NAFTA
Dear Daniel – As to citing NAFTA as one of Bill Clinton’s accomplishments: shortly after it was passed I was down in Chihuahua, my wife’s home town, and her rich relatives were all licking their chops in anticipation of making millions. When I ventured to express a mild skepticism these charmingly polite people were suspicious that my wife had married a Communist.
One of the many results of NAFTA was to drive the small Mexican farmer off his land (Milpa) and the Ejidos, communal farms which go back before the Conquest, by flooding the market with cheap subsidized American corn. Now when they are starving and have no recourse but to try to get into the States, we brutally try to build a fence to keep them out and patrol it with moronic vigilantes. “Illegal Immigration” becomes a hot political issue and none of our brainless candidates has any real answer other than to whip up hysteria.
Chihuahua was a small provincial city at the foot of the Sierra Madre. They used to kid themselves as being a “rancho,” small farm. It has a glorious history as the cradle (La Cuna) of the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa, Felipe Angeles, the mighty Division del Norte which won the big battles of the Revolution. My wife’s Grandparents, Leonardo and Dolores Revilla, were figures in the Revolution, friends and associates of Abraham Gonzales, great revolutionary Governor of Chihuahua, and General Felipe Angeles, the cleanest figure (la Figura mas Limpia) in the Revolution. When General Angeles was executed by the counter revolutionary Carrancistas, my wife’s Grandmother and Mother, Carmen Revilla, were with him in his last moments. My youngest son Philip is named for him. Dona Dolores Revilla founded the first Feminist club in Chihuahua. Later she was honored by the Government for her “Many acts of humanity” during the Revolution. She is also pictured in a mural in the Municipal Palace, right between Pancho Villa and Abraham Gonzalez.
Now that valiant city is riddled by the drug traffic. Mainly because Americans can’t refrain from shoving stuff up their noses and selling assault rifles to the cartels. I still have relatives down there and they are suffering. As was said over a hundred years ago, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States."
But as to Clinton’s being the worst President, he is up against a very strong field. We cannot pass over George W. Bush who, as they say, needs no introduction, and Ronald Reagan who to my mind began the cycle of destruction. Before him the American way had been, sure the big guys got theirs, but they always left a little for us. It was under Reagan that the "we want it all” cycle began. Besides repeal of Glass-Steagal, engineered by the all-wise Rubin which is a prime mover in the current debacle – Rubin is still very much in the scene as the eminence grise behind Summers and Geithner – we must add “Welfare Reform” which ended “Welfare as we know it” to the list of Clinton’s accomplishments.
Letter from Roy Metcalf