About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

550 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1997)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0550 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Anatole France told the story of a boy who was taken by an uncle to see the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. He could not follow the debate and asked what it was about when they emerged on the street. His uncle said, They were discussing the cost of the First World War. And what did they decide? They decided that the cost was 23 trillion francs. And what about the men and women who were killed? Oh, they were included. The articles that follow are reminiscent of that discussion. Enormous social dislocation is going on in North America, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is contributing to that dislocation. In Mexico, the oldest incumbent political party or oligarchy in the world, the Institutional Revolu- tionary Party (PRI), seems in danger of losing control. If that happens, NAFTA will be one reason. The PRI is not a party in the American sense but more of a family firm and social insurance scheme. It has successfully packed the ballot boxes of Mexico for more than sixty years. Currently, it is under intense scrutiny because Mexico, after the euphoria of the signing of NAFTA, suddenly stumbled into an economic and political black hole with the peso devaluation crisis of December 1994. After delivering the goods for many years in terms of stability and order, the PRI is beginning to appear to its Washington patrons like a possible liability rather than ally. Inflation, unemployment, the collapse of businesses and banks, and guer- rilla warfare are some of the cavalry of the Apocalypse that have arrived on the Mexican scene. Former President Carlos Salinas, the hero of NAFTA, has fallen from grace. Memories of President Ernesto Zedillo's 1994 election promises to provide for the well-being of your family and his advertisements of himself as a leader who knows how to do it have acquired an ironic taste. All of this is having profound cultural consequences, and not only in Mexico. The immigration crisis is an indication that no part of North America can really escape the consequences of upheaval in another part. During the lobbying that preceded ratification of NAFTA, Salinas and other Mexican leaders took pains to claim that the accord had nothing to do with political or cultural concerns. NAFTA was represented as being entirely about economics. That was undoubtedly a wise course of action in terms of placating the national vanities of the three countries, but only the naive would think that NAFTA was simply a tariff accord or that economic reform would have no reference to cultural values. Do work habits have nothing to do with culture? Does productivity have nothing to do with culture? Can a free market exist in a country that is not free? Does freedom have nothing to do with culture? Questions of a possible common culture are increasingly on the minds of many North Americans. 9

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most