro del Comité Emiliano Zapata, de Oakland, afiliado a la Comisión Nacional para la Democracia en México. Esta traduccion aparecio en Revista del Sur.

What is Neo-liberalism? A brief definition for U.S. activists.

Haga clic aqui para leer este ensayo sobre el neoliberalismo en español

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the U.S. neo-liberalism was more commonly known as "Reaganomics," after the policies and measures that were inaugurated under the Republican Administration of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. We are offering this early work produced in 1996 by Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia as background information to help develop and engage discussions to build-up and promote the U.S. Social Forum. The U.S. Social Forum will be starting when thousands of activists, organizers and community leaders and members of U.S.-based social justice movements converge in Detroit the week of June 21, 2010.

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What is “Neo-Liberalism”?

A Brief Definition

By Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo García

“Neo-liberalism” is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.

“Liberalism” can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right-wing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate “liberals” -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neo-liberalism.

“Neo” means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called The Wealth of Nations. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation’s economy to develop. Such ideas were “liberal” in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged “free” enterprise,” “free” competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt’s New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted.

But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That’s what makes it “neo” or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.

A memorable definition of this process came from Subcomandante Marcos at the Zapatista-sponsored Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neo-liberalismo (Inter-continental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism) of August 1996 in Chiapas when he said: “what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there ...” and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico.

The main points of neo-liberalism include:

1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics -- but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.
2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job.
4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neo-liberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America.

In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutting back social programs. The Republican “Contract” on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will “get government off my back.” The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world’s people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end.

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Elizabeth Martinez is a longtime civil rights activist and author of several books, including “500 Years of Chicano History in Photographs.” Arnoldo García is a member of the Oakland-based Comite Emiliano Zapata, affiliated to the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico. Both writers attended the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and against Neo-liberalism, held July 27 -August 3,1996, in La Realidad, Chiapas.