Product Description
"The essays in this book propose new ways of reducing inequality, not by growth-inhibiting transfers and regulations, but by enhancing efficiency--eliminating consumption subsidies for the wealthy, increasing the productivity of the poor, and shifting to a more labor-and-skill-demanding growth path ... [They] draw on discussions at a conference sponsored by the IDB and the MacArthur Foundation, titled "Inequality-Reducing Growth in Latin America," held in Washington, D.C. in January 1997"--Foreword. ... Read more

Product Description
This major new Handbook offers a comprehensive analysis of the key issues surrounding the rapid expansion of Latin America's manufacturing sector.It systematically examines the most important factors influencing the comparative advantages and the globalization of manufacturing industries in the region. The Handbook of Latin American Trade in Manufactures provides a detailed account of trade and investment policies, international technology transfers, macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment policies and industry-specific initiatives affecting the export competitiveness of Latin America's manufactures.The four major parts of the Handbook contain detailed assessments of regional and country-specific developments in manufacturing trade, and the statistical appendix provides essential information on the countries of the region. This Handbook will be welcomed by a wide range of economists in the fields of international trade and investment, industrial organization, development economics and Latin American trade.It will also be of interest to business analysts and policy makers concerned with the formation of trade strategies. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from American Decades: Primary Sources, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1694 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.American Decades Primary Sources provides fresh insight into the decade's most important events, people, and issues. Entries representing a diversity of views that provide insight into the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from the decade. Also included are concise contextual information, notes about the author and further resources. American Decades Primary Sources includes chapters on the arts, medicine and health, media, education, world events, religion, government and politics, lifestyles and social trends, law and justice, religion, business and the economy, and sports. Included to provide unique perspectives and a wealth of understanding are first hand accounts that include oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws, legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoonsand recipes. ... Read more

Product Description
This book describes how workers, unions and NGOs from four Central American countries--Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua--fought back and struggled for social justice alongside US-based unions and NGOs. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Robert Pastor maintains that the collapse of Communism is less important in permitting the United States to escape the whirlpool of Latin American politics than are the new trends of democracy and freer trade in the region.Robert Pastor maintains that the collapse of Communism is less important in permitting the United States to escape the whirlpool of Latin American politics than are the new trends of democracy and freer trade in the region. ... Read more

Product Description
Over the past five years, the World Bank has undertaken a major project looking at how to achieve the benefits of open trading through liberalization policies. This has involved very detailed analysis of the experience of 19 countries to uncover the fundamental principles by which governments can achieve neutrality in their countries' trading systems and the demonstrable advantages of an international free market economy. The results of the work are published in seven volumes, two each for each of the three major regions (Latin America, Asia and Pacific and Mediterranean) plus a volume synthesizing the results and acting as a manual of trade liberalization. ... Read more

Product Description
Before social unrest shook the region in the 1970s, Central America experienced more than a decade of rapid export growth by adding cotton and beef to the traditional coffee and bananas. Williams shows how the rapid growth contributed to the present social and political crisis, examines the causes of the export boom and who benefited from it, and shows the impact of the boom on land use, the ecology, and the conditions of life in the rural areas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

University of California anthropologist, Carol A. Smith, reviews Williams' work
University of California anthropologist, Carol A. Smith, reviews Williams' work in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, "What took place in Central America calls for comparative research. The most useful and original comparisons have been done by Robert Williams, an economist who uses sociological, historical, and ethnographic methods in his research.Robert Williams's Export Agriculture (1986) observes that cotton and cattle production for export expanded hugely in all five countries and led to significant dispossession of peasants everywhere, including Costa Rica.But the five Central American states handled peasant protest quite differently, with both Costa Rica and Honduras carrying out land reform and expanding services while the three other states responded with repression and militarization-which led to war.In States and Social Evolution (1994), Williams examines the social and economic factors that led to two different kinds of states in Central America-the three revolutionary countries being controlled by rigid oligarchies, the other two being led by more open political groups. (Williams) finds an explanation in the social and political relations created by the coffee export economy, the first major post-colonial export in the region, which played a critical role in state formation."

The environmental repercussions of export agriculture
Williams' book deals with the issue of export agriculture in Central America and its repercussions on the economic, ecological, and social well-being of this troubled region. Williams divides the book into three parts, according to the main exports of Latin America. First, Williams deals with cotton's emergence as a cash crop and its positive and negative aspects. Second, Williams deals with cattle and the effects it has had upon the land and the men who till it. This book is interesting in the way it views the cash crops in an economic light and in the ways they affect farmers, large
farmers, and the working class.

The environment has blessed Central America with some of the best land anywhere on earth. Central America's pacific coastal plain, for example, is ideal for growing cotton. The ecological consequences of growing cotton, however, are quite severe. The stress on the soil is severe, considering this crop is not for subsistence. While the law requires that the land be cleared as to protect the land, it is nearly inevitable to prevent the volcanic soils to be vulnerable from wind and water erosion. In the rainy season, however, thunderstorms take their toll on the soil since they make the land prone to flooding. This damage is in addition to the fact that the best lands are used for the production of cotton, while simultaneously polluting the coastal eco-system. The fertility of the soil was short lived in Central America, since after four or five years of consecutive cultivation the light soils of the coastal plain began to lose their natural fertility. This, in turn, led to the need to use chemicals to yield more crops per acre of land.

In regards to cattle, Williams argues that the emerging demand for beef in the United States as a result of the fast food business precipitated the need to make subsistence plots in Latin America land for cattle grazing. For institutions like the World Bank, AID and IADB cattle was seen as a pragmatic, quick way to achieve export led growth. By most accounts, this land was carved from Central American forests. Swidden agriculture (slash and burn) practiced by indigenous allowed for the land to be regenerated after the patch had been abandoned. Under modern methods of forest clearing, the land is almost always relegated to remaining fallow. Modern methods of clearing have allowed for flatlands below the grazing grounds to become subject to flooding. Williams concludes that for those privileged enough to gain access to bank credit, the beef export boom meant a quick way to expand their fortunes, while for those who planted for survival it spelled impending doom. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from American Decades: Primary Sources, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1573 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.American Decades Primary Sources provides fresh insight into the decade's most important events, people, and issues. Entries representing a diversity of views that provide insight into the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from the decade. Also included are concise contextual information, notes about the author and further resources. American Decades Primary Sources includes chapters on the arts, medicine and health, media, education, world events, religion, government and politics, lifestyles and social trends, law and justice, religion, business and the economy, and sports. Included to provide unique perspectives and a wealth of understanding are first hand accounts that include oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws, legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoonsand recipes. ... Read more

Product Description
Food, televisions, computer equipment, plumbing supplies, clothing. Much of the material foundation of our everyday lives is produced along the U.S./Mexico border in a world largely hidden from our view. Based on gripping firsthand accounts, this book investigates the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border. Journalist David Bacon paints a powerful portrait of poverty, repression, and struggle, offering a devastating critique of NAFTA in the most pointed and in-depth examination of border workers published to date.
Unlike journalists who have made brief excursions into strawberry fields and maquiladoras, Bacon has more than a decade's experience reporting on the ground at the border, and he has developed sustained relationships with scores of workers and organizers who have entrusted him with their stories. He describes harsh conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley, the deplorable housing outside factories in cities such as Tijuana, and corporate retaliation faced by union organizers. He finds that, despite the promises of its backers, NAFTA has locked in a harsh neoliberal economic policy that has swept away laws and protections that Mexican workers had established over decades. More than a showcase for NAFTA's victims, this book traces the emergence of a new social consciousness, telling how workers in Mexico, the United States, and Canada are now beginning to join together in a powerful new strategy of cross-border organizing as they search for economic and social justice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great, real deep
Struggle and hope. That's what I thought of this May the 1st of 2006, when seemingly millions of people across the US, mainly Latinos, rallied to support so-called illegal immigrants. These immigrants have literally spent a long time struggling both in the nations they came from and here in the US as business people get rich from their labor. But that day there was hope. In this day of globalization where corporations have the ultimate freedom to cross borders at will in the search for higher and higher profits, while workers cannot without becoming "illegals", it was a day that seemed to signify that "Si, se peude!" They stood up to a government punishingits own people trying to escape a poverty created by the economic policies created by that very government.

What exactly is going on at the US-Mexican border? It seems so far away to me, but in a town I grew up near, you can see the backlash and blame on immigrants for US citizens losing jobs to what is really that fault of neo-liberal attacks like NAFTA. In Hazleton, PA (about 45 minutes from my native Carbondale), some of the most draconian laws against immigrants ever passed sailed through recently. But it all comes back to the border. It turns out that Mexican immigrants are not so docile after all,and that they, just like any people who have been wronged over and over, will stand up for themselves. David Bacon, a labor journalist who works for the Nation, illustrates this well in "The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U. S./Mexico Border".

Bacon looks at what exactly is happening on the border. He starts by exploring the grape pickers of Southern California. Most had come to the US to seek higher wages than they could have possibly gotten in Mexico. But after NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association), the companies at which they had won better wages after decades of fights with the Caesar Chavez's United Farm Workers (UFW), many suddenly found that they lost these jobs as they moved to Mexico's Mexicali Valley where they could pay those workers as much as a third less than the mainly Mexican immigrants in the US. In the Mexicali Valley, farmworkers (who often bring their children to the fields since there is no affordable school or daycare) could barely afford to pay their bills or get groceries, leading to many families sharing homes in order to pool their resources.

Along this same border has risen the infamous Maquiladora (duty-free and union-free factories) industry, which is now a global term but originated as a term for clothing manufacturers along the US-Mexico border. These have swelled since NAFTA, and one of the allures is that it is very hard to form an independent union in Mexico. However, Bacon illustrates that over the past decade of NAFTA Mexico, several independent unions have arisen in the face of a hostile ruling PRI, and then PAN, governments. At the same time, US unions have begun to pull away from their former cold-war, anti-communist sentiment and have slowly recognized that American workers and Mexican workers both lose because of NAFTA and that they must work together in order to survive, The UE, (United Electrical), an independent union, sent the first support to the new independent unions and conducted co-campaigns on the border to organize Maquiladoras into unions to demand better conditions and wages. Interestingly enough, it also began the question of shifting their tactics, since while US unions usually pressure companies until they can win or get some of their goals, Mexican unions usually see the government as their main enemy since the Mexican government maintains industry control over wages and will often not let companies raise wages if it will effect an entire industry (another reason US companies like moving to Mexico).

Some of the stuff in this book honestly was shocking how far 1st world companies would go to crush 3rd world workers. There are countless stories in "Children of NAFTA" of brutal beatings of union organizers. They (factory managers) shipped in temps in many stories to vote for the company government-sanctioned union in factory-wide elections, which too seemed many times to galvanize Maquiladora workers against the management. Black-lists, revenge wage-reductions, and brutal attacks on factory workers' pro-union demonstrations almost made reading it unbearable. However, as the labor organizers learned to deal with NAFTA, the one thing I came away from is that the only hope that we human beings fighting for a better future for our children have is that we can never turn our backs on anyone in a struggle. If global corporations can be everywhere, labor unions must be too. While we engage in these struggles locally, our minds must think globally, as the phrase goes.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for
If you are looking for a biased account of the human tragedy that is Mexican labor, this might be the book for you.

If you are looking for a analysis of what is happening and WHY. You may be disappointed.

David Bacon clearly wishes that he was the Saul Alinsky of Mexico. If you don't know who Saul Alinsky is, you may have just found your next reading subject.

It's not that its poorly written. It is just not impressive in any way. If you can't get enough of Mexico or if you need something to read between globalization protests, you will love it. But its hard to just jump in with an open mind and not be disappointed. ... Read more