 |
|
|
'It's inhuman that borders are only open to capital' |
|
By Diego Cevallos*
The North American Free Trade Agreement has encouraged illegal migration, says Mexican peasant Lucas Benítez, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, in a conversation with Tierramérica.
MEXICO CITY - The rights of immigrant workers are violated in the United States, and President George W. Bush has no interest in stopping the phenomenon, says Lucas Benítez, a Mexican peasant who crossed the U.S. border illegally in 1992, and is about to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
"It's inhuman that while free trade treaties open the borders to capital, they remain closed to human beings, to those of us who came to sell the United States our labor," Benítez told Tierramérica in a telephone conversation from the southern U.S. state of Florida.
The 29-year-old leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, in northern Florida, will receive the Kennedy prize on Nov. 20, alongside his coalition colleagues Julia Gabriel and Romeo Ramírez, both Guatemalans.
The award, instituted in 1984 and consisting of 30,000 dollars, recognizes the three for having pulled from "slavery" thousands of undocumented workers who are the driving force in Florida's agricultural development.
- What does the Kennedy award mean to you?
- It's a big step forward because it highlights our fight to denounce the mistreatment and the human rights violations that rural workers continue to suffer in the United States. Some people think that nothing like that happens here, but they are wrong.
- What do you think of the promises of President George W. Bush and Mexico's President Vicente Fox to give residence status to immigrant workers in the United States?
- Bush has no interest in legalizing the undocumented workers or in reuniting family members who have been living here for years, nor (is he interested) in halting the human rights violations. Vicente Fox is promoting a migration program for seasonal work permits, which is something we don's support. That would be a form of slavery because it would force us to work with only one boss, and the immigrants would not be able to move from one company to another. If that isn't slavery, I don't know what is.
- So, what is the solution?
- First we need to legalize the millions of us who are already here. And second, if they really want to make a treaty, the first guarantee must be that the immigrants can work for any employer and that they have the right to organize and to have their own voice in this country. But this is difficult to achieve between Mexico and the United States. It is deplorable and inhuman that while free trade treaties open the borders to capital, like between these two countries, they remain closed for human beings, to those of us who came to sell our labor.
- But the governments say that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a positive factor and a dynamic force for both economies. You disagree?
- It has really been a factor that forced many of us to emigrate. My father survived in Mexico working the land, like my grandfather. I wanted to do the same, but the land no longer provides enough to eat or to compete with the big transnationals and agro-industries that receive subsidies from the U.S. government. This caused Mexico to go from being an agricultural producer to a producer of cheap labor for the United States. That is the true outcome of free trade.
- Do the efforts of organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which you lead, contribute to changing this reality?
- When we arrived here in 1992 the working conditions were worse than they are today. I have seen bosses who carried pistols in the fields to intimidate us. My compañeros (fellow workers) were sometimes beaten for the simple fact that they wanted to drink water. But we began to organize quietly, and in 1995 we staged a strike. Since that moment, things began to change. Several employers were tried and sentenced, and working conditions improved. But there is still much to do to truly guarantee the rights of workers in farming, which is the main source of our employment in the United States.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent.
|
