Conghaileach
5th June 2003, 13:23
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 29, 2003
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WHO IS GUILTY IN IMMIGRANT DEATHS?
By Heather Cottin
When 19 women, men and children died of asphyxiation, hyperthermia and
dehydration in a truck in southern Texas last week, authorities were
quick to blame the driver. They needed a scapegoat, someone on whom to
focus media attention while the real perpetrators of this crime went
free.
There is talk of the death penalty for driver Tyrone Williams, who comes
from Jamaica and lives in a working class neigh borhood in Schenectady,
N.Y. Williams was driving his own rig. He is one of the thousands of
independent truckers in the U.S. who leave their families for long
periods, traveling great distances trying to make a buck. Williams's
semi usually transported milk from New York to Texas and watermelons
from Texas to New York. When he was approached by people who offered him
money to transport Latin American economic refugees through Texas, he
agreed.
Williams was offered $2,500 to transport what he was told was a group of
16 people who were returning to the U.S. from visiting their families in
Mexico, or who were trying to get work in the United States for the
first time. (Newsday, May 19)
Only it wasn't 16 people, it was closer to 100. And they came from
several countries: Honduras, where 67 percent of the population lives in
poverty; the Domin ican Republic, where 60 percent of the people are
poor and 20 percent survive on less than $1 per day, according to a 1999
report by the Organization of American States; and Mexico, where over 17
million people subsist on less than $350 per person per year. Two-thirds
of Mexico's population of 34.1 million live below the poverty level.
Refugees of this system of misery risk death trying to get into the
United States.
Williams's tractor trailer was just one of thousands of big rigs that
take on human cargoes in return for a few thousand dollars. His truck
was locked tight and the people inside were trapped in the hot Texas sun
for hours. One by one they died. One was five-year-old Marco Antonio
Villasenor Acuna of Mexico, who was traveling with his father. By the
time Williams realized something was wrong, 17 people were already dead.
Others died later in Texas hospitals.
Williams and the Latino workers were all caught in the growing economic
crisis.
Mexico's economy has been in decline for some time. In the 1990s the
government ended the right of millions of Mexicans to own communal land.
Privatization by U.S. transnational corporations forced millions off
their land and into the cities, where unemployment burgeoned. Then the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) encouraged the growth of the
maquiladoras--factories along the U.S. border that pay wages of $3 to $5
per day while Wall Street benefits. To escape this misery, thousands
have tried to emigrate to the Southwest, a region the U.S. took from
Mexico in a war of aggression in 1848.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government and racist vigilantes demonize and hunt
down these refugees. Mexicans and Central Amer icans are denied visas
and called "illegal aliens." Hundreds of right-wing racists prowl the
southern region of the United States in death squads, their mission to
stop the migration of Latin American people into the United States. In
October, a dozen Mexicans were shot and two were killed by vigilantes in
Arizona. (Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2002)
These racists work in concert with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, the Border Patrol, and now the Department of Home land
Security. Anti-immigration activity is not new. Two decades ago, border
guards and racists hunted down Central Americans who were fleeing U.S.-
sponsored wars against the peasants and workers in El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua.
U.S. WARS AGAINST PEASANTS
In the 1980s the U.S. backed fascist oligarchies in Central America
while organizing and paying for wars against revolutionaries seeking
land reform. In El Salvador, for example, 14 families owned 80 percent
of the land. In Guatemala, the U.S. corporation United Brands, formerly
United Fruit, owned the majority of the arable land. In Nicaragua the
Sandinista revolutionaries tried to hold onto land reforms, but the
Pentagon and CIA waged a bloody war against them.
In the end, the "neoliberal" economic schemes backed by the U.S.
prevailed. NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas have codified
this iniquitous system.
NAFTA canceled tariffs on U.S. products sold in Mexico, economically
obliterating up to 80 percent of Mexican farmers, who could not compete
with U.S. agribusiness. As many as 10 million farmers will be forced off
their land by 2004. (Jerry Mander, "The Case Against the Global
Economy," p. 126)
After NAFTA was signed, huge numbers of Mexican peasants were forced off
their ancestral lands. The transnationals have turned these fertile
regions into plantations where export crops destined for the United
States are grown. The trans na tionals pay the workers starvation wages.
Land reforms have been reversed. Landless peasants have flooded into the
cities to compete for low-paying jobs in areas where unemployment can be
as high as 35 percent. The U.S. enforces these conditions with money,
militarism and manipulation. Billions in profit go to United Brands,
Domino Sugar, Liz Claiborne, General Motors, Chrysler, Fisher Price,
U.S. banks and other trans nationals. They suck the resources and
lifeblood from these countries, destroying their economic sovereignty.
Their junior partners, the oligarchies of Central Amer ica and Mexico,
allow U.S. corporations to enslave and impoverish their populations.
The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have
rendered Caribbean, Central American and Mexican peasants and workers
poorer than they were in 1980.
So, in the Southwest, there is a land-office trade transporting people
desperate to work into the United States.
Independent truckers are vulnerable to the bribes of the "coyotes," the
people who smuggle Central Americans and Mexicans into the U.S. These
small businesses are on the ropes and losing ground to the huge trucking
conglomerates. They have faced large price hikes in tolls, fuel oil and
insurance.
Independent truckers and the people who run these smuggling operations
make a few thousand dollars at most. When the U.S. government arrested
four individuals, including Williams, for the murder of the migrant
workers in Texas, it targeted the wrong criminals.
Those really responsible include the Bush administration, which reneged
on its promise to Mexican President Vicente Fox to open the border to
migration. Instead the Department of Homeland Security is encouraging
militia groups and border guards to kill and imprison refugees of this
cruel system.
Also culpable are the transnationals that employ 1 million workers in
the maquila dora towns along the U.S.-Mexican border. And the U.S.
agribusiness owners making billions from the cheap labor and land stolen
from poor peasants in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.
The real criminals are the capitalists who make billions from these
arrangements, and the corrupt governments that benefit from the economic
plunder of the increasingly impoverished people of these regions.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: [email protected] Subscribe wwnews-
[email protected] Unsubscribe [email protected] Support the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
Reprinted from the May 29, 2003
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WHO IS GUILTY IN IMMIGRANT DEATHS?
By Heather Cottin
When 19 women, men and children died of asphyxiation, hyperthermia and
dehydration in a truck in southern Texas last week, authorities were
quick to blame the driver. They needed a scapegoat, someone on whom to
focus media attention while the real perpetrators of this crime went
free.
There is talk of the death penalty for driver Tyrone Williams, who comes
from Jamaica and lives in a working class neigh borhood in Schenectady,
N.Y. Williams was driving his own rig. He is one of the thousands of
independent truckers in the U.S. who leave their families for long
periods, traveling great distances trying to make a buck. Williams's
semi usually transported milk from New York to Texas and watermelons
from Texas to New York. When he was approached by people who offered him
money to transport Latin American economic refugees through Texas, he
agreed.
Williams was offered $2,500 to transport what he was told was a group of
16 people who were returning to the U.S. from visiting their families in
Mexico, or who were trying to get work in the United States for the
first time. (Newsday, May 19)
Only it wasn't 16 people, it was closer to 100. And they came from
several countries: Honduras, where 67 percent of the population lives in
poverty; the Domin ican Republic, where 60 percent of the people are
poor and 20 percent survive on less than $1 per day, according to a 1999
report by the Organization of American States; and Mexico, where over 17
million people subsist on less than $350 per person per year. Two-thirds
of Mexico's population of 34.1 million live below the poverty level.
Refugees of this system of misery risk death trying to get into the
United States.
Williams's tractor trailer was just one of thousands of big rigs that
take on human cargoes in return for a few thousand dollars. His truck
was locked tight and the people inside were trapped in the hot Texas sun
for hours. One by one they died. One was five-year-old Marco Antonio
Villasenor Acuna of Mexico, who was traveling with his father. By the
time Williams realized something was wrong, 17 people were already dead.
Others died later in Texas hospitals.
Williams and the Latino workers were all caught in the growing economic
crisis.
Mexico's economy has been in decline for some time. In the 1990s the
government ended the right of millions of Mexicans to own communal land.
Privatization by U.S. transnational corporations forced millions off
their land and into the cities, where unemployment burgeoned. Then the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) encouraged the growth of the
maquiladoras--factories along the U.S. border that pay wages of $3 to $5
per day while Wall Street benefits. To escape this misery, thousands
have tried to emigrate to the Southwest, a region the U.S. took from
Mexico in a war of aggression in 1848.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government and racist vigilantes demonize and hunt
down these refugees. Mexicans and Central Amer icans are denied visas
and called "illegal aliens." Hundreds of right-wing racists prowl the
southern region of the United States in death squads, their mission to
stop the migration of Latin American people into the United States. In
October, a dozen Mexicans were shot and two were killed by vigilantes in
Arizona. (Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2002)
These racists work in concert with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, the Border Patrol, and now the Department of Home land
Security. Anti-immigration activity is not new. Two decades ago, border
guards and racists hunted down Central Americans who were fleeing U.S.-
sponsored wars against the peasants and workers in El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua.
U.S. WARS AGAINST PEASANTS
In the 1980s the U.S. backed fascist oligarchies in Central America
while organizing and paying for wars against revolutionaries seeking
land reform. In El Salvador, for example, 14 families owned 80 percent
of the land. In Guatemala, the U.S. corporation United Brands, formerly
United Fruit, owned the majority of the arable land. In Nicaragua the
Sandinista revolutionaries tried to hold onto land reforms, but the
Pentagon and CIA waged a bloody war against them.
In the end, the "neoliberal" economic schemes backed by the U.S.
prevailed. NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas have codified
this iniquitous system.
NAFTA canceled tariffs on U.S. products sold in Mexico, economically
obliterating up to 80 percent of Mexican farmers, who could not compete
with U.S. agribusiness. As many as 10 million farmers will be forced off
their land by 2004. (Jerry Mander, "The Case Against the Global
Economy," p. 126)
After NAFTA was signed, huge numbers of Mexican peasants were forced off
their ancestral lands. The transnationals have turned these fertile
regions into plantations where export crops destined for the United
States are grown. The trans na tionals pay the workers starvation wages.
Land reforms have been reversed. Landless peasants have flooded into the
cities to compete for low-paying jobs in areas where unemployment can be
as high as 35 percent. The U.S. enforces these conditions with money,
militarism and manipulation. Billions in profit go to United Brands,
Domino Sugar, Liz Claiborne, General Motors, Chrysler, Fisher Price,
U.S. banks and other trans nationals. They suck the resources and
lifeblood from these countries, destroying their economic sovereignty.
Their junior partners, the oligarchies of Central Amer ica and Mexico,
allow U.S. corporations to enslave and impoverish their populations.
The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have
rendered Caribbean, Central American and Mexican peasants and workers
poorer than they were in 1980.
So, in the Southwest, there is a land-office trade transporting people
desperate to work into the United States.
Independent truckers are vulnerable to the bribes of the "coyotes," the
people who smuggle Central Americans and Mexicans into the U.S. These
small businesses are on the ropes and losing ground to the huge trucking
conglomerates. They have faced large price hikes in tolls, fuel oil and
insurance.
Independent truckers and the people who run these smuggling operations
make a few thousand dollars at most. When the U.S. government arrested
four individuals, including Williams, for the murder of the migrant
workers in Texas, it targeted the wrong criminals.
Those really responsible include the Bush administration, which reneged
on its promise to Mexican President Vicente Fox to open the border to
migration. Instead the Department of Homeland Security is encouraging
militia groups and border guards to kill and imprison refugees of this
cruel system.
Also culpable are the transnationals that employ 1 million workers in
the maquila dora towns along the U.S.-Mexican border. And the U.S.
agribusiness owners making billions from the cheap labor and land stolen
from poor peasants in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.
The real criminals are the capitalists who make billions from these
arrangements, and the corrupt governments that benefit from the economic
plunder of the increasingly impoverished people of these regions.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: [email protected] Subscribe wwnews-
[email protected] Unsubscribe [email protected] Support the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)